A Theoretical Physicist’s Impressions From The Front Lines of Policy Advising

Though the speaker is a theoretical physicist researching mathematical foundations of "supersymmetry" in particle, field, and string theory, by quirks of fate his “second life” has seen advising stints with the NSF, DoE, DoD, the State of Maryland Board of Education, and the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The "laws of nature in this second life" are very different from those in his first. Reflections on these differences are the subject of this talk.