Lane to return to Rice faculty from White House

CONTACT: B.J.
Almond
PHONE: (713) 348-6770
EMAIL: balmond@rice.edu

LANE TO RETURN TO
RICE FACULTY FROM WHITE HOUSE
Assistant to U.S. president for science and
technology will become Rice professor again

Neal Lane,
assistant to the president of the United States for science and technology,
director of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy and former director
of the National Science Foundation, will rejoin the faculty at Rice
University.

Lane, 62, will return to
Rice from the Clinton White House to take the position of University Professor
in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and senior fellow at the James A.
Baker III Institute for Public Policy. University Professor is a special
appointment entitling the holder to teach in any department in the university.
Lane is the only person ever to hold the position at Rice.

“This is another signal
day for Rice University, as we welcome back our colleague and faculty member
Neal Lane, who has served his country with such distinction in several vital
national positions,” Rice President Malcolm Gillis said.

Lane said that he and
his wife, Joni, would fly back to Houston and Rice Jan. 20.

“I have had the
privilege to serve in the Clinton-Gore administration for more than seven years
and now am excited to be coming home to Rice, where Joni and I have so many
friends,” Lane said. “I look forward to teaching again and working with Rice’s
outstanding students and faculty on physics research and science and technology
policy.”

Lane has been assistant
to President Clinton and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
since August 1998. He will resign from both positions to return to Rice, where
he served as provost from 1986 to 1993 and was an award-winning teacher and
researcher in atomic and molecular physics for more than 27 years.

In his current federal
roles, Lane provides the president with advice in all areas of science and
technology policy, and he coordinates policy and programs across the federal
government. He also co-chairs the president’s Committee of Advisers on Science
and Technology Policy and manages the president’s National Science and
Technology Council.

President Clinton named
Lane in 1993 to lead the National Science Foundation (NSF), the federal agency
that provides more than $3 billion in support for research and education in
science, mathematics, engineering and technology. Lane also served ex officio on
the National Science Board for six years.

Lane earned his
undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Oklahoma in
the early 1960s. He joined the Rice faculty in 1966 as an assistant professor of
physics and was named chair of the physics department in 1977. While
departmental chair, Lane spent 1979 serving as director of the Division of
Physics for the NSF.

Lane left Rice in 1984
to become chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. In 1986,
he returned to Rice as provost.

“The Department of
Physics and Astronomy is delighted to have Dr. Lane returning,” said Kathleen
Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. “We are hopeful that he
will re-establish his highly acclaimed program of study in theoretical
physics.”

Lane is a fellow with
the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. In his previous time at
Rice, he was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and twice won the
George R. Brown Prize for Superior Teaching. He also has studied as a
postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and has
held several visiting fellowships at the Joint Institute for Laboratory
Astrophysics in Boulder, Colo.