US president-elect Barack Obama on Saturday signalled climate change and genetic research will be among his top priorities when he takes office as he named four key members of his administration.
"It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," said Obama in a weekly radio address. Leading his list of nominees is John Holdren, who would become director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chairman of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The professor of environmental policy at Harvard University led the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organisation of prominent scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. Holdren is no stranger to Washington, having served as President Bill Clinton's science and technology adviser in the 1990s.
Obama called Holdren "one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change". Underscoring the importance of genetic research, the president-elect also named Eric Lander and Harold Varmus as co-chairmen of the council of advisors alongside Holdren.
Lander is founding director of the Broad Institute, which played a leading role in the Human Genome Project which in 2003 succeeded in mapping the location of about 20,500 genes on the 23 pairs of human chromosomes. Lander and his colleagues are using these findings to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the basis of human disease, a field that could hold the key to curing many incurable diseases, Obama aides said.
Varmus, a co-recipient of a 1989 Nobel prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, has been serving as president and chief executive of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York since January 2000.