Steve Fetter, dean of the School of Public Policy for the past four years, has been appointed assistant director at-large at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President. He will focus his attention on the scientific and technical aspects of energy, climate change, and security policy issues.

OSTP Director John Holdren said in a recent ScienceInsider article that he and Steve have very similar backgrounds and portfolios. “When I can't be in two places at once, I have complete confidence that Steve will be bringing the same things to the table that I would have brought,” Holdren said.

Fetter has been a professor in the School of Public Policy since 1988, serving as dean from 2005 to 2009. His research and policy interests include nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, nuclear energy and releases of radiation, and climate change and carbon-free energy supply.

“It has been a privilege and pleasure to serve as dean of the School,” Fetter said. “I look forward to returning to the School enriched from the experience at OSTP.”

While dean, Fetter was president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, treasurer of the Arms Control Association, and a member of the Intelligence Science Board. He also served on the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee and on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and as vice chairman of the Federation of American Scientists . He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Physical Society.

In 1993-94 Fetter served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. He has been a visiting fellow at the U.S. State Department, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and he has been a consultant to several U.S. government agencies. He received a Ph.D. in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and a S.B. in physics from MIT. 

Fetter has written articles for Science, Nature, Scientific American, International Security , Science and Global Security, Nuclear Technology, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Arms Control Today. He has given over a hundred invited lectures and presentations, contributed chapters to over twenty edited volumes, and is author or coauthor of several books and monographs, including Toward a Comprehensive Test Ban, The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy, The Nuclear Turning Point, Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Explosive Materials, Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons, and Climate Change and the Transformation of World Energy Supply.