Thomas M. Kirlin, Ph.D.
Chief Operating Officer & Program Director

Dr. Kirlin is the Chief Operating Officer and Program Director at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, where he assists with program development, fundraising and implementation. He also oversees financial, staffing and administrative operations and directs the Center's Vannevar Bush Initiative on innovation, science and technology that, to-date, has produced Marshalling Science, Bridging the Gap: How to Win the War Against Terrorism and Build a Better Peace and Advancing Innovation: Improving the S&T; Advisory Structure and Policy Process. He is also helping to develop an electronic database on homeland security for senior government officials, the research community, Congress and first responders.

For three years Kirlin directed the Center Fellows Program and student symposia, doubling the size of the Fellows Program and orgnizing panels on public policy, Congress, Execuitve Leadership and the media. He started a Center website and revitalized its publications program. He is the editor of Dialogues on Presidential Leadership and The Character of George Washington, among other Center publication, and served as assistant editor of Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case Studies in Presidential Leadership (Praeger, 2001). Dr. Kirlin serves as the Center's Chief Financial Officer and a member of its Board of Trustees.

Before joining the Center, Kirlin taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; served for five years as an industry delegate to UN climate change negotiations in Europe and Japan; and for six years produced a national radio show on national energy policy.

Dr. Kirlin earned his Bachelor of Arts with honors at the University of Notre Dame; his Masters and Doctorate are from the University of Iowa. Kirlin also did post-doctoral work at Yale University, under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.