Top Bush Administration S&T Officials to Speak at AAAS Forum on 20-21 April

White House science adviser John H. Marburger III, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are among the scheduled speakers for the 31st annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy to be held 20-21 April in Washington, D.C.

The Forum, widely recognized as the major public meeting in the United States on science and technology policy issues, will feature sessions on avian flu and other global health threats; protecting the integrity of science; use of science and technology to help achieve energy security and homeland security; and the U.S. response to the global innovation challenge. The Forum also will assess the research and development spending proposals in the pending 2007 federal budget and their implications for the future.

For details on the Forum, click here.

Marburger will deliver the keynote address on Thursday 20 April at 9 a.m. The opening plenary session at 10 a.m. will discuss the budget and policy context for proposed R&D spending in the FY2007 federal budget. Kei Koizumi, director of the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program, will assess the long-term implications of the proposed budget, which would increase R&D spending to nearly $137 billion in 2007 but continue the Bush Administration's emphasis on development of weapons and space vehicles. As a result, funding for the remainder of the R&D portfolio would fall, even after the requested increases for the President's American Competitiveness Initiative are taken into account.

Other speakers at the opening session include Bill Hoagland, director for budget and appropriations in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.); Douglas Holtz-Eakins, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now with the Council on Foreign Relations; and William Saletan, national correspondent for Slate, the online magazine.

AAAS Forum on Science & Technology Policy To register for the Forum, click here.

Gerberding will be the luncheon speaker on Thursday. Her agency has been deeply involved in monitoring the global spread of avian flu and its potential impact on human health. Gerberding recently acknowledged that the 2007 budget proposal includes spending reductions for important CDC programs such as research on infectious and environmental diseases, health promotion and studies on public health. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she said CDC is "working hard to be more effective with less." But, she added: "I'm not going to pretend that it's not a challenge."

Pandemic flu and other global health threats will be discussed at one of three concurrent sessions on Thursday afternoon. Speakers at the health threats session will include Linda Lambert, chief of the respiratory diseases branch, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Cecile Viboud, a research scientist at the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health; and Peter Sandman, a risk communications consultant from Princeton, N.J.

AAAS President John Holdren, professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, will moderate and speak at the second of the concurrent sessions, a look at energy challenges for the 21st century. The third session will be on science and homeland security, featuring Gretchen Lorenzi of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit; Starnes E. Walker III, chief scientist at the Office of Naval Research; Vayl Oxford, director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office; and Richard T. Roca, director of the Applied Physics Laboratory of The Johns Hopkins University.

Harold T. Shapiro, president emeritus and professor emeritus of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, will deliver the annual William D. Carey lecture at 5:45 p.m. on 20 April. Shapiro chaired the National Bioethics Advisory Commission during President Bill Clinton's second term.

The Forum continues Friday 21 April with breakfast remarks by John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; a morning plenary session on responses by industry and U.S. policy makers to the global innovation challenge, chaired by Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; a luncheon address by Energy Secretary Bodman; and an afternoon plenary session on protecting the integrity of science with Felice Levine, executive director of the American Educational Research Association; Nicholas Steneck, professor of history at the University of Michigan and currently with the Office of Research Integrity at the Department of Health and Human Services; and John Horgan, Stevens Institute of Technology, author of “The End of Science.”

The sessions will be held in Washington D.C. at the Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Ave, N.W., three blocks from the Capitol Building and two blocks from Union Station. Metro: Red Line, Union Station.

Earl Lane

11 April 2006