Science champion
Sandia retiree appointed to prestigious national board
Sandia retiree named to prestigious board
When she was a little girl in the Illinois cornfields looking up at the stars, Julia Phillips yearned to be an astronomer. Fast forward 50 years and she is a newly appointed member of the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation. The appointment caps a long and prestigious career in science and engineering, the bulk of it at Sandia National Laboratories.
On the 25-member National Science Board she will be responsible for making recommendations to the NSF to promote education in science and engineering. Phillips has serious concerns about the current state of science education in the United States. She said international studies have shown this country is behind countries like Japan, Finland and Canada in this arena.
She said much scientific research is done at U.S. universities that have long attracted post-graduate students from overseas.
“Look at American winners of the Nobel Prize, many were born elsewhere,” she said.
But state budget challenges have forced cutbacks at many public universities, adversely affecting students and research.
“If education is better in other countries, there is less reason for them (overseas students) to come here and stay,” she said.
Phillips is also worried that federal funding for scientific purposes has declined relative to spending on programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
“Other countries have stepped up their investment while U.S. investment has been stagnant at best,” Phillips said.
Valuable asset
Sandia Laboratory Fellow Jerry Simmons, who worked with Phillips for many years, believes she will be a valuable asset to the National Science Board.
“She’s a very strong champion for science. She will represent it well. She has very good instincts about how you support scientists at institutions and at government bodies,” Simmons said.
Phillips, 62, retired in 2015 as acting vice president and chief technology officer at Sandia National Laboratories. During her 19 years at the labs she held such notable positions as director of Physical, Chemical and Nano Sciences, director of Nuclear Weapons Science and Technology and director
of Laboratory Research Strategy and Partnerships.
Before coming to Albuquerque, Phillips spent 14 years as a member of the technical staff and a manager at the AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murrayhill, N.J.
Her résumé includes membership in numerous high-level professional organizations, including the National Academy of Engineering and the American Physical Society. In 2008, she became one of only two women to win the American Physical Society’s George E. Pake Prize in its 32-year history.
Early stargazer
Phillips’ path to scientific pursuits started in rural Freeport in northwestern Illinois.
“It was a small town surrounded by cornfields,” she said. “It meant you could go out at night and actually see the stars. I loved stargazing.”
Her parents encouraged her interest, ordering children’s science kits for her, and she participated in science fair projects at school. It was the objective nature of science that appealed to her; there were “answers that you could discover” rather than being subject to a teacher’s interpretation.
She wanted to go to the College of William & Mary in Virginia, the second oldest university in the country. At the time, it was tough for women to gain entrance and it didn’t offer an astronomy major.
“(But) I wanted to go to William & Mary worse than I wanted to be an astronomer,” said Phillips.
She chose to major in physics, “because it was the most fundamental and I never really moved beyond that.”
She became fascinated by particle physics, the study of subatomic matter such as electrons and photons. After her bachelor’s degree she went on to earn a doctorate in atomic physics at Yale University.
In 1981, she interviewed for a job with the Bell Laboratories. Deeply impressed by the man who interviewed her, she “invited” herself for a second interview.
“That was very unusual for a shy Midwestern girl,” said Phillips.
At Bell, she explored materials used in semiconductors for the phone industry.
“In the eighties, the emphasis was in making things smaller, faster and more energy efficient,” she said.
‘Feral’ in N.M.
During that period, she met her husband, neurobiologist John Connor, through a shared interest in music. She plays the flute, he plays the piano. They started playing music together on weekends, she said, “and very slowly, one thing led to another.”
They married and had two daughters. When the research institute where Connor worked as a department head closed, they relocated to new jobs in New Mexico.
“New Jersey is no place to live on one income if you can help it,” she said.
Her husband started at what is now the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute and later moved to the University of New Mexico. She went to Sandia, where she already knew many people and was familiar with their work.
The move to New Mexico meant a big lifestyle change.
“I like to say we went feral,” Phillips said.
They bought a South Valley property with several acres and had sheep and an organic garden.
“Our kids grew up knowing where most of their food came from. It was a pretty awesome way to grow up,” she said.
Though Phillips still does some work for Sandia and is committed until 2022 on the National Science Board, she her husband have continued the rural lifestyle in their retirement. They moved to a small town on the Oregon coast where they enjoy playing music, collecting rocks on the beach and hunting for berries and mushrooms in the local woods.