Obama Unveils Science Advisors

The President's nerd team is ready to go. Avengers (of science) assemble!
the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Tom FitzSimmons/the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University

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While most of the science news media was focused on a certain bacon-flavored illness, Obama quietly unveiled his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And while this team has doesn’t have the pure nerd power of Vice-President Gore’s Action Rangers, it is still a pretty impressive line-up.

Notable members of the team include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Human Genome Project leader Eric Lander, MacArthur Genius Award recipient Christopher Chyba, Nobel laureates Ahmed Zewail and Mario Molina, and Microsoft chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie.

After announcing the members of the Council, the White House also unveiled the Office of Science and Technology Policy blog. Shortly after the blog went live, it also got its first blog troll. At least he didn’t go with “firsties.”

The council will be co-chaired by Lander, biologist Harold Varmus (yet another Nobel Prize winner), and previously announced Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren. Whether the team will also fight crime by night has yet to be determined.