President Obama Announces Members of Science and Technology Advisory Council

27 / 04 / 2009
In a speech at the National Academies today, President Obama announced the membership of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology—a stellar team of experts who will help advance the President’s bold agenda to reinvigorate the economy while building a new and innovative foundation for a 21st Century America.

PCAST consists of 20 of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers. They will advise the President and Vice President directly to help the administration formulate policy in the many areas where understanding of science, technology, and innovation is key to forming responsible and effective policy.

PCAST will be co-chaired by John Holdren (Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy), Eric Lander, (Director of the Broad Institute and one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project), and Harold Varmus, (President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, former head of the National Institutes of Health and a Nobel laureate).

President Obama’s PCAST includes 3 Nobel laureates, 2 university presidents, 4 MacArthur Prize Fellows, and 14 individuals who are elected members of one or more of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It is a balanced team with members from all across the country, representing a broad array of fields and professional activities in science and technology.

Many of the objectives of the Obama Administration—in the fields of energy, education, health, climate change, environment, security, and the economy—can be met only with a strong national effort in science and technology. President Obama will rely heavily on his Council of Advisors as he restores science to its rightful place in policy making.

Members of PCAST other than the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology are not regular employees of the government. They are Presidential appointees and are not compensated for their service to the Executive Office of the President.

PCAST members are:

Rosina Bierbaum, a widely-recognized expert in climate-change science and ecology, is Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Her PhD is in marine biology. She served as Associate Director for Environment in OSTP in the Clinton Administration, as well as Acting Director of OSTP in 2000-2001. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Christine Cassel is President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and previously served as Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Oregon Health & Science University. A member of the US Institute of Medicine, she is a leading expert in geriatric medicine and quality of care.

Christopher Chyba is Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. His scientific work focuses on solar system exploration and his security-related research emphasizes nuclear and biological weapons policy, proliferation, and terrorism. He served on the White House staff from 1993 to 1995 at the National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy and was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship (2001) for his work in both planetary science and international security.

S. James Gates Jr. is the John S. Toll Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major research university. He has served as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, and the Educational Testing Service and held appointments at MIT, Harvard, California Institute of Technology and Howard University.

John Holdren is serving as co-chair of PCAST in addition to his duties as Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. Prior to this appointment Dr. Holdren was a Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He also served concurrently as Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and as Director of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship.

Shirley Ann Jackson is the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and former Chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1995-1999). She is the University Vice Chairman of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Jackson was the first African American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT and chairs the New York Stock Exchange Regulation Board.


Eric Lander is serving as a co-chair of PCAST. He is the Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Professor of Biology at MIT, Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He was one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship and is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine.

Richard Levin has served as President of Yale University since 1993 and is a distinguished economist with interests in industrial organization, the patent system, and the competitiveness of American manufacturing industries, including industrial research and development, intellectual property, and productivity. He is a leader in US-China cooperation, in research and education, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Chad Mirkin is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Medicine at Northwestern University, as well as Director of Northwestern's International Institute of Nanotechnology. He is a leading expert on nanotechnology, including nano-scale manufacturing and applications to medicine. Awarded the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in 2002, he is the top-cited researcher in nano-medicine in the world, as well as one of the most widely cited chemists.

Mario Molina is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth's ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases. The only Mexican-born Nobel laureate in science, he served on PCAST for both Clinton terms. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

Ernest J. Moniz is a Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, Director of the Energy Initiative, and Director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at MIT. His research interests include the future of nuclear power, coal, nuclear fuel cycles, natural gas, and solar energy in a low-carbon world. He served as Under Secretary of the Department of Energy (1997-2001) and Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1995-1997).

Craig Mundie is Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft Corporation. He has 39 years of experience in the computer industry, beginning as a developer of operating systems. Dr. Mundie co-founded and served as CEO of Alliant Computer Systems.

