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Obama Administration Appoints Scientists with Reach in Materials Research On April 27, during remarks at the National Academy of Sciences, President Barack Obama announced the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). President Obama said, “This council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experience and views. I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation.” 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 of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University 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. Among the members of PCAST are scientists with a materials research association. PCAST member Chad Mirkin is Professor of Materials Science and Engineer ing, 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 nanoscale manufacturing and applications to medicine. Awarded the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in 2002, he is one of the top-cited researchers in nanomedicine, as well as one of the most widely cited chemists. In 1999, Mirkin received the Materials Research Society’s Outstanding Young Investigator Award for his “pioneering and leadership role in developing a new interdisciplinary field in which complex biological macromolecules are used to assemble inorganic nanoparticle building blocks into functional meso- and macroscopic structures.” Shirley Ann Jackson, the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1995–1999), accepted an appointment to the council. She is the University Vice Chair 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. From 1991 to 1995, she was a physics professor at Rutgers University while concurrently serving as a consultant in semiconductor

theory to AT&T Bell Laboratories. Prior to that, Jackson conducted research in theoretical physics, solid-state and quantum physics, and optical physics at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Former Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1995–1997) Ernest J. Moniz joins PCAST. 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 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research centers on energy technology and policy, including the fut