About Those Science Envoys

On learning that the new Egyptian president used to be an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, I double-checked my paltry posting on the Egyptian race to see if this had any mention.  It did not, but it was not a campaign I followed closely.

I was also motivated to check back on the science envoys, notable scientists and/or engineers appointed to State Department positions to serve as scientific resources during overseas visits.  In the year since I last posted on the topic, trips were planned (and presumably carried out, though I can’t confirm) for Dr. Bruce Alberts (Indonesia, where he helped launched a science partnership), Dr. Gebisa Ejeta (Ethiopia and Tanzania), Dr. Rita Colwell (Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam) and Dr. Alice Gast (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).  I’d link to official State Department bios, but they seem to be archived or non-existent.  You’ll have to make do with these.

It’s nice to see the envoys still traveling abroad, though I wish there was as much attention paid to the program as there was when it first started.  What little there is here came from a haphazard search of press releases, so I could well have missed much.