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Harvard's John P. Holdren Named White House Science Advisor
Cambridge, Mass. - December 22, 2008 - President-elect Barack Obama has selected Harvard University's John P. Holdren to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology in the new administration. The post, popularly known as "the President's science advisor," also includes directorship of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and requires Senate confirmation.
Holdren is currently the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program in the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also professor of environmental science and policy in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and president and director of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. He has been at Harvard since 1996 and affiliated with Woods Hole since 1992.
Holdren, who holds MS and PhD degrees in aerospace engineering and plasma physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, is a specialist in energy technology and policy, global climate change, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, and science and technology policy. He is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science - the largest general science society in the world - and a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
"None of the great interlinked challenges of our time - the economy, energy, environment, health, security, and the particular vulnerabilities of the poor to shortfalls in all of these - can be solved without insights and advances from the physical sciences, the life sciences, and engineering," Holdren said Saturday. "President-elect Obama understands this with perfect clarity. To be able to work with him and the rest of the splendid team he has assembled to be sure that the potential of science and technology to build a more prosperous society and a better world is fully developed and exploited in all that his administration does is the greatest opportunity - and the greatest responsibility - of my professional life."
At Harvard, Holdren's teaching, research, and engagement with public policy have focused on bolstering U.S. efforts to develop and deploy energy technologies to reduce the risks of climate change and overdependence on oil, devising ways to minimize dangers from nuclear weapons and weapon-usable materials, and strengthening the processes by which accurate information about policy-relevant science and technology gets acquired by decision-makers and the public.
Holdren and his colleagues have also developed substantial programs of cooperation with China and India on development and deployment of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies for addressing the challenges of climate change, oil dependence, and sustainable development. This year he was named to a three-year, nonresident appointment as guest professor in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
In Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and at the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE), Holdren focuses on how better to link the rapidly growing scientific understanding of the causes and consequences of global climate change to the policy challenges of developing adequate remedies in time, as well as on helping students develop their ability to function effectively at this science-policy intersection. From his arrival at Harvard in 1996 until this year, he served as a member of the Board of Tutors of the HUCE-linked undergraduate concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy.
In the policy arena, Holdren has served since 2002 as co-chair of the independent, bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy and was a principal architect of the recommendations on energy-technology innovation strategy in its 2004 and 2007 reports. He was also a coordinating lead author of the 2007 report of the 18-member, 11-nation United Nations Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, which he presented to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and summarizing before the General Assembly.
From 1994 to 2001, Holdren served as a member of former President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), leading major studies requested by Clinton on US-Russian cooperation to protect nuclear materials from theft, the US program of research on fusion energy, US energy research and development strategy, and international cooperation on energy-technology innovation. In parallel with his service on the Clinton PCAST, Holdren chaired the standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences, which advises the government and the nation on a range of matters where science and technology bear directly on the security of the country.
Following receipt of his PhD from Stanford in 1970, Holdren worked as a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he remained an active consultant until 1994. In 1973 he co-founded the interdisciplinary graduate program in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served on the faculty from 1973 to 1996.
From 1991 to 2005, Holdren served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, helping shape that foundation's programs on international peace and cooperation, environment, and population.
Holdren was born in Sewickley, Pa., and grew up in San Mateo, Calif. He resides with his wife of 42 years, biologist Cheryl E. Holdren, in Falmouth, Mass. They have two grown children and five grandchildren ages 3 to 17.
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