Dr. Pat Dehmer, Deputy Director of Science Programs at the Department of Energy, will discuss science's role in energy challenges. Dr. Dehmer is the senior science official in the third-largest federal sponsor of basic research in the country, which funds research at 300 colleges and universities as well as at DoE laboratories. She previously directed the DoE's Office of Basic Energy Science, and under her leadership that office's budget more than doubled to $1.2 billion a year. She led a five-year effort there to tie basic energy research more closely to real-world energy problems. Before beginning work at the DoE's Office of Science in 1995, Dehmer already had a distinguished career in atomic, molecular, optical and chemical physics at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, with more than 125 peer-reviewed publications. She earned her PhD in chemical physics from the University of Chicago in 1972.

More about the speaker: Dr. Pat Dehmer has extensive experience in research and in administration. She held the position of senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, working in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. She was recruited in 1995 to the position of Associate Director for Basic Energy Sciences in the Office of Science, with the Program budget rising from approximately $600M in FY 1994 to the President's request of $1.5B in FY 2008. During the period that she led Basic Energy Sciences, the world's most powerful spallation neutron source was conceived and built, under budget, ahead of schedule, and with increased scope. She has shepherded the construction of the Linac Coherent Light Source at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She has built the structure and hired the personnel that have made Basic Energy Sciences a powerful element in the nation's scientific portfolio.

MIT News Release Nov. 3, 2008