RPI's Shirley Ann Jackson receives ASME President's Award

The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and current president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the prestigious ASME President's Award during a ceremony on March 1.

The ASME President's Award, established in 1998, recognizes prominent individuals and companies who have demonstrated significant contributions to the engineering profession.

ASME Past-President Susan H. Skemp (left) presents Shirley Ann Jackson with the ASME President's Award.

ASME is honoring Jackson for her outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and for her dedication to the promotion of diversity and inclusion in engineering education. She became the 18th president of Rensselaer in July 1999.

Susan H. Skemp, a past-president of ASME who currently serves as an ASME Federal Government Fellow at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C., presented the President's Award to Jackson at a ceremony on the RPI campus in Troy, N.Y.

Jackson joins a distinguished list of past award recipients, including Dean Kamen, Daniel S. Golden, Sheila E. Widnall, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Westinghouse Electric Co., among others.

A theoretical physicist and the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in any subject, Jackson has enjoyed a distinguished career in industry and research, government and academia.

Over the past five years, Jackson has worked to bring national attention to what she has dubbed the "Quiet Crisis" in America — the threat to the United States' capacity to innovate due to the looming shortage in the nation's science and technology workforce. She noted that, if the United States is to maintain its preeminence in science and technology, America must tap all the talent the nation has to offer, including women and minorities — what she refers to as the "underrepresented majority."

Prior to becoming president of RPI, Jackson was appointed by President Bill Clinton to chair the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1995, thereby becoming the first African-American to hold that position. She worked as a theoretical physicist at the former AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., and as a professor of theoretical physics at Rutgers University.

Among the many honors she has received, Jackson was named one of the Top 50 Women in Science by Discover magazine, and has been recognized in a book published by Essence titled "50 of The Most Inspiring African-Americans." She also was named one of the "50 R&D Stars to Watch" by Industry Week magazine.

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