Former White House Advisor Assesses Challenges for U.S. Science and Technology

Dec 11, 2014

Neal Lane, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will present “Giving Science Advice to the President — and Why It’s Getting Harder” at 4 p.m., Thursday, 

The lecture is sponsored by the Texas Center for Climate Studies and the College of Geosciences and is free and open to the public.

Lane’s lecture will focus on the role of science adviser to the president and how that role is affected by societal forces. He will also discuss current challenges to the United States science and technology enterprise.

Lane is currently the Malcolm Gillis University Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Senior Fellow in the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.  He was appointed Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he served under President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001. 

He previously served as Director of the National Science Foundation from 1993 to 1998. Lane became an assistant professor of physics at Rice University in 1966. He left Rice in 1984 to become chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, but returned to Texas in 1986 to serve as provost of Rice until 1992.