The Carnegie Corporation of New York has established a nonpartisan commission charged with assessing how federal and state leaders can more effectively incorporate scientific and technical information into policymaking.
One of the central questions on the commission’s agenda is how to produce a “technically literate’’ citizenry in the United States, as well as a skilled workforce that includes “first rate’’ scientists and science-based professionals.
The panel will also address the corporation’s long-term concern with promoting involvement in science among young people, women, and members of minority groups.
The new Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, announced last week, will be co-chaired by the Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, president of The Rockefeller University, and William T. Golden, president of the New York Academy of Sciences.
The New York-based commission is expected to release interim reports before making its final recommendations in about three years. It will issue a follow-up report two years later.
The corporation has provided $500,000 for the first six months of the commission’s work.
David Z. Robinson, a research physicist who is executive vice president and treasurer of the corporation, will leave that job to become executive director of the 22-member panel.
In addition to well-known scientists and academic leaders, the commission includes former President Jimmy Carter, other former government officials, and leaders from the private sector.
David A. Hamburg, president of the corporation, said in making the announcement that rapid advances in science and technology pose a “challenge to government beyond prior experience.’'
“The main purpose of the commission,’' he said, “is to seek ways in which the branches of government can encourage and use the contributions of the scientific community.’'
The panel’s other members are:
Richard C. Atkinson, chancellor, University of California at San Diego; Norman R. Augustine, vice chairman and chief executive officer, Martin Marietta Corporation; John Brademas, president, New York University; Lewis M. Branscomb, director of Harvard University’s science, technology, and public-policy program; William T. Coleman Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Transportation; Sidney D. Drell, professor and deputy director, Stanford University’s linear-accelerator center; U.S. Senator Daniel J. Evans of Washington; Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, chairman, the Atlantic Council of the U.S.; Shirley M. Hufstedler, former U.S. Secretary of Education; Adm. Bobby R. Inman, former director of the National Security Agency; Helene L. Kaplan, chairman of the Carnegie Corporation board; Donald Kennedy, president, Stanford University; William J. Perry, former U.S. undersecretary of defense for research and engineering; James B. Reston, senior columnist, The New York Times; Robert M. Solow, professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; H. Guyford Stever, foreign secretary, National Academy of Engineering; Sheila E. Widnall, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Jerome B. Wiesner, president, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.