United States Department of State
Bureau of Energy Resources
2201 C Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20520
United States of America
Benjamin L. Schmitt
Energy Diplomacy Officer for Europe
IEEE Science and Technology Policy Fellow
22 February 2016
IEEE U.S. Department of State Science and Technology Policy Fellowship
Mid-Year Fellowship Overview
Introduction
Perhaps one of the most transformative elements, that has influenced transatlantic foreign policy
over the past half-century, is the manner by which rapid growth in fundamental science and
technology development worldwide has positioned these fields at the focal point of nearly every phase
of the modern diplomatic portfolio, regularly with significant implications for an evolving geopolitical
landscape. These impacts range from headline-grabbing energy-development and nuclear accords
addressing global environmental and hard security concerns, to transcendent scientific breakthroughs
made as a result of U.S. and EU leadership in supranational research collaboration, in which science
and technology policy has the unique ability to rapidly enrich bilateral relations between natural allies,
as well as thawing partnerships with former geostrategic adversaries. Additionally, this intersection of
diplomacy, science, and technology policy also enables academic and economic development of
emerging societies, which is fundamental to global economic growth and security objectives
worldwide.
Throughout my career, I have pursued physics research across four continents, motivated by highimpact scientific questions with significant connection to ongoing international grand-challenges,
including through Department of Energy-supported laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF)
research and NASA-supported experimental cosmology research. At each stage I have emphasized
demonstration of a strong commitment toward engagement of domestic and foreign stakeholders, and,
especially though critical research partnerships with the German Max-Planck-Society and Chilean
federal research agencies and diplomats, an emphasis on ensuring contemporary and future
cooperation between the United States and allied global institutions – both in scientific and
geostrategic objectives. It is this multidisciplinary focus that I have continued in my new role as an
Energy Diplomacy Officer for Europe in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources,
serving as the 2015-2016 IEEE Department of State Science and Technology Policy fellow.
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Biographical Sketch
For context regarding the path that I took toward my new role at the U.S. Department of State, I
began my formal drive toward a future career working at the intersection of research physics and
public policy through my work first as a high-school student, and then undergraduate researcher at the
University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). Here, I was able to join and
immediately contribute to a dynamic program of work underway at LLE to probe and characterize the
physics of plasmas at high energies and densities in support of the core objective of this Department of
Energy facility; namely, the pursuit of energy-gain in laser-driven inertial confinement fusion
processes.
When demonstrated, the technology development initiated at LLE, and carried out today by a
number of seminal facilities around the globe will make fusion viable as a future alternative energy
source, with the potential for boundless socioeconomic impacts around the globe in the coming
decades, including elimination of the global fossil-fuel-reliance paradigm, which has long been a
driver of international conflict and national security concerns, while growing the global economy
through leadership in this key sector. In addition to offering the potential for clean energy
independence, laser-(and other) fusion programs have made key contributions to international nuclear
agreements, by allowing for an understanding and stewardship of U.S. and NATO nuclear stockpiles
through clean laboratory physical processes, eliminating the requirement for detonation testing.
Inspired by the sweeping scientific and international geopolitical impact enabled by fusion research, I
remained at LLE during my entire college education, culminating in an undergraduate thesis focusing
on the development of next-generation x-ray diagnostics instrumentation to characterize laser-fusion
interactions, while also driving me to pursue an international research experience in Germany during
the summer of 2006, which grew my desire to contribute to both domestic and foreign science policy
later in my career. To bolster the skills needed for such a position, I completed a triple major that
included a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy, as well as a B.A. degree with majors in Mathematics, and
in Modern German Languages and Cultures (with independent translation work in scientific German
discourse), the latter of which included a cluster of academic coursework in the history and policy
involved in European integration and the development of the supranational institutions of the
European Union, central to my current role in European energy security policy. During this period, I
supported my public engagement skills through presentations of my research during two further
research experiences at Cornell and Columbia Universities, as well as through classical vocal
performances in a variety of languages (including German) as leads in three operas at the University of
Rochester’s Eastman School of Music.
