Science Policy Webinar: “Moving Science from a ‘Nice-to-Have’ to a ‘Must-Have’ in U.S. Foreign Policy: Stories from a Physicist on the Front Lines of Transatlantic Security Policy”

Benjamin L. Schmitt of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, will present a free webinar, Moving Science from a ‘Nice-to-Have’ to a ‘Must-Have’ in U.S. Foreign Policy: Stories from a Physicist on the Front Lines of Transatlantic Security Policy, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Pre-registration is required at this link.

This webinar is presented by UNC Asheville’s Society of Physics Students, along with the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Department of Political Science. For more information, please email Britt Lundgren, assistant professor of physics, at blundgre@unca.edu.

More about Benjamin L. Schmitt

Benjamin L. Schmitt, is a postdoctoral research fellow and project development scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he focuses on the development of instrumentation and infrastructure for next-generation Antarctic experimental cosmology facilities at the South Pole. For this work, Schmitt traveled to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica in early 2020. From 2015-2019 he served as European energy security advisor at the U.S. Department of State where he advanced diplomatic engagement vital to the energy and national security interests of the Transatlantic community, with a focus on supporting the resilience of NATO’s Eastern Flank as it faced Russian malign energy activities. While at the State Department, Schmitt also served as the 2015 IEEE Department of State Science and Technology Policy fellow.