Jay Davis, PhD, Elected President of the Hertz Foundation

LIVERMORE, CA, October 29, 2009 — The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announced today that Jay Davis, PhD, has been elected President of the Hertz Foundation. Dr. Davis, the Founding Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the Founding Director of the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Hertz Foundation. The Hertz Foundation, established in 1957, is one of the nation’s leading non-profit organizations focused on empowering innovative young scientists and engineers.

“I am honored to be elected to lead the Hertz Foundation in its quest to find talented young scientists and engineers with the capacity to drive innovation, enhance competitiveness and help solve critical problems we face as a society,” stated Dr. Davis, “I look forward to leading the Foundation’s efforts to discover the next generation of Hertz Fellows.”

During his tenure at LLNL, Dr. Davis and his team built the most advanced and widely used accelerator mass spectrometry lab in the world. Dr. Davis has authored more than 80 publications and has been granted numerous patents. He participated in two UN weapons inspections of Iraq in 1991, and briefed the UN Security Council on his findings. For his contributions to national security as founding Director of the DTRA, he was twice awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Department of Defense's highest civilian award. Dr. Davis has also served on the Board of ANSER Corporation, as chair of the review committee for the Los Alamos nuclear weapons program, and as a member of the University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Davis received his BA in Physics from the University of Texas (1963), his MA in Physics from the University of Texas (1964), and his PhD in Physics from the University of Wisconsin (1969). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.