Extending these overarching themes of broad collaboration and academic diversity, I received a
State Department Fulbright research fellowship to advance my earlier work through plasma
diagnostics research supporting terrestrial-fusion and laboratory astrophysics research at the MaxPlanck-Institute for Nuclear Physics, during a year-long effort in which I was part of a team
performing measurements of the photoionization of highly-charged ions produced in an electron beam
ion trap developed in Heidelberg, during inter-institutional campaigns at the BESSY synchrotron
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facility in Berlin-Adlershof. Through the German Fulbright Commission itself, I was able to take part
in broad professional development and policy training programs, and gained invaluable first-hand
experience working on a daily basis within a small team of multinational researchers hailing from five
European member states in a foreign federal research organization and framework, through which I
could then form critical comparisons between foreign research structures such as the Max-PlanckSociety with U.S. federal laboratory analogs, and having early discussions with group and division
leaders on concepts for interfacing transatlantic research collaborations. It was also during my time in
Germany that I gained my first experience in engagement of both foreign and domestic policymakers,
through a brief description of my research (in German) during an impromptu meeting with Austrian
President Heinz Fischer in Salzburg, as well as a description of my Fulbright project and my personal
recommendations for the implementation of a European-modeled high-speed-rail infrastructure during
a unique meeting with then U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood and his staff aboard a highspeed train between Paris and Strasbourg.
Transitioning back to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school, I built upon all of these
earlier experiences to help lead the development of a project with a uniquely broad international scope.
Namely, I focused on the design, integration, and operation of ACTPol, a new receiver (camera) for
the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) capable of making high-sensitivity measurement of the
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – work supported by both NSF Graduate Research
Fellowship and NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF) awards. Among other
scientific achievements, measurements of the CMB have enabled significant advances in our
understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe, while probing the mysterious dark
energy. I led a long-term development effort to move ACTPol from the blank page to a fullyoperational facility for CMB science, which included the design and integration of a distributed
portfolio of enabling technologies for CMB science, through long-term on-site collaboration with
teams at NIST-Boulder, and NASA-Goddard. During this development process, I maintained close
contact with applications of these CMB imaging technologies under development for ACTPol with a
team at NIST-Boulder who reconfigured the core millimeter-wavelength imaging systems central to
ACTPol for use in a fully-integrated platform for standoff security imaging, for applications as
military checkpoint, naval port security, and portal (airport) security systems that could revolutionize
screening for concealed weapons and improvised explosive devices, mitigating a myriad of threat
scenarios now encountered by NATO forces. To bolster my background in the application of CMB
imaging systems to hard security scenarios, I regularly participated in international conferences with
security and defense themes, including presentation of my research at three consecutive SPIE
European Security+Defence conferences between 2012 and 2014.
After the first three years of North American instrumentation development, I transitioned to take a
leadership role in the on-site deployment of the ACTPol receiver to the ACT site, located at over
17,000 feet (5190 meters) in elevation in the rugged Atacama Desert of Northern Chile. Over the
course of seven deployment operations resulting in over a year spent abroad during my thesis, I was
able to effectively utilize my previous experience working with multinational teams in Germany, to
again work within teams of international collaborators during extended field operations, resulting in
successful first light and science-grade observations, for which I then directed a team of collaborators
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from Europe, Africa, North, and South America in the efficient remote operations of the ACTPol
experiment on return to North America.
Concurrent to the core science and technology that I led as an NSTRF fellow during my graduate
work, I was also heavily involved in federal stakeholder engagement. Through NSTRF, I was called
on by program administrators at NASA Headquarters to be involved in the 2013 NASA Tech Day on
the Hill event, in which I was able to gain critical experience describing my research and advocating
for American investment in space technology to both NASA officials, including Administrator Charles
Bolden, and Ranking Member of the House Committee on (science) Appropriations, Rep. Chaka
Fattah. I built on this initial experience on Capitol Hill again in 2014, participating in the American
Astronomical Society’s Congressional Visit Day. This event allowed for two days of intensive
training in the structure and execution of the federal science policy, advocacy, and appropriations
process, followed by a full day of engagement with policymakers and their staffs on the Hill. During
this event, I met with the offices of eight House and Senate Members, including advocating for science
appropriations with ACTPol as a central example, which included a 45-minute briefing of House
Science, Space, and Technology Committee Member Chris Collins, and was followed by a briefing on
the state of the Presidential Budget Request at the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy. Even while abroad in the remote Atacama Desert, I was committed to continuing this drive.
