Steve Fetter is no stranger to government. This year’s American Institute of Physics (AIP) fellow in the State Department is taking a sabbatical from his job as a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Fetter, who holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT and a 1985 PhD in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, focuses on nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and climate change. “Most of my students go to work for the federal government,” he says. “I think I have 20 former students here at State.”
Among the topics Fetter is involved in are R&D investment strategies to support regional stability and nation-building operations around the world, and the global dialog on such issues as nanotechnology and quantum cryptography. He is in the office of science and technology adviser George Atkinson—who three years ago was AIP’s first State Department fellow.
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