From Auburn geology to national innovation, Mark Peters returns to the Plains

The problems Mark Peters has spent his career helping solve rarely fit within one discipline.

They stretch across fields, institutions and decades. They ask scientists and engineers to work alongside policymakers. They require people who can see connections across complex systems.

A 1986 Auburn geology graduate, Peters served as commencement speaker on May 3 for the Graduate School and the College of Sciences and Mathematics. Today, he leads MITRE, a global not-for-profit technology company that oversees six federally funded research and development centers. MITRE’s work spans national security, homeland security, law enforcement, cybersecurity, health, aviation and transportation, economics, and commerce. 

Speaking to graduates, Peters pointed to his own career as one example of where a scientific foundation can lead.

“I hope they think, wow, this geologist from Auburn went and did interesting things in his career,” Peters said. “But I also hope they see how my scientific training at Auburn led to where I am now and who I am as a leader.”

His message reflected the path his own career has taken. Scientific training is not only preparation for a first job or graduate program. It can become a framework for leadership, especially when the problems ahead do not fit neatly within one field.

“My education taught me how to think,” Peters said. “You learn how to approach a problem with curiosity and from all different angles. That training will always stay with you, and it translates into how you lead.”

For the graduates seated before him, that idea pointed forward. For Peters, it also reached back to Auburn, where a geology degree gave him a way to connect many of the scientific questions that interested him.

At Auburn, that foundation started with a program that combined fieldwork and laboratory training with coursework across the sciences. Peters entered as a geology major, and an enthusiastic professor in his first course helped confirm that he had chosen the right path.

“For me, it started with education,” Peters said. “I was interested in a broad range of sciences, and the geology program brought them together in a really unique way.”

After graduating from Auburn, Peters earned his doctorate in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago and completed a postdoctoral appointment at Caltech. He initially thought he was headed toward academics, but his interest in working across a wider range of scientific challenges led him to the national laboratory system.

“As with all scientists, I’m intellectually curious, but I get bored focusing on one topic for very long,” Peters said. “I quickly realized I wanted to work on a range of problems, and that led me to the national labs.”

His early work included support for the Yucca Mountain project before he transitioned to Los Alamos National Laboratory. A later assignment in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Department of Energy helped shape his career by bringing science, policy and national priorities into clearer focus.

Peters realized he could satisfy his intellectual curiosity not by narrowing his field, but by moving among disciplines and helping teams address national challenges, from energy production to security.

Before joining MITRE in 2024, he held leadership roles at Argonne National Laboratory, served as director of Idaho National Laboratory from 2015 to 2020, and later held a leadership role at Battelle Memorial Institute.

Peters describes national laboratories as “uniquely American” institutions built around deep scientific and engineering expertise focused on large-scale public challenges.

“How do we create our energy future? How do we secure the United States? How do we secure the globe?” he explained. “Really, really big problems.”

For Peters, that work carries both urgency and optimism. Scientific challenges may unfold across decades, but they also invite each generation of graduates to contribute new questions, new tools and new forms of leadership.

“You’ve got to feel good every morning waking up. You’re saving the world every day,” Peters said. “These are big, hard problems. Sometimes they’re multi-decade problems that require constant focus.”

A nationally recognized expert in nuclear energy and national security, Peters is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the 2023 recipient of the Henry DeWolf Smyth Nuclear Statesman Award. He also serves as vice president and president-elect of the American Nuclear Society.

That was the message he brought back to Auburn. Leadership is not a title conferred later, but a way of moving through the world now.

“They’re all leaders,” Peters said. “We can all be leaders, and I think Auburn positions them very well for that.”

For Peters, that belief is grounded in the same lesson that carried him from geology to national laboratories to MITRE. The most important problems rarely arrive in tidy categories. They demand curiosity, breadth and the confidence to work across boundaries.