During site deployments until my final deployment in 2015, I have taken part in leading multiple
official visits of the CONICYT (Chilean analog to the U.S. NSF) astronomical delegation on the highaltitude telescope site, and was responsible for leading a group of consultants dispatched by
CONICYT to assess and advocate for improvements to be made by the Chilean government to
improve site logistics and access to the myriad of foreign telescope investments in the region.
During my time working in experimental cosmology research with the ACTPol team, I was also
involved in the development of and participation in an array of education and public outreach
programs. Perhaps the most notable program I was able to lead in this capacity, and one that has been
able to leverage my technical, artistic, cultural, and policy background has been devising and leading
The ARTacama Project. Central to the project was the commissioning of a large-scale, mixed-media
painting completed by a Fine Arts Professor at Penn, to abstractly embody the growth of structure in
the universe, probed by ACTPol. This mural was then photographed, printed, and wrapped on the
surface of the ACTPol receiver. As such, since its installation to the ACT site, ACTPol has become
simultaneously one of the highest-altitude ground-based telescopes on the planet, as well as the
highest-altitude contemporary art installation on earth. In order to use The ARTacama Project to
highlight ACTPol and over a decade of U.S. critical investments in Atacama-based astronomy, I also
led an effort to host a formal symposium on the project, which was initially devised to coincide with
the Spring-2015 state visit of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to the Philadelphia area.
Throughout that process, I had the unique opportunity to lead diplomatic efforts to secure a visit to this
symposium at Penn by President Bachelet, which began with a series of meetings to develop strong
ties and backing of the project from the Honorary Consul of Chile in Philadelphia, and proceeded by
writing an official white paper that was carried by the Consul of Chile during his August 2014 visit to
meet with members of the Chilean Senate in Santiago. As a result of that visit, the Consul was able to
organize a private meeting in Philadelphia between myself and Ambassador of Chile to the U.S. Juan
Gabriel Valdés. During the meeting, I presented the science and technology results of ACTPol with a
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focus on small business development associated with the project in Chile and the U.S., and the manner
by which universally engaging cosmology projects like ACTPol contribute to bilateral diplomacy
between the two nations. I also described ongoing programs from the ACTPol collaboration to help to
continue to inspire Chilean students to take an active role in their heritage of astronomical research,
while also commenting on the great pride I have felt expressed by Chileans in their burgeoning role as
international hosts to multinational observatory facilities, which has directly resulted in their own
investment in home-grown basic science and technology development programs over the past few
decades. To bolster this effort further, I was also able to conduct a Spring-2015 meeting of project
stakeholders at an opera house in northern Patagonia, and plan future programs based on The
ARTacama Project, including a multinational initiative to join astronomers, policy makers, and
performing artists in an interdisciplinary master class series.
Fellowship Placement, Motivation, and Critical Focus
To support my multidisciplinary interests in basic science and technology development along with
foreign policy and international security work, I actively pursued a science policy fellowship in
Washington as a part of my postdoctoral application portfolio. Ultimately, this search led me to the
IEEE Department of State Fellowship program, under which I was selected to serve at the State
Department in the 2015-2016 fellowship year. After this selection process, I was able to participate in
a rigorous weeklong placement process at the Department of State, in which I met and interviewed
with 12 different offices, ranging from region-and-country-specific desk officer roles (including on the
Germany and China Desks), as well as in functional Bureau offices focusing on the intersection of
foreign policy and international diplomacy with a myriad of particular subject areas, including
counterterrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, space and advanced technology, science cooperation, and
energy security. Even outside of the context of the yearlong IEEE State Department fellowship itself,
the placement week was a tremendous experience to gain a direct understanding of the broad range of
policy areas that are central to the varied careers of both foreign and civil service diplomats at the
Department of State, and was an integral experience in its own right, especially in its ability to enable
me to create networks across the Department months before beginning my new role at State. Now six
months into my fellowship, I have called on these contacts on a regular basis to collaborate with and
enrich my work in the Department.
