Six presidential science advisers are slated to speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005, beginning with a Feb. 14 event featuring John Marburger, current White House science adviser to President George W. Bush.
Sponsored by CU-Boulder's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, the year-long series titled "Policy, Politics and Science in the White House: Conversations with Presidential Science Advisers" is free and open to the public. The primary goal is to provide a new perspective on the role of science in policy and politics at the highest levels of government, said Roger Pielke Jr., director of the center.
The Marburger talk will be at 7 p.m. in Room 100 of the Mathematics Building, located at the intersection of Colorado Avenue and Folsom Street on campus.
Former presidential science advisers scheduled to speak on the Boulder campus in 2005 include Neal Lane and John Gibbons, science advisers to Bill Clinton during his two terms, D. Allan Bromley, science adviser to George H. Bush, George Keyworth, science adviser to Ronald Reagan, and Edward David, science adviser to Richard Nixon.
"Science policy issues have captured the public's attention, especially in the past year," said Pielke. "As a result, a lot of interesting science and technology issues that are usually debated in cloistered halls and research institutions are now very public."
Science policy issues that have made headlines in the past year include stem-cell research, global warming, the direction of NASA's research efforts and the recall of high-profile pharmaceuticals for health and safety reasons, he said.
Another goal of the lecture series is to document how science is used and perhaps misused in policy and politics, Pielke said. Each presidential adviser will be asked to discuss a significant science policy issue or issues that arose during his tenure, he said.
"These people come from different political parties and different eras," said Pielke. "We are interested in how the complexities of science policy issues have changed in the White House over time."
The science advisers also will attend classes at CU-Boulder and interact with students, said Bobbie Klein, managing director for the CU science policy center. The visits are expected to include roundtable discussions involving science advisers, students and faculty.
The public talks will include question-and-answer sessions with the audience, said Pielke. The format is expected to be similar to a recent public lecture series at CU-Boulder featuring U.S. Secretaries of the Interior, where speakers fielded written questions from the audience.
Marburger, who also is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, previously directed the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. He served as president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1980 to 1994 and was a faculty member from 1994 to 1997, teaching and conducting research on optical science.
Marburger came to New York from the University of Southern California, where he was a professor of physics and electrical engineering and served as chairman of the physics department and dean of the College of Letters.
He became president of Brookhaven Science Associates in 1997, a partnership between Stony Brook and Battelle Memorial Institute that successfully competed for the contract to operate Brookhaven National Laboratory.
While at USC, Marburger contributed to the growing field of nonlinear optics, which was created by the invention of the laser in 1960. He developed theories for various laser phenomena and was a co-founder of USC's Center for Laser Studies. His teaching activities included "Frontiers of Electronics," a series of educational programs on CBS television.
The visits to campus by other presidential science advisers include:
* D. Allan Bromley, March 30-April 1;
* John Gibbons, April 28-29;
* Edward David, Sept. 14-15;
* Neal Lane, Oct.5-6;
* and George Keyworth, Nov. 28-30.
Details on their public talks will be made available at a later date.
Pielke said the center plans to videotape the science adviser lectures and hopes to make them available to the public via Internet Webcasts. The public programs eventually may be transcribed and made available to historians, he said.
Additional information regarding the CU series is available on the
Web at: .
Parking for the Feb. 14 Marburger event in Math 100 is available at meters along Colorado Avenue and in Lot 436 at Colorado Avenue and Regent Drive.
The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. CIRES is a joint program of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.