US President-elect Joseph Biden has decided to appoint eminent geneticist Eric Lander as science advisor at the rank of minister. This was reported by Science magazine on Friday, January 15th.
Biden considers Lander one of the leading American scientists, as well as the leader of the human genome project and a pioneer in the field of genetics.
It is noted that Lander will become the first active scientist to serve as adviser to the US president for science.
Lander was previously co-chair of the Presidential Council of Science and Technology (PCAST) for 8 years under former President Barack Obama, where he worked closely with Obama’s science advisor John Holdren and interacted with Biden.
On January 13, it became known that Biden was going to appoint the National Security Agency (NSA) employee Anne Nybeger, the US Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security. She will be responsible for cybersecurity issues and new technologies in this area.
Biden also intends to appoint Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall as his homeland security adviser. She will also become the US Presidential Assistant for National Security. In the Barack Obama administration, Sherwood-Randall was the Deputy Secretary of Energy. Her deputy will be Russ Travers, who was previously the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
The appointments of Nybeger and Sherwood-Randall to these posts do not require Senator approval. Biden had previously stated that Jake Sullivan would be his National Security Assistant.
On January 8, it became known that Biden intends to appoint a former US intelligence officer, Andreu Kendall-Taylor, as senior director for Russia and Central Asia at the White House’s National Security Council (SNB). She was previously a “CIA analyst” and worked for the US director of national intelligence.