A Nobel Prize winner who is a leader and innovator in science education has joined the board of directors of Science Foundation Arizona.
Carl Wieman, a Stanford University professor of physics and education, was the driving force in creating the website PhET, which provides interactive simulations to improve how physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math are taught and learned. The program, based at the University of Colorado, is free and open to the public.
The simulations are used more than 40 million times a year by students of all ages throughout the world.
Wieman contributed start-up money and leadership in forming a team of high-level programmers and science-education professionals to develop the project.
Science Foundation Arizona is a non-profit founded in 2006 by Greater Phoenix Leadership Inc., the Southern Arizona Leadership Council and the Flagstaff Forty in conjunction with the executive and legislative branches of state government.
It is intended to be a catalyst for high-wage, knowledge-based jobs and economic diversity.
Before taking the Stanford post, Wieman was associate director for science for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, for which he was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for studies of the Bose-Einstein condensate, which proved a theory of Albert Einstein.
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