E. William Colglazier
Dr. E. William Colglazier is Editor-in-Chief of Science & Diplomacy and Senior Scholar in the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).
He served as the fourth Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State from 2011 to 2014 to provide scientific and technical expertise and advice in support of the development and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. From 1994 to 2011, he was Executive Officer of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) where he helped to oversee the studies that provide independent, objective scientific advice on domestic and international public policy issues.
He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1971, and prior to 1994 worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Tennessee. While at Harvard, he also served as Associate Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Humanism of the Aspen Institute. He is past chair of the Forum on Physics and Society of the American Physical Society (APS) and a Fellow of the AAAS and APS.
In 2015 he received the Joseph A. Burton Forum Award from the APS for "outstanding contributions to the public understanding or resolution of issues involving the interface of physics and society"; received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, from the Japanese government for "contributing to science and technology exchange and mutual understanding between Japan and the United States"; and was appointed distinguished Visiting Fellow by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria. In 2016, he was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of the ten international members to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism to promote the role of science, technology, and innovation for achieving for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.