PCAST Members Announced

April 28th, 2009

Posted by: admin

In what may become tradition of burying the interesting policy stuff on the same day as a politically savvy move, the Obama Administration announced on Monday who the remaining members of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) will be.  It had already been announced that Eric Lander and Harold Varmus will join Presidential Science Adviser Holdren as co-chairs of PCAST.  Dr. Landren directs the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and holds appointments in biology faculties at both schools.  Dr. Varmus is a fomer NIH Director and currently heads the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

I’ll list the other members after the jump, and you can look at more complete bios on the PCAST website (which, sadly, is woefully thin for the launch of the new Council).  Two points worth noting: a higher percentage of PCAST members have backgrounds in life science fields than in the past; and a few PCAST members have served in government S&T positions before.

Rosina Bierbaum, Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan
Christine Cassel, President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine
Christopher Chyba, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs at Princeton University
S. James Gates Jr., Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland
Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Richard Levin, President of Yale University
Chad Mirkin, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Medicine at Northwestern University
Mario Molina, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego
Ernest J. Moniz, Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at MIT
Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft
William Press, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas
Maxine Savitz, retired general manager of Technology Partnerships at Honeywell, Inc
Barbara Schaal, Professor of Biology at Washington University in St Louis
Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google
Daniel Schrag, Professor of Geology and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Harvard
David E. Shaw, chief scientist of D. E. Shaw Research
Ahmed Zewail, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Caltech

One Response to “PCAST Members Announced”

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  1. David Bruggeman Says:

    This SEED Magazine post has a more detailed breakdown of the members’ backgrounds by subject matter:

    http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/breakdown_the_new_pcast/