Ernest J. Moniz has served on the MIT faculty since 1973. He was Under Secretary of the Department of Energy from October 1997 until January 2001. He also served from 1995 to 1997 as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President.

At MIT, Moniz was Head of the Department of Physics and Director of the Bates Linear Accelerator Center. His principal research contributions have been in theoretical nuclear physics, particularly in advancing nuclear reaction theory at high energy.

Moniz received a B.S. degree in physics from Boston College, a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Athens and the University of Erlangen-Nurenburg. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Moniz received the 1998 Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation.