People

Spotlight

Name: Nicholas Diehl.

Position: Associate ombuds. Working with faculty, staff and students to help resolve conflicts as part of the ombuds office, which serves as a confidential resource for members of the University community. Providing conflict-management training to staff. Teaching students to be mediators. Overseeing the office’s budget and administrative needs.

Quote: “I am fascinated by hearing people’s stories, and I enjoy helping to find creative solutions to conflicts and facilitating communication. Most of the time conflict is the result of a lack of understanding between two people.”

Other interests: Gardening. Attending classical music concerts. Exercising and biking with his wife, Stacey.

Appointments

Norman McNatt has been promoted to director of corporate and foundation relations in the Office of Development.

He succeeds Mary Baum, who became director of leadership gifts in August. He has been serving as acting director since then and had served as associate director of corporate and foundation relations since joining the development staff in 1996.

McNatt will lead the corporate and foundation relations team as it raises funds from Princeton’s institutional donors in support of a wide range of University-wide, departmental and program needs.

During his time at Princeton, he has worked closely with the president, provost, deans and many faculty members as well as major corporate funders and foundation executives. He was part of the team that landed Princeton’s largest corporate gift to date, a $20 million grant from BP and the Ford Motor Co. for a project called the Carbon Mitigation Initiative to develop solutions to the greenhouse warming problem.

“Norm has demonstrated excellent management and administrative abilities,” said Michele Minter, director of development. “(Vice President for Development) Brian McDonald and I are delighted that Norm has taken on this much deserved new assignment, and we look forward to having him as a partner as we prepare for the next campaign.”

McNatt came to Princeton from the Institute for Advanced Study, where he was a public relations and development officer. He also previously served as secretary of the university at Rutgers University and taught British history. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Rutgers and did additional graduate study at both Rutgers and the London School of Economics, where he was a Fulbright Research Fellow.

Physicist Janardhan Manickam has been named head of the theory department at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

A leader in the fusion theory community, Manickam also has contributed strongly to the experimental program, most recently as national coordinator for spherical torus theory. A spherical torus is a type of experimental fusion device. His principal interest focuses on magnetohydrodynamics, which is the study of the interaction between electrical fields and conducting fluids.

Manickam joined the laboratory’s staff in 1975, and has been a principal research physicist since 1986. He also has been a visiting scientist at several research institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany, and the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute in Tokai, Japan. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the co-author of more than 150 papers in scientific journals.

Manickam succeeds William Tang, PPPL chief scientist, who is engaged in advancing scientific computing initiatives and strategies in collaboration with other plasma science institutions, Princeton University departments and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.