NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – President-elect Barack Obama has selected Broad Institute Founding Director Eric Lander and former NIH Director Harold Varmus to serve as co-chairs for the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The two appointees were named along with two other high-ranking members of Obama’s science and technology team.
John Holdren, the director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, has agreed to serve as assistant to the president for science and technology and to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren also is a former president and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Obama also nominated Jane Lubchenco to serve as administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lubchenco is a past-president of the International Council for Science and a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology,” Obama said in a statement.
Noting that Lander was “one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome,” Obama said he will be “a powerful voice in my Administration as we seek to find the causes and cures of our most devastating diseases.”