Arden L. Bement

Bement, 77, has been at the cutting edge of research since the 1970s. Three decades ago, President Carter appointed him as the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary of Defense for research and engineering. Now President Obama wants him to continue running the NSF, and its $9.6 billion budget, five years after Bement first got the job from President George W. Bush. "I do like what I'm doing," he said, "and I work very hard at it."

Bement grew up in Pennsylvania and got his start in science when a heart murmur kept him out of the Navy. He went to work for a molybdenum mining company in Colorado, and then earned a degree in metallurgy from the Colorado School of Mines. While working for General Electric, Bement earned a master's degree in metallurgical engineering from the University of Idaho and a doctorate in the same field from the University of Michigan. He later worked for Battelle Northwest Laboratories and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving on to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under President Ford, and then to the Pentagon under Carter. He spent 12 years at TRW, leaving the aerospace company for Purdue University until December 2001, when he became Bush's director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In between, Bement served as a city council member in Washington state and achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers.

It's no surprise that Bement is popular among his peers. He "brings years of experience in overseeing the NSF," said Robert Boege, director of the Alliance for Science & Technology Research. "He's known for his steady pursuit of agency goals and a calm, expert appreciation of the complicated interplay between basic research and the national innovation ecosystem."

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