John Gibbons, White House science adviser to former President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1998, will speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Thursday, April 28.
The free, public event, to be held at 7 p.m. in room 270 of the Hale Science Building, is part of a 2005 lecture series at CU-Boulder titled "Policy, Politics and Science in the White House: Conversations with Presidential Science Advisers." The series is sponsored by CU-Boulder's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, 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.
The series began Feb. 14 with a talk on campus by John Marburger, current White House science adviser to President George W. Bush, and is designed 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 talk by Gibbons will include a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Hale Science is located near the intersection of Broadway and Pleasant Street.
As presidential science adviser, Gibbons was the most senior member of the White House staff on matters of science and technology policy. Prior to his White House service, Gibbons directed the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment for 13 years, serving congressional committees by providing independent, expert analysis and advice on issues involving the impacts of science and technology on society.
After leaving the White House, Gibbons was the Karl T. Compton Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a senior fellow at the National Academy of Engineering. During 2000 and 2001 he served as senior adviser to the U.S. Department of State on issues of science and technology capabilities. He also served as president of the scientific research society, Sigma Xi.
Gibbons, who began his career as a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. He has received six honorary doctorate degrees and numerous other distinguished prizes and awards for his contributions to science, including awards from NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Pielke said the CU-Boulder presidential science adviser series coincides with an unusually high interest by the public and media during the past year in science policy issues like stem-cell research, global warming, energy development, space science and the pharmaceutical industry.
One goal of the lecture series is to document how science is used, and perhaps misused, in policy and politics, he said. Each presidential adviser is asked during the talks to discuss a significant science policy issue or issues that arose during his tenure.
The science advisers participating in the series also attend classes on campus and interact with students and faculty in roundtable discussions, said Bobbie Klein, managing director for the CU science policy center.
Other presidential science advisers slated for talks on the Boulder campus in 2005 include Neal Lane, science adviser to Clinton from 1998 to 2003, George Keyworth, science adviser to Ronald Reagan, Edward David, science adviser to Richard Nixon and Donald Hornig, science adviser to Lyndon Johnson.
More information regarding the CU series is available on the Web at: .