* A pair of FBI agents cracked the cold case of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
* A doctor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who designed and ran a program that delivered a billion vaccinations and eradicated polio in India.
* A man inside the Energy Department who had been sent to a massive nuclear waste dump outside Denver, containing enough radioactive gunk to fill 90 miles of railroad cars, and told to clean it up. He finished the project $30 billion under budget and 60 years ahead of schedule — and turned the dump into a park.
* A woman at the Agriculture Department who found ways to create products from misshapen fruits and vegetables unsuitable for market, which reduces food waste, a $400 billion problem for the United States each year.
* A man inside the Environmental Protection Agency conceived and put in place a service called AIRNow that supplies Americans with the best air-quality forecasts in the world.
* A special agent at the Drug Enforcement Administration led a team that seized 919,088 capsules of especially lethal fentanyl — and prosecuted the people peddling them.
* Locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Syria
* Delivering high-speed internet to rural America
* Extracting 15,000 Americans from in and around Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023
* Led the development of industry-wide standards and practices to prevent roof falls in underground mines, leading to the first year (2016) of no roof fall fatalities in the United States. A former coal miner.
* A doctor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who designed and ran a program that delivered a billion vaccinations and eradicated polio in India.
* A man inside the Energy Department who had been sent to a massive nuclear waste dump outside Denver, containing enough radioactive gunk to fill 90 miles of railroad cars, and told to clean it up. He finished the project $30 billion under budget and 60 years ahead of schedule — and turned the dump into a park.
* A woman at the Agriculture Department who found ways to create products from misshapen fruits and vegetables unsuitable for market, which reduces food waste, a $400 billion problem for the United States each year.
* A man inside the Environmental Protection Agency conceived and put in place a service called AIRNow that supplies Americans with the best air-quality forecasts in the world.
* A special agent at the Drug Enforcement Administration led a team that seized 919,088 capsules of especially lethal fentanyl — and prosecuted the people peddling them.
* Locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Syria
* Delivering high-speed internet to rural America
* Extracting 15,000 Americans from in and around Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023
* Led the development of industry-wide standards and practices to prevent roof falls in underground mines, leading to the first year (2016) of no roof fall fatalities in the United States. A former coal miner.
