U.S. President-elect Barack Obama named more scientists to top posts over the weekend: Harold Varmus and Eric Lander will serve as co-chairs of the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, headed up by Harvard physicist John Holdren.

Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist and former head of the AAAS, will also lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

These scientists are no strangers to our pages: Two years ago, Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, penned an opinion article urging scientists to spend time in a lab in a developing country, in order to build a "global science corps. " And in our upcoming January issue, he writes about his tenure as head of the National Institutes of Health under Bill Clinton (available in the new year).

Lubchenco has contributed to numerous stories over the years, such as about the importance of protected marine parks, and the scientific shortcomings of outgoing president George W. Bush (hint: there were many, she said).

You can also review comments MIT's Eric Lander made on the five-year-anniversary of the Human Genome Project, and marvel at how in 2005, as the principal investigator on the biggest NIH grant, Lander received nearly seven times more funding than the total amount given to all institutions in the state of Wyoming the year before.






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