Obama underscores support for technology
President-elect Barack Obama used his Saturday Radio address to underscore his support for science and technology in the US. He said that his administration would restore the United States to its technology leadership position in the world.
He also used the occasion to announce three more new administration science and technology appointments. Obama named John Holdren, Harold Varmus, and Eric Lander to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a key group in formulating science policy for the Obama administration. These appointments must be approved by the Senate.
As a part of his radio remarks, Obama said “Whether its the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs – today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. Its time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore Americas place as the world leader in science and technology.”
John Holdren was nominated as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Holdren’s professional focus has been global environmental change, energy technologies and policies, nuclear proliferation, and science and technology policy. Holdren is currently the director of the Woods Hole Research Center and board chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Harold Varmus joins Holdren on the President’s Council of Advisors. Dr. Varmus won the 1989 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the causes of cancer and specifically for discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes. Varmus is a previous director of the National Institutes of Health, from 1993 to 1999. He currently serves as President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Eric Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Lander has devoted his career to realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine.
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