After a difficult week spent ranking the dozen offices with which I had an opportunity to
interview across the Department, I ultimately selected my current role as an Energy Diplomacy Officer
for Europe within the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources. Founded in 2011, the Bureau
of Energy Resources (ENR) has quickly become the leading U.S. government organization supporting
strategic foreign policy engagement in energy policy globally. Given my strong background in
science and technology development for both energy (fusion research) and large-scale space
technology research projects, coupled with an academic background in the history and policy of
supranational European integration, as well as German language and cultural experience, both
domestically and throughout nearly two-years living in Europe earlier in my career, the selection of
the European energy diplomacy group within ENR could not be better matched to my interdisciplinary
professional training.
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Broadly, the European energy diplomacy group within ENR focuses on United States and
European Union geopolitical energy security objectives across the European region, as well as U.S.
geostrategic energy security engagement in Central Asia. Early in my first six-months within ENR, I
rapidly worked to integrate myself within the active policy-making and advisement process already in
progress within the group, taking on policy and engagement tasks ranging from Western Europe to
East Asia, and from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean in order to gain a broad perspective on the
state-of-play in the geopolitics of energy of the region at large, and to guide the development of
focused regional work within ENR’s Europe team. While not my ultimate regional focus, this rapid
integration was underscored by providing policy language within the first six-weeks on the team to
support Secretary of State John Kerry’s Autumn 2015 trip to Central Asia. The ability to have a
meaningful impact in the U.S. foreign policy enterprise through a science and technology policy
fellowship such as IEEE was made clear to me even in those early weeks, when that very same policy
language I was able to provide for Secretary Kerry’s visit to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan was reported
publicly by the New York Times as appearing in a section of his speech in that capital. Also, within
that same first six weeks in the Bureau, as a part of bilateral engagement in support of Bureau
leadership I was able to engage with 5 foreign ministers, 3 foreign ambassadors, 3 U.S. ambassadors, 3
members of European Parliament, and a former Prime Minister from the European region.
As I became fully-integrated into the European energy diplomacy team, I have been able to take
on the role as team lead for engagement on issues at the nexus of energy and security with all Baltic
Sea littoral states and the broader Nordic region, including Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland,
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. I also actively support ENR engagement with Germany and
Russia, as well as with the European Council, European Parliament, and NATO institutions in
Brussels. In this role, I leverage my technical experience in experimental physics, along with my
multidisciplinary background working in both domestic and foreign federal research settings, to
support, advise, and shape U.S. foreign policy decisions, with a particular focus on advocacy for
programs and joint-multinational strategies that foster strong bilateral relations between the U.S. and
partner EU member states, as well as the supranational EU institutions. The ultimate objective of this
work is to support and ensure a lasting and strong cohesion of political, economic, and security
cooperation vital to the lasting success of the so-called “European experiment.” The “struggle for
Europe” especially given the current points of concern across the European Union is and will continue
to be central to my work within geostrategic energy engagement with Europe in my role at the State
Department.
Perhaps one of the greatest realizations of my first six-months working to support European
energy security within ENR has been how centrally energy issues reside within the broader policymaking process of the broader European region. To this end, it is undeniable that the Europe of 201516 represents a continent at a crossroads. There are a number of grave concerns – economic
turbulence, migration, the threat of terrorism, and even the new prospect of a founding EU member
state exiting the union. Each of these challenges has implications for transatlantic cooperation, for
European integration, and is represented clearly within the Nordic and Baltic region on which I focus
during my IEEE fellowship tenure. Even within the region, energy issues impact each nation in an
interconnected, yet unified, manner. For example, until recently the Baltic states were considered a
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European “energy island,” but now are increasingly integrated, while Norway remains a major energy
producer.
Yet in spite of all of these issues, the great strides that Europe has taken to bolster its common
approach to multinational community-building over this period illustrates that even in the face of
seemingly insurmountable challenges, a united Europe is able to prevail over any odds. As has been
the European tradition for over a half-century, these challenges will only be met with regional and
multinational approaches. With global markets inexorably linked and cross-border solutions needed to
ensure that supply reaches every country in a stable and secure manner, cooperation will continue to
be the only way to shape the sustainable energy future of Europe. To ensure that this tradition of
cooperative success in energy diplomacy continues across the European region, I contribute to the
ongoing commitment that the United States has demonstrated over the long term, to help advance
European energy security. Indeed, multinational energy cooperation forms the very cornerstone of
European political cohesion, stability, and cooperation across disciplines, just as it has for over half-acentury, beginning with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community after the Second
World War.
