Dr Ernest J Moniz
Dr Ernest J Moniz is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering
Systems, Director of the Energy Initiative, and Director of the Laboratory for Energy and
the Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has served on
the faculty since 1973. Dr. Moniz served as Under Secretary of the Department of
Energy from October 1997 until January 2001. In that role, he had programmatic
oversight responsibility for the offices of Science; Fossil Energy; Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy; Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology; Environmental
Management; and Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. He served as DOE chair of
the Laboratory Operations Board and of the Research and Development Council,
through which he initiated a portfolio approach to managing and advancing the
Department’s R&D programs. He also led a comprehensive review of the nuclear
weapons stockpile stewardship program and served as the Secretary’s special
negotiator for Russia initiatives, with a particular focus on the disposition of Russian
nuclear weapons materials. Dr. Moniz also served from 1995 to 1997 as Associate
Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive
Office of the President, where his responsibilities spanned the physical, life, and social
and behavioral sciences, science education, and university-government partnerships.
He is a member of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
(PCAST).
At MIT, Dr. Moniz served as Head of the Department of Physics and as Director of the
Bates Linear Accelerator Center, a DOE user facility. His principal research contributions
have been in theoretical nuclear physics, particularly in advancing nuclear reaction
theory at high energy, and in energy technology and policy studies, which is his current
research focus. As Director of the MIT Energy Initiative, he chairs the Energy Council, an
interdisciplinary faculty group that is advancing the MIT President’s commitment to
expanded research, education, and outreach related to energy and the environment.
Dr. Moniz received a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in physics from
Boston College, a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and
honorary doctorates from the University of Athens, the University of ErlangenNurenburg, and Michigan State University. He was a National Science Foundation
Postdoctoral Fellow at Saclay, France and at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Moniz
is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt
Foundation, and the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations. He currently serves on the Boards of American Science & Engineering,
Nexant, and the Electric Power Research Institute and has also served as a technology
strategy advisor to BP, Cummins, USEC, and Babcock & Wilcox. Dr. Moniz received the
1998 Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in
advancing scientific simulation and, in 2008, the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios
III for contributions to development of research, technology, and education in Cyprus
and the wider region.
Dr Robert Stoner
Dr Robert Stoner is Assistant Director of the MIT Energy Initiative for Developing
Countries. A physicist and inventor, Dr. Stoner was a member of the Device Physics
and Process Development groups at Intel Corporation from 1992 through 1995. At Intel
he co-invented the trench transistor, and developed the gate dielectrics for Intel’s 0.18
and 0.25 micron manufacturing processes. In 1995, he founded Cooper Mountain
Corporation, where he led the design and commercial development of the first optical
measurement products incorporating ultrafast pulsed lasers. This was enabled by Dr.
Stoner’s inventions in the fields of optics and electronics, and by the development of the
semiconductor pumped ultrafast laser, which he undertook jointly with Coherent Laser
Group. Cooper Mountain was subsequently acquired by Rudolph Technologies, which
was taken public in 1998. Its ultrafast optical products and systems, with sales of close
to a billion dollars, have become the standard throughout the semiconductor industry for
metal interconnect and ion implantation process control measurements.
Dr. Stoner subsequently formed Vinestone Corporation, a UK peer-to-peer database and
workflow software developer, which he sold in 2002. From 2002 to 2007 he held a
number of senior executive roles and served as Chairman of the Technical Advisory
Board at Zygo Corporation, a developer of precision optical systems and instruments for
the global aerospace and semiconductor industries. There he led three of the company’s
four divisions, and oversaw the development of numerous optical instruments and
systems, including sections of the National Ignition Facility (NIF). At Zygo he also coinvented a family of thin film measurement and surface profiling techniques using white
light interferometry, and led a joint research program with collaborators at Brown
University in Scanning Opto-Acoustic Microscopy (SOAM).
In 2007 he joined the Clinton Foundation, where he was named the Chief Executive of
the Africa-based Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative, an economic development group
with programs in business creation, agriculture, health and reforestation operating
primarily in Rwanda and Malawi. In this role he also served as an economic advisor to
the Ministers of Finance and Agriculture in both countries. He later established and led
the Clinton Foundation’s Developing World Clean Energy Initiative, working in India and
East Africa to help governments develop renewable energy policies and projects.
Dr. Stoner joined MIT’s Energy Initiative (MITEI) in mid-2009 to help create a
multidisciplinary program involving faculty, staff and students focused on the energy
challenges of the developing world. He is currently the Executive Director of the Low
Carbon Energy University Alliance (MIT-Cambridge-Tsinghua). He also serves on the
Board of Directors of the Asia Energy Access Fund.
Dr. Stoner received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics with High
Honors from Queen’s University, Canada, and a doctorate in condensed matter physics
from Brown University. He was a National Science and Engineering Research Council
of Canada Scholar, and Brown Fellow, and an Adjunct Professor of Engineering at
Brown from 1995 through 2005. His current technical interests include energy
distribution systems, and phonon imaging.