Cherry A. Murray, the Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy and professor of physics at Harvard University, has been nominated by President Obama to be the director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science oversees the 10 national laboratories sponsored by the Energy Department.
Professor Murray joined the Harvard faculty in 2009 and served a five-year term as dean of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Earlier she was an experimental scientist and administrator at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Bell Laboratories. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Murray is a past president of the American Physical Society. In 2014, Professor Murray was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Obama.
A native of Fort Riley, Kansas, Professor Murray holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.