Nobel Laureate Nominated for US Office of Science and Technology Policy Associate Directorship. (March 24, 2010)

The Director of US President Barack Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), John Holdren, may soon be joined by physicist Carl Wieman as an associate director for science.

Professor Wieman together with Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle received the 2001 Nobel Physics Prize "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates". Professor Wieman, who divides his time between the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada, and the University of Colorado, Boulder has in recent years led in efforts to reform U.S. undergraduate education, and if his nomination is approved by the US Senate he will also be responsible for overseeing education as part of his science portfolio.