President Obama Picks Gallagher to Direct National Institute of Standards and Technology

President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Patrick Gallagher to be Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Department of Commerce. Dr. Patrick Gallagher is currently the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In his present position, Dr. Gallagher provides high-level oversight and direction for NIST. Dr. Gallagher received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Pittsburgh in 1991 and joined NIST in 1993 as an instrument scientist at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). Dr. Gallagher became Director of the NCNR in 2004, where he served until assuming his current duties as NIST Deputy Director in September 2008. From 1999 to 2001, Gallagher was a NIST agency representative at the National Science and Technology Council. He remains active in the area of U.S. policy for scientific user facilities and has chaired the Interagency Working Groups on neutron and light source facilities under the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In 2006, the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded Dr. Gallagher a Gold Medal for his leadership in interagency coordination of policy for scientific user facilities in the United States. Dr. Gallagher has been a member of numerous advisory, study and review committees including the Math and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation; the Committee of Visitors for Basic Energy Science in the Department of Energy for the Division of Materials Science and Engineering and the Division of Scientific User Facilities; the Solid State Sciences Committee, the Neutrino Advisory Committee and the New Materials Growth and Synthesis Committee of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Research Council; the Neutron Sciences Advisory Board of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Advanced Photon Source for Argonne National Laboratory.