State Department Taps Security Policies Expert for Jefferson Fellowship

Kathleen Vogel, an associate professor of political science and the director of NC State’s Science, Technology and Society program, will spend the next academic year helping advise federal officials in Washington.

The U.S. Department of State recently named Vogel to its 12th class of Jefferson Science Fellows, a group of scholars who serve one-year assignments as science advisers on foreign policy issues.

Vogel studies the production of knowledge on technical security policy issues, such as bioweapons, and how that process affects assessments and policy decisions.

“We understand why the State Department tapped Kathleen Vogel for this advising role,” said Jeff Braden, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “She has earned a reputation as an expert in understanding the production of knowledge around bioweapons and in understanding the security threats inherent in emerging technologies. NC State is proud to share our faculty’s expertise in ways that serve our nation’s security.”

Vogel has previously served as a William C. Foster Fellow in the Department of State’s Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction in the Bureau of Nonproliferation. In addition, she spent time as a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratories and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.    

“I am looking forward to making new professional connections at the State Department and with the broader U.S. government community and seeing how those connections could help develop new science policy programmatic activities at NC State for students and faculty,” Vogel said.

Since the program started in 2003, Jefferson Science Fellows have aimed to bring an added level of science, technology and engineering expertise to Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development offices. The program tailors Fellow assignments to each office’s need and each scholar’s expertise. Following her year-long fellowship that begins in August 2016, Vogel will return to NC State. She will continue to serve the U.S. government as a consultant.

NC State is home to two other Jefferson Science Fellows: plant pathology professor Jean Ristaino (2012) and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Mohammed Zikry (2008).

For more information on the program, go to sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/Jefferson/.