Kathleen Amm will tell you she’s been a science nerd for as long as she can remember. As a graduate student at Florida State in the mid-1990s, she studied physics and spent countless hours working on high-temperature superconductors during the earliest days of the FSU-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the largest and highest-powered magnet laboratory in the world.

Amm, who completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, quickly fell in love with Tallahassee not just for the National MagLab, but also for the school spirit that thrummed throughout FSU’s campus during the Bobby Bowden era.

“This is where I came to love college football. I went to school in Canada — they have football, but it’s not as big as it is here. I actually never made it to a football game during school, but I always watched on TV,” Amm said, admitting that most of her free time was also spent in the lab.

Today, Amm serves as director of the National MagLab, the place where she first sharpened her skills under the advisership of mechanical engineering professor Justin Schwartz and Jack Crow, the lab’s founding director. As she turns the page on her first year at the helm, Amm is drawing inspiration from gridiron greats as she leads the more than 500 scientists and 2,000 visitors from around the globe who utilize the National MagLab’s world-class facilities each year.

“We have an incredible team here. One of the highlights for me of this first year has been working on making this a better place for our employees and strengthening our leadership team, getting them the training they need to coach their teams and help them reach their potential,” Amm said. “We have a lot of good sports teams here; we know about coaching at FSU. We want to teach our scientific leaders to be excellent coaches too so that we elevate our teams, and they can develop the best science and perform at their best.”

Supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and State of Florida, the National MagLab is a sprawling 500,000-square foot facility in Tallahassee’s Innovation Park complex and includes satellite locations at the University of Florida in Gainesville and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Researchers utilize the National MagLab’s high-field magnets and instrumentation to answer key questions in the fields of health, energy, materials science, quantum science and beyond.

“Each of my directors and leaders talk to me about their people and what they're doing to help their teams move forward and hit goals so that we can be successful and have a winning season at the National MagLab. What I’m really excited about is how we continue to grow Tallahassee and make this an incredible place to work and live.”

— Kathleen Amm

This isn't the first time Amm has been a head coach — she previously served as director of the Magnet Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Prior to that, Amm worked as a physicist in the electromagnetics and superconductivity lab at GE Global Research, General Electric’s global innovation hub, and held various other leadership positions with the company. 

In 2023, when then-director Gregory Boebinger announced plans to retire after nearly 20 years in the director’s chair, the university launched an international search for its next lab leader. Amm was the No. 1 pick and began her tenure as director in May 2024.

“This is beyond my wildest dreams to be able to lead such a phenomenal group of scientists and engineers here at the National MagLab who are just doing incredible research,” she said.

While Amm’s return to Tallahassee was a welcome homecoming, the lab is brand-new to her in many ways, transformed by nearly three decades of growth and innovation.

“It’s just phenomenal to see this place,” Amm said. “This building was half empty when I came here for graduate school, and they were just starting to build the 45 Tesla hybrid magnet. They were in the process of designing it at that point in time, so there were lots of seminars and discussions about it.”

And the growth isn’t slowing down. In addition to continually working to secure spaces for the National MagLab’s latest technology and innovations, including a gypsum stack cleanup project poised to help reduce industrial waste and shore up the U.S. rare earth element supply chain, Amm is enthusiastic about equipping the lab’s scientists with the tools and guidance necessary to bring their research from laboratory to marketplace.

“We recently had FSU’s commercialization team come out and talk to our people. We have so much unleveraged potential to partner with industry and bring Tallahassee companies in to work with us. That's a big growth opportunity for us at FSU,” said Amm, an inventor herself who holds 22 patents. 

The synergistic relationship between the National MagLab and the FSU and Florida A&M University colleges and departments from which many of the lab’s researchers hail — physics, chemistry and engineering to name a few — has been instrumental to the lab’s forward progress.

“I’m excited about partnering with the College of Arts and Sciences, the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and others. I love talking to Dean [Sam] Huckaba and Dean [Suvranu] De about our plans. We have such a powerhouse leadership team at FSU who just wants the faculty here to be wildly successful, and it’s exciting to be a part of that,” Amm said.

Huckaba, who was part of the search process, said Amm hit the ground running on her first day and has already made a difference.

“Kathleen is smart, savvy, and extremely well-prepared to lead the National MagLab. What a nice bonus that Kathleen is one of our own college alumni [Class of 1998] and that she has returned home to fill such an important role,” Huckaba said.

Another underlined item in Amm’s personal playbook — highlighting the significance and scope of the research conducted at the National MagLab to a global audience.

“There are many companies that now have patents and licenses in this arena based upon research that was done here,” Amm said, noting the lab’s more than 100 lifetime patents. “It’s critically important to have a place where you do fundamental research. With industry and shareholders expecting immediate returns on investment, universities and national labs are really the only place you can conduct longer-term, fundamental science.”

As Amm fortifies the National MagLab for the future, she hopes to continue building strong relationships with the lab’s expansive team of researchers and fostering the sense of community and pride that first helped FSU feel like home.

“Each of my directors and leaders talk to me about their people and what they're doing to help their teams move forward and hit goals so that we can be successful and have a winning season at the National MagLab,” Amm said. “What I’m really excited about is how we continue to grow Tallahassee and make this an incredible place to work and live.”