AAAS Fellows in front of the U.S. Capitol building

NSF AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows

Biography

Portrait of Nicholas Wagner, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow
Credit: Charlotte Geary/NSF

Dr. Nicholas Wagner
AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow
Division of Information and Intelligent Systems
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Class of 2024-2026


Dr. Nicholas Wagner comes to the National Science Foundation after spending the last five years as a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). At IDA, he led support for Task Force Lima, the Department of Defense's generative artificial intelligence task force. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, he obtained a bachelor's degree in materials science and engineering from Arizona State University. He then attended Northwestern University, where he earned a doctorate, also in materials science and engineering. His research focused on how data-driven AI approaches could enable faster discovery of materials useful for electronics. While a graduate student, Wagner interned on the Google Accelerated Science team and was a visiting student at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Outside of work, he enjoys playing video games, traveling and reading books beside his cat Heidi.