William Press is Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, has wide-ranging expertise in computer science, astrophysics, and international security. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences, he previously served as Deputy Laboratory Director for Science and Technology at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1998 to 2004. He is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Harvard University and a former member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1982-1998).

Maxine Savitz is retired general manager of Technology Partnerships at Honeywell, Inc and has more than 30 years of experience managing research, development and implementation programs for the public and private sectors, including in the aerospace, transportation, and industrial sectors. From 1979 to 1983 she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Conservation in the US Department of Energy. She currently serves as vice-president of the National Academy of Engineering.

Barbara Schaal is Professor of Biology at Washington University in St Louis. She is a renowned plant geneticist who has used molecular genetics to understand the evolution and ecology of plants, ranging from the US Midwest to the tropics. Dr Schaal serves as Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences, the first woman ever elected to that role.

Eric Schmidt is Chairman and CEO of Google Inc. and a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc. Before joining Google, Dr. Schmidt served as Chief Technology Officer for Sun Microsystems and later as CEO of Novell Inc.

Daniel Schrag is Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University-wide Center for Environment. He was trained as a marine geochemist and his studies on climate have ranged from the El Nino cycle in the Pacific to glaciations over the past 800 million years. Awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 2000, he is working with economists and engineers on technological approaches to mitigating future climate change.

David E. Shaw is the chief scientist of D. E. Shaw Research, LLC, where he leads an interdisciplinary research group in the field of computational biochemistry. He is the founder of D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund company. Dr. Shaw is a former member of PCAST under President Clinton and a member of the executive committee of the Council on Competitiveness, where he co-chairs the steering committee for the Council's federally funded High-Performance Computing Initiative. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies.

Harold Varmus is the President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and co-chair of PCAST. Dr. Varmus served as the Director of the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999 and in 1989 was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering studies of the genetic basis of cancer. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine and recipient of the National Medal of Science.

Ahmed Zewail is Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, a member of the National
Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for his pioneering work that allowed observation of exceedingly rapid molecular transformations. He is an Egyptian-American and Muslim, widely respected in the Middle East as a voice of reason.

PCAST Backgrounder: President Obama’s Science Agenda

President Obama has consistently articulated a strong commitment to science, technology, and innovation in public policy and given a strong endorsement to science and technology’s potential to help achieve important national goals relating to health care, clean energy, education, and the economy.

In his first weekly address to the nation just days after his inauguration, the President outlined principles for an economic recovery package going beyond short-term recovery and favoring long-term science- and technology-related investments in energy, education, health care, and infrastructure projects. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by the President on February 17, 2009, amounted to the largest increase in basic research funding in American history and will spur new discoveries in energy, medicine, climate, and the technologies of the future.

President Obama has also established a new place for science and technology in policymaking. On March 3, he ordered federal agencies to ensure that scientific and technical expertise was applied to decisions that may affect threatened or endangered species—a first step toward reversing regulations issued in late 2008 that allowed federal agencies to circumvent scientific and technical advice on endangered species decisions. In a March 9 Presidential Memorandum, he stated forcefully that “Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health, protection of the environment, increased efficiency in the use of energy and other resources, mitigation of the threat of climate change, and protection of national security.”

The administration has also acted to remove barriers to promising scientific research. Last month the President issued an Executive Order repealing presidentially imposed limits on federally funded human embryonic stem cell research, instructing the National Institutes of Health to develop guidelines for the responsible and safe conduct of this important field of biomedical research.

On March 11, President Obama signed into law the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill, finalizing the 2009 budgets for most federal departments and agencies and, after many years of stagnant science budgets, providing real increases for every major R&D funding agency.

This spring, the Obama Administration will presents its fiscal year 2010 budget to the Congress and the American people—a budget that reinforces the Administration’s commitment to science, technology, and innovation as critical tools for making progress toward the national goals of a prosperous economy, a clean energy future, a healthy population, and a strong and secure America. The federal R&D investment also recognizes that the urge to probe more deeply into the unknown and expand the frontiers of human knowledge is at the core of the American experience.