President-elect Joe Biden announced that he will elevate the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to a Cabinet-level agency, signaling a major shift in priorities from the Trump Administration, the Washington Post reports.
The Biden transition team said that Eric Lander, a mathematician and geneticist who helped map the human genome, will be the person to occupy that seat in the new administration.
In other science-related appointments, Biden said MIT Vice President of Research Maria Zuber, a planetary scientist who lead efforts to map the surfaces of the moon and Mars, and Nobel laureate Francis Arnold, a pioneer in synthesizing artificial proteins, to head the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.