In the decades since, the global community has regularly looked to the energy cooperation models
first pioneered across Europe to bridge once unthinkable geopolitical gulfs. This is especially notable
for a field that is itself driven by transformative developments in science and technology, yielding
tangible benefits in terms of basic economic growth and political unity. In this sense, energy is unique
in foreign policy – nations can work together to develop practical technical solutions to political
problems unlike in any other area of foreign policy, and nowhere is this more evident than in U.S.-EU
cooperation on supporting broader energy security of the European region.
Central to supporting broad EU objectives in favor of a comprehensive diversification strategy to
ensure European energy security is the development of a mature and well-functioning internal market
structure. To achieve this goal, support includes infrastructure and programmatic backing to ensure a
diversity of energy fuel types, transit routes, and source countries, and with this focus I have been able
to devise and work together with partners in Brussels and EU member states to deploy novel and
evidence-based policy frameworks to ensure the energy security of the European region – central to
any discussion of the ultimate security and political stability of the broader region in the long term. To
meet this objective, I have been active in working to convene support and partnerships across the U.S.
Interagency in Washington, including through cooperative work with the Department of Energy,
Department of Defense, NASA, as well as with the robust private sector and non-governmental
organization (NGO) community that is based across Washington. In addition to offering direct
technical and policy support to ensuring the feasibility and deployment of the myriad of European
energy infrastructure and regulatory priorities, I have also been involved in ENR participation in
ongoing multinational negotiations involving energy assets within the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP), which involves both strong interagency cooperation, as well as direct
work with The White House, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Most recently I have again
had direct engagement with The White House, leading a briefing of National Security Council officials
in The White House West Wing on a number of issues with which I am materially engaged.
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Outside of building a network of domestic collaborations to support European energy security, as
a State Department diplomat, I have also had significant levels of engagement with the Diplomatic
Corps and European interlocutors in Washington, through regular meetings at foreign Embassies
around Washington, and in bilateral discussions at the State Department and at think tanks and other
NGOs. Such foreign diplomatic work recently culminated with leading diplomatic engagement
directly in Europe, most recently during travel to Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and Germany (where I
was able to conduct both diplomatic technical and policy-based discussions with German policymakers in the German language.) This trip was especially notable since I was able to directly support
a principal State Department official, in this case the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
Energy Diplomacy, in Sweden and Denmark, and continue on my own to conduct strategic
engagement in support of broader policy objectives led by the State Department Special Envoy and
Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, in visits to Germany and Poland.
As a unique addition to my first six-months as the IEEE Fellow, I was also able to directly
participate in preparations for Special Envoy’s confirmation hearing for appointment as Assistant
Secretary of State for Energy before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as
accompany a small ENR delegation to Capitol Hill to support the Special Envoy’s confirmation
hearing in person (during which I appeared on the CSPAN broadcast of the hearing as a member of the
delegation). In addition to the core energy policy and technical advisement objectives that I have
focused on in my first six-months at the State Department, I have also been active in ensuring that
horizonal energy technologies such as fusion systems are brought into the traditional policy sphere
represented within ENR, most notably with my visit to the Wendelstein 7-X stellerator system just
prior to its commissioning ceremony, which included an appearance by German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics, in Greifswald, Germany.
Fellowship Tenure Outlook and Conclusion
As a result, my tenure at the Department of State supported by an IEEE Department of State
Science and Technology Policy Fellowship has and will continue to be vital to support my long-term
career aspirations working at the intersection of basic physics research and foreign (energy) security
policy, and my own growth and leadership in fostering transatlantic security and partnership. The
IEEE fellowship will also continue to allow me to make contacts with a cohort of leaders in energy
and security policy on both sides of the Atlantic, with whom I will be empowered to work to support
transatlantic unity through my career. In my remaining time as the IEEE Department of State Science
and Technology Policy Fellow, I will continue to support the legacy of the broader IEEE organization
through a tireless support of public policy, science, technology, and international security programs
aimed at ensuring multinational partnerships that make the world a more secure, clean, and
interconnected environment, seeding a bright future of common human discovery and cooperation.
Benjamin L. Schmitt
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