President Obama announced today the members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in remarks made at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Some members were announced previously, but this is the first time the full council was presented publicly. Obama cited the distinguished council’s “diversity of experience and views,” and said the members would advise him on “national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation.” You can see the full list here.
Xconomy’s cities of Boston, Seattle, and San Diego are all represented prominently on the advisory council. Here’s a quick rundown:
Council members with strong ties to the Northwest include Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft; and Christine Cassel, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, who was previously dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Oregon Health & Science University. (Another presidential advisor with ties to Oregon—though she’s not on this council—is Jane Lubchenco, a professor at Oregon State University, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last month as under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, and the ninth administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
Not to be outdone, the Boston area contributes luminaries John Holdren (co-chair), director of the Office for Science and Technology Policy and former director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; Eric Lander (co-chair), director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Ernest J. Moniz, director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at MIT; Daniel Schrag, professor of geology and professor of environmental science and engineering at Harvard; and Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT.
And San Diego has Mario Molina, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Molina is a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and is also the director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City.
