O’Toole and Gallagher confirmed by Senate

Tara O’Toole, who has been waiting since May for the Senate to confirm her as under secretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), finally got the nod on 4 November.

O’Toole, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, is a former assistant secretary for environment, safety and health at the Department of Energy, where she led the Clinton administration’s government-wide investigation into the human radiation experiments that had occurred during the cold war.

Her confirmation came several days after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the floor to blast Republican senators for stalling action on more than 200 presidential nominations, including O’Toole.

Senate rules allow any member to prevent a nomination from coming up for a vote, no matter how certain confirmation may be.

The under secretary post has been vacant since the Obama administration began. Its purpose is to meet the diverse technology needs of the numerous DHS agencies. A notable exception is technology for the detection of nuclear materials, a function that belongs to DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

By contrast, Patrick Gallagher, Obama’s nominee for director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, had to wait only a few weeks for his confirmation, which came on 5 November.

Gallagher who has been acting director of NIST since September 2008, has worked at the agency’s Gaithersburg, MD headquarters since 1993.