WASHINGTON – Elected President Joe Biden on Saturday announced new members of his science team, as well as his plan to elevate the director of the Office of Scientific and Technological Policy to a cabinet level for the first time, a move meant to end his commitment to science.
“We are going to lead with science and truth,” Biden said in a speech on Saturday about his new appointments in Delaware. “We believe in both.”
Biden nominates Eric Lander for the position. Lander, who needs Senate confirmation, is a mathematician and geneticist who helped map the human genome and founded the Broad Institute, a biomedical research center known for their work on the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology.
Lander is also a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School and previously served on President Barack Obama’s board of scientific advisors.
The decision to raise Lander to the cabinet level is a sharp interruption for President Donald Trump, who has spent much of his term disrespecting and approaching health and science experts. The position that Lander will hold for almost two years under Trump.
Biden also announced on Saturday that dr. Alondra Nelson will serve as Deputy Director for Science and Society of the Office of Scientific and Technological Policy, and Maria Zuber and Frances Arnold will serve as co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Dr. Francis Collins continues as director of the National Institutes of Health.
Elected Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother was a scientist, said she grew up with the fundamental belief of collecting data and making decisions ‘on the basis of evidence’.
“The science behind climate change is not a hoax. The science behind the virus is not biased. The same laws apply, the same evidence applies, whether you accept it or not,” Harris said.
Biden said his science team will focus on five key areas: the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, the climate crisis, technological advances in the industry and the long-term health of science and technology in the country.
Biden, who lost a boy to cancer, said ending the disease would also be a top priority for his administration, and it would be a hallmark of the incoming first lady, Dr. Jill Biden.
“When I announced in 2015 that I would not be running for president, I said I had only one regret – that I would not be the president presiding over the end of cancer as we know it,” Biden said. . “As president, I will do everything in our power to finish it.”
Ron Klain, the new chief of staff of the White House in Biden, also announced on Saturday that on the Inauguration Day, Biden will sign about a dozen executive orders that will extend the current break for the payment of student loans, rejoin the Paris Agreement and the Muslim travel ban will stop.
