Cathie Ailes was a leading contributor to the field of science and technology public policy, a strong manager, and a devoted member of the SRI family. As the Director of the Science and Technology Policy Program in SRI/Washington, her reach extended globally and broke new ground in creating innovative methods for assessing science and technology programs.
Cathie Ailes started at SRI in 1975 as an analyst for Dick Foster on national security issues including the Soviet Bloc. When Foster’s group was disbanding, she transitioned into science and technology (S&T) assessments involving, first, the Soviet Union, then expanded into assessments in other parts of the world. She became one of the two or three top program evaluators for the National Science Foundation, including creating roadmaps for S&T development.
Her national and international evaluations required multidimensional methodologies, including surveys, focus groups, literature reviews, other quantitative analyses as well as site visit interviews, case studies, and peer review panels. She assessed federal programs to enhance research and education at U.S. universities, compared international scientific and technical personnel studies, evaluated federal international cooperative science and technology programs; and analyzed statistics and data related to science, technology, and educational policy issues.
Early on, she used a small core of SRI people and several outside people to form the competent teams needed for this work. Later, she grew the SRI staff that now stands at about 14 people. She helped them broaden to other clients like NIST, DOE, and now NASA. That group is now one of the top three policy evaluation groups in the nation.
In the five years before her death in the summer of 2005, Ailes conducted site visit interviews and focus groups at some 25 colleges and universities across the United States and with government, academic, and industry representatives in a dozen other countries.
Cathie Ailes developed an incredible trust in all her clients to the point that they would tell stories to others about her achievements. She had an uncanny ability to form personal relationships with her clients. She left SRI the legacy of these clients and an internationally respected group of analysts.