President-elect Joe Biden introduced the lead members of his White House science team on Saturday. Here are the seven senior members of that group, along with brief summaries of their academic credentials.
President-elect Joe Biden introduced the lead members of his White House science team on Saturday, saying “These are among the brightest, most dedicated people not only in the country but the world.” Here are the seven senior members of Biden’s science group, along with brief summaries of their academic credentials. Eric Lander is Biden’s choice to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and will also serve as his science adviser, a position that will be promoted to Cabinet status. “For the first time in history, I’m going to be elevating the presidential science adviser to a Cabinet rank, because we think it’s that important,” Biden said. Lander received his Bachelor’s degree from Princeton, where he graduated as valedictorian. That was followed by his selection as a Rhodes Scholar, and his completion of the DPhil from the University of Oxford. A distinguished mathematician and biologist, Lander is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine, and has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Lander is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School. He is the founding director of the Broad Institute, a genomic research center in Cambridge, Mass. He co-chaired President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Biden picked Alondra Nelson to be OSTP deputy director for science and society. She earned her B.A. from the University of California, San Diego and her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University in 2003. Currently, she is the President of the Social Science Research Council and the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She held previous academic and administrative appointments at Yale and Columbia. Nelson serves on the boards of several scholarly organizations and foundations. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Medicine.
