Lane returning to campus from presidential post

Lane
returning to campus from presidential post
…………………………………………………………………

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

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.