Chemists, chemical engineers, and pharmaceutical veterans join Biden advisory panel

US President Joe Biden announced Sept. 22 the new members of his scientific advisory committee, including several leaders in the chemistry enterprise.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) will consist of 30 members from a variety of disciplines, including agriculture, engineering, neuroscience, and cybersecurity.

Biden had announced the three scientific leaders for PCAST in January. They are Broad Institute mathematician and geneticist Eric Lander, Biden’s science advisor; Chemistry Nobel Laureate and California Institute of Technology chemical engineer Frances Arnold; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology geophysicist and vice president for research Maria Zuber.

The full council is the most diverse ever, the administration says. More than half of the members are women and more than a third are people of color and immigrants. This is also the first time women have served as PCAST cochairs.

“We are thrilled that some of our most accomplished Americans are willing to step up and serve the nation by being members of PCAST,” Arnold says in a White House press release. “Their vast expertise will help the nation build back better through science and technology.” In addition to Arnold, panel members with a connection to chemistry include:

John Banovetz, a materials scientist and chief technology officer at 3M

Sue Desmond-Hellmann, a breast cancer researcher formerly at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the University of California, San Francisco; and Genentech

Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

Vicki Sato, former president of Vertex Pharmaceuticals and vice president for research at Biogen.

At its first meeting Sept. 28–29, PCAST focused on US research competitiveness internationally and ways to improve the health of US science and technology. It also discussed preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal response, and how the community can learn from that experience. Those are just the first of five areas that Biden charged the panel to address.

PCAST’s homework assignment is to lay out the structures that will guide US science for the next 70 years, Lander said in introducing the meeting. “It’s an assignment that’s broadly to the whole community of people who care about science and technology,” he said. And it’s one that many people care about—no one who was offered a position on PCAST turned it down, Lander says. “I think the membership in this PCAST is just stunning.”