Njema Frazier

After receiving her Ph.D., she worked as a professional staff member for the Committee on Science at the U.S. House of Representatives for four years. Dr. Frasier then started her career at the NNSA, working as a nuclear physicist from 2001 to 2016. She has also been an active member of the National Society of Black Engineers and served as National Alumni Chair in 2008 and National Leadership Institute Chairperson from 2010 to 2012.  She is also the co-founder of the POWER (Professional Opportunities for Women at Energy Realized) Employee Resource Group for women at the Department of Energy (DOE). POWER supports women at the DOE professionally and personally as well as working to reach out to and inspire young women to enter STEM.

Dr. Frazier was born and raised in San Francisco, CA. She had an early interest in math, but it was not until attending a summer program that she discovered her aptitude for both math and science. About that summer, she has said, “I loved it so much that I became a student mentor after I aged out of the program.” She attended Carnegie Mellon University where she received a B.S. in 1992. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she went on to receive both an M.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from Michigan State University (MSU), the top-ranked US nuclear physics program according to U.S. News & World Report. While at MSU, she worked at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab (NSCL) focusing on "Properties of Shell-Model Wavefunctions at High Excitation Energies."

Njema Frazier (born in San Francisco, California on March 13, 1974) is a nuclear physicist at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in Washington, D.C.