In 1992, after nine years in the world of experimental physics, award-winning physicist Dr Michael Moloney made a life-changing decision to walk away from a promising career in academia. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy his work. He did, but deep down he knew that if research was to become his forever career, he needed to feel a lot more passionate about it than he did.
At the time Moloney was based in Trinity College Dublin, where his supervisor was Prof John Hegarty, who later became the college’s provost. Moloney had begun ruminating about a move and had already applied for the position of third secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs, when the subject of his future career came up in a discussion with Hegarty.
“Completely unrelated to my application, he suggested I consider the diplomatic service, which was a bit of a weird coincidence,” says Moloney. “But it wasn’t a complete shot in the dark because he knew I was interested in policy and that the department recruited people from multidisciplinary backgrounds. On that basis, he thought it could be a good fit for my interests and skills.”
The reality is that there are physicists in important jobs in a multiplicity of organisations and industries but, because of this persistent image of success, we are losing people because they feel they don’t fit that image
Moloney got the job of third secretary and spent time in Iveagh House in Dublin before moving to the Embassy in Washington and subsequently to the Permanent Mission at the UN in New York. “I was posted to Washington in the midst of the hectic negotiations leading to the [Belfast] Agreement, so it was a very dynamic time in Irish-US relations,” says Moloney. “Our mission was small, and I got the opportunity to do a lot of very high-impact work, despite the fact I was the most junior diplomat on the team.”
In 2000 Moloney took a career break to spend time at the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, an organisation to which he subsequently returned when he left the Department of Foreign Affairs. Since 2018 Moloney has been chief executive of the not-for-profit American Institute of Physics (AIP), a job that combines his two great loves of science and policy.
Since joining AIP, whose remit is to advance, promote, and serve the physical sciences, Moloney has been leading a strategic transformation of the organisation focused on helping its member societies to broaden their impact, see beyond their individual missions and advance the physical sciences through independent research in social science, policy, and history.
“My job is not in the detail. It’s providing the North Star or the overall direction for the organisation,” he says.
AIP is a federation of 10 member societies representing an extended community of more than 116,000 people, so Moloney’s diplomatic skills and well-practised ability to accommodate the interests of multiple groups is proving a distinct advantage.
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He puts early lessons in how to get on with others down to the fact that his mother ran a play school when he was a toddler. Then, as a doctoral researcher at Trinity College, he was responsible for managing large-scale projects involving multiple stakeholders.
“I’ve tended to be in positions requiring collaboration, so you’ve got to listen and let people have their say,” says Moloney, who also spent 15 years as director for space and aeronautics at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine before joining AIP. During his time at the academies he worked on numerous groundbreaking projects including those leading to the launch of the James Webb space telescope and the Perseverance rover on Mars.
Moloney is passionate about opening the sciences as a career to all, whether that’s in academia or in industries that depend on cutting-edge scientific investigation for their very survival. “Currently this isn’t the situation, and there’s a long way to go to attract the best minds,” he says. “This is because of the existing physics culture which, more often than not, still depicts success as a white-haired white man standing at a blackboard solving the equations of the universe.
I’m not the world’s greatest reader of books. I’d like to be better, but I’m so focused for 10 hours a day with my job that, for me, a book isn’t the release it is for other people
“The reality is that there are physicists in important jobs in a multiplicity of organisations and industries but, because of this persistent image of success, we are losing people because they feel they don’t fit that image,” he adds. I’ve experienced that ‘not fitting in’ and had to find another path. I wasn’t aware I was being rejected by the culture, but in fact I was.
“AIP and our member organisations are now very focused on recognising that we, as a scientific discipline, need to engage in systemic cultural change – which is incredibly hard to do. As a white, male, English-speaking immigrant, I have benefited from a good deal of privilege. Recognising this is a personal motivator for the diversity and inclusion work we are doing at AIP.”
Moloney travels extensively for work and keeps mentally and physically fit by working out. When he’s home, he tends to switch off by socialising with friends.
“I’m not a tremendously multidimensional person, but I enjoy getting away and watching sci-fi on TV. I’m not the world’s greatest reader of books. I’d like to be better, but I’m so focused for 10 hours a day with my job that, for me, a book isn’t the release it is for other people.
“I also like to go to Ireland regularly because I miss my family and close lifelong friends, the craic, a good bag of crisps, salt and vinegar on my chips, a quiet pint in the pub and Grafton Street and St Stephen’s Green on a sunny summer’s morning ... you know how the song goes.”
