Flemming Awards go to outstanding feds
Recipients of the annual Arthur Flemming Awards were recognized recently, in an online event spotlighting outstanding, innovative feds.
A handful of outstanding feds recently received one of government service’s highest honors—the Arthur Flemming prize, a tradition that has lasted nearly three-quarters of a century.
Recipients include feds who have helped make farming stand up to climate change, launch solutions to the opioid epidemic, and develop more powerful “quantum” computing solutions to manage huge data sets.
The Arthur S. Flemming Commission and the George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration work in partnership with the National Academy of Public Administration to manage the annual awards.
The Flemming Awards go to a dozen of the civil service’s finest—from a range of agencies and departments, each having contributed in fields including applied science and engineering, basic science, leadership and management, legal achievement and social science. Previous awardees include NASA astronaut and first man on the Moon Neil Armstrong and National Cancer Institute AIDS drug developer Samuel Broder.
The namesake of the awards served under seven administrations for presidents from both major political parties across multiple decades. Flemming twice received the Presidential Medal of Freedom—once from President Eisenhower and again from President Clinton.
This year’s recipients come from a wide range of agencies.
Steven Mirsky, for example, of the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture is being recognized for developing “the merger of precision and sustainable agriculture to make farming more productive, adaptive and resilient in the face of climate change, declining soil and water quality, and pest resistance,” as described in the awards announcement.
Stephanie Schollaert Uz, a civil servant and scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA, manages part of the Earth Sciences Division and is using technology and data models to monitor pathogens, pollutants and water quality in groundbreaking ways.
These and ten more dedicated feds and their admirable work are recognized for Flemming Awards, and you can read the announcement about them on the awards website. Recipients were announced a few months ago, but the virtual emceed event, with acceptance speeches and celebratory fanfare, was aired online just this past week and has been made available on the Government Matters website.
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