Alan Tomkins

Alan Tomkins is the deputy director of NSF's Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES). Since joining the agency in the fall of 2014, he has served as the acting division director for SES on several occasions and for the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) for eight months in 2018.

Dr. Tomkins has also performed a variety of agency-wide roles, ranging from increasing public access to simplifying, streamlining and standardizing the merit review process. His major cross-agency activity is serving as one of the co-chairs, along with representatives from OSTP, NIH and NOAA, of the Subcommittee on Open Science. He also serves as NSF's representative on the committee that is advising the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and the Federal Judicial Center on developing a fourth edition of the "Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence," a primary reference source for federal judges on questions of science, technology and medicine in litigation. Dr. Tomkins is also involved in the oversight of NASEM's Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN): Facilitating Rapid and Actionable Responses to Social, Behavioral, and Economic-Related COVID-19 Questions.

Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Tomkins spent almost 30 years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where was the founding director of the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center (now emeritus director) and professor in the Law-Psychology Program (now emeritus professor). He received a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from Boston University and a J.D. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.