The research led to an ongoing position for Jackson at Bell Labs. Later, in 1991, she also joined the faculty at Rutgers University. During those years, she expanded into public policy work, advising Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey on how the state should invest in science and technology at its major research universities and serving on the board of the state’s largest utility.

In 1994, Jackson got a call from the White House: President Bill Clinton wanted her to serve as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She accepted, even though it meant giving up her tenured position at Rutgers and spending the work week away from her husband, physicist Morris Washington, and their son, Alan, who was just starting high school. As head of the NRC, Jackson developed and implemented regulation for assessing risk at the country’s nuclear power plants. Her approach took advantage of sophisticated computer modeling—much of it pioneered at MIT—to make probability-based judgments about the likelihood of various problems. For instance, if a power plant operator wanted to make physical changes to the plant or operate it differently, regulators could more accurately predict the relative risks of those changes. Victor McCree, who joined Jackson’s staff at the commission in 1996 and is currently its executive director for operations, says the new approach was “probably the most significant philosophical and practical change in the history of the NRC.”

Jackson also led international efforts to promote nuclear safety, working in places including post-apartheid South Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union. “My first year as chairman I went to Chernobyl, and that focuses the attention,” she says. Nearly a decade after the 1986 accident, the site still had high radiation levels emanating from the destroyed reactor, and radioactive contamination in a broad area around the plant. Jackson and her team “helped the Ukrainians figure out what to do and how to seal this thing up,” helping to train regulators and inspectors in the region. Jackson also spearheaded the creation of the International Nuclear Regulators Association, which supports nuclear regulation around the world.

Return to academia

Following her stint at the NRC, Jackson returned to academia in 1999 as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As the sixth person to serve as president in 14 years, she aimed to transform RPI into a world-class technological research university. She was ready, having already served on the boards of Rutgers and MIT. (Jackson became a member of the MIT Corporation in 1975 and is now a lifetime member.) “I understood universities from the point of view of oversight and from the point of view of the faculty, in terms of how to organize research,” she says.

Jackson’s efforts to reshape the university met with resistance from some faculty. In 2006, she prevailed in a vote of no confidence by a small margin. (She says the faculty were concerned about tighter criteria and higher expectations for promotion and tenure, among other things.) In a separate struggle, her administration suspended the faculty senate in 2007. (The Board of Trustees had asked the senate to amend its constitution to limit its membership, resulting in an impasse; the senate was then reconstituted in 2012.) Jackson says that for legal reasons she can’t discuss the specifics, but that “change is hard—harder for some people than others.”

Change can also be expensive. In 2017, Standard & Poor’s lowered the university’s long-term bond rating from A- to BBB+, citing its high debt burden and low level of available resources. But RPI maintains an A3 bond rating with Moody’s, and Jackson plans to shore up the university’s finances with a capital campaign launched this past fall. The new campaign follows her successful Renaissance at Rensselaer campaign, which had raised over $1 billion by 2008 in support of her vision for RPI, known as the Rensselaer Plan. That funding helped the school reduce the student-faculty ratio from 18:1 to 13:1; dramatically increase research funding from $35 million to $100 million annually; and construct new facilities, including biotechnology and nanotech buildings and an experimental media and performing arts center.

And those investments appear to have paid off: since Jackson’s arrival at RPI, applications have nearly quadrupled, research dollars have tripled, and the student body is more diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, and geographic background. Today, she says, the most pressing issue on her mind—and what she considers one of the major issues facing American higher education—is funding for basic research and support of graduate students, who she calls “the basis of our innovation ecosystem.”

Speaking out for science

Meanwhile, Jackson has also become a prominent voice on scientific and technical issues that matter to the country. From 2009 to 2014, she served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) for President Obama; in 2014 she became cochair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, serving until early 2017. In these positions, she led a study on advanced manufacturing in the United States and got involved with issues of national and global security, cybersecurity, and digital technology.

Jackson with President Barack Obama in 2016 when he presented her with the National Medal of Science. DREW ANGERER | GETTY IMAGES

“She has a broad view of how science and technology can assist our country and the world,” says Gates, who served with Jackson on PCAST. In 2016, Obama awarded her the National Medal of Science.

“It’s important to serve,” Jackson says. “It does take a lot of time. But I don’t play golf. And I have the ability to learn fast.”

Although she’s now a widely respected spokesperson for science, she tries to stay away from some topics, like whether evolutionary theory contradicts religious beliefs: in certain quarters, she says, that argument is “unwinnable.” Instead, she focuses on pragmatic responses to serious problems. For example, even for those who deny humans’ role in climate change, the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events “stares you in the face,” she says. “You can see the effects in housing, in the stability of roads.” So she encourages people to help look for ways to address those effects “even if you don’t believe that at the front end is climate change.” (Of course, she also acknowledges that building practices only go so far, and scientists and public policy experts need to keep talking about the root causes of climate change.)

These days, flags from dozens of countries from which RPI students hail encircle the dining hall in the Rensselaer Student Union: just under half the school’s graduate students, and about 11 percent of its undergraduates, come from abroad. In February, after President Trump announced his travel ban, a large group of students and faculty marched from the campus to downtown Troy in solidarity with international students, says Tobe Ezekwenna, a computer science graduate student from Maryland. Even though RPI is not generally known for political activism, he says, “people here really care about their peers.” And even in the Trump era, says Jackson, RPI is still in “high demand” among international students, although international applications for graduate programs in the United States have declined in the past year.