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Obama Leans on NYAS Members for Science and Technology Advice

Four Academy members, including one Nobel laureate, provide policy counsel to the President.

Published June 16, 2009

NYAS members are well represented among President Obama’s scientific advisors.

Harold Varmus

NYAS President's Council member Harold Varmus co-chairs Obama's President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST). Varmus, who won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and former Director of the National Institutes of Health. He has been a Life Member of NYAS since 2001.

John Holdren

Member John Holdren, PCAST co-chair and director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, is the former Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He spoke about climate change at the Academy in February 2007.

Steven Chu and Eric Lander

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, has been a NYAS member since 2006. And MIT biology professor Eric Lander, third co-chair of Obama’s advisory council, has been a NYAS member since 1998.