CCST Newsroom

CCST Council Member Sung-Mo “Steve” Kang has been appointed the new president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea’s leading technology school. Kang’s four-year term is scheduled to begin on February 23. “I did not expect this development,” said Kang. “KAIST is facing some organizational challenges, and there was a need […]

A delegation from the California Teacher Advisory Council (Cal TAC) spent three days in Washington, D.C. last week, introducing Cal TAC as an organization dedicated to strengthening STEM teaching and learning throughout California, and briefing Senate staff and Congressional members about their current work on digitally enhanced education. The delegation included Cal TAC Chair Brian […]

CCST Senior Fellow Dr. David Okrent, Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles and world renowned nuclear physicist and expert on nuclear reactor safety, died at his home in Los Angeles on December 14, 2012, after a sudden illness. He was 90. Dr. Okrent obtained his MS and […]

San Jose State University has announced a partnership with an online education startup to offer low-cost online classes for credit. The experimental pilot project marks the first significant foray into online education for the California State University system, and could be the harbinger of a paradigm shift in higher education in California. “The state’s public […]

The California Science and Technology Policy Fellowship program has placed its fourth consecutive group of fellows in the California state legislature, continuing to build on a growing legacy of making S&T expertise available to lawmakers in a way most states do not have. Each year, the program places ten professional scientists in yearlong appointments in […]

Four months after landing on the red planet, NASA’s largest-ever Mars rover, Curiosity, is fully functional and writing the latest chapter in a story of exploration that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been building for decades. “JPL has a long tradition of exploring Mars,” said David Seidel, JPL Deputy Education Director and Manager, STEM […]

CCST has released the sixth publication in its California’s Energy Future (CEF) project, “California’s Energy Future: Building and Industrial Efficiency“. The CEF project focuses on exploring possibilities for California’s energy strategy through the coming decades, seeking ways the State could meet the mandated reductions of the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels […]

A new initiative at the University of California, Davis is promoting collaborative engagement between University researchers and policy-makers to help better inform energy and environmental policy. The Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy was created earlier this year to bring to bear expertise at the University of California and other research institutions to […]

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a statement on October 20 on the labeling of genetically modified foods, stating that there is no scientific evidence to justify efforts to mandate labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods for consumers. “The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of […]

A new summary report has been released detailing the proceedings of a June 2012 summit on integrating digital media into teacher preparation in California. (Click here for the report.) The summit, convened by the California Teacher Advisory Council (Cal TAC), brought together science and math teachers, university faculty, philanthropists, and technical experts to develop a strategy […]

A successful culture of innovation depends as much on enabling entrepreneurship as on the ideas themselves, according to CCST Council Member Atul