Sharon Hays

Associate Director

Dr. Sharon L. Hays was confirmed by the Senate as Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President in late September, 2006. In this role, she serves as the OSTP Director's Deputy for Science. Dr. Hays has been at OSTP since mid-2002, serving first in OSTP's Technology Division, and later as the Chief of Staff.

Before coming to OSTP, Dr. Hays was the Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Research of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science from the beginning of the 107th Congress until August 2002. Prior to her promotion to Staff Director, Dr. Hays worked as a professional staff member, first for the Basic Research Subcommittee and subsequently for the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. She first joined the Science Committee's staff in mid-1999.

Dr. Hays served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Representative Vernon Ehlers between 1997 and 1999. She worked on a Science Committee project assigned to Dr. Ehlers by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Science Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner: to outline an updated science policy for the Nation. That effort culminated in a comprehensive Science Committee report entitled Unlocking Our Future: Toward a New National Science Policy.

Before coming to Capitol Hill, Dr. Hays worked as a research assistant at the University of Southern California and then attended graduate school in biochemistry at Stanford University, where she studied in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Paul Berg and received her Ph.D. in 1997. Dr. Hays also holds a B.A. in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Hays lives with her husband in Virginia, where she volunteers as a dog handler for wilderness search and rescue efforts.