He was one of the 35 Nobel laureates who signed a letter urging President Obama to provide a stable $15 billion per year support for clean energy research, technology and demonstration.[4]
In October 2010, Phillips participated in theUSA Science and Engineering Festival's lunch with a laureate program where middle and high school students got to engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch.[5] Phillips is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's advisory board.[6]
Phillips has served as a member, and later as an associated member, on the Commission on Symbols, Units, Nomenclature, Atomic Masses and Fundamental Constants (C2) of theInternational Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 2011 to 2024.[7]
Phillips married Jane Van Wynen shortly before he went to MIT. Neither had been regular churchgoers early in their marriage. However, in 1979, they joined the FairhavenUnited Methodist Church inGaithersburg, Maryland because they appreciated its diversity. He is a founding member of theInternational Society for Science and Religion. He and his wife have two daughters; Caitlin Phillips (born 1979) who founded Rebound Designs, and Christine Phillips (b 1981) who works in Science Communication.
During a seminar at the University of Maryland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry titledCoherent Atoms inOptical Lattices Phillips stated, "Rubidium is God's gift to Bose–Einstein condensates."
