President-elect Barack Obama’s nominations of a number of individuals to cabinet-level positions relevant to science and technology

Updated 12/21/2008: This week was dominated by President-elect Barack Obama’s nominations of a number of individuals to cabinet-level positions relevant to science and technology. On Monday, Obama formally announced Steven Chu as his pick for Secretary of Energy . The Nobel laureate in physics and director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shared the stage in Chicago with others who were named to key federal energy and environment posts, notably former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner, who will fill a newly created White House post as “czarina” of energy and climate change. With a title of assistant to the president, Browner will report directly to Obama, and unlike Chu’s, her appointment does not require Senate confirmation. Other appointments included Lisa Jackson, head of New Jersey’s Environmental Protection Department, as EPA administrator; Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor for environment in Los Angeles, as chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Heather Zichal, former legislative director to Senator John Kerry, to be deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change under Browner. All will play major roles in developing policies to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and reducing US dependence on foreign oil.

On Thursday, word began to leak out that Obama would select Harvard physicist John Holdren to be his science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). On Friday, Harvard confirmed the selection , which Obama announced in his weekly radio address the following day .

Holdren directs the science, technology, and public policy program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs within Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. After beginning his career as a plasma physics researcher, Holdren moved into the science policy arena, where he has specialized in energy, climate change, and arms control issues. He was a member of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the Clinton administration, and is also a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Holdren’s appointment brought cheers from scientific associations. H. Frederick Dylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics and publisher of Physics Today , said Holdren’s “solid research as a physicist speaks to his scientific credentials, but his extensive and highly-respected work on energy technology and policy, global environmental change, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation attest to a remarkable man who believes that science and technology must play a crucial role in improving global economic and sociopolitical conditions in both developed and developing countries .”

Alan Leshner, executive director of AAAS, commented, “John Holdren’s expertise spans so many issues of great concern at this point in history--climate change, energy and energy technology, nuclear proliferation. He is widely respected in the United States and around the world as a science leader .”

During the campaign, Obama pledged to restore the title of assistant to the president to the science adviser position. President Bush had lowered the rank of his science adviser, John Marburger, a notch in the White House bureaucratic structure, and many in the science policy community considered the demotion to have restricted Marburger’s access to the Oval Office, and consequently his influence, compared with that of previous science advisers. Marburger himself dismissed the title change as irrelevant. Holdren’s nomination to head OSTP requires Senate confirmation, although the science adviser post does not. If confirmed, Holdren will continue the perfect record physics has had as the discipline of every presidential science adviser since World War II. Holdren also has a PhD in aeronautical engineering.

It remains to be seen how Holdren will divide the energy and environment advising responsibilities with Browner, who is trained as a lawyer.

David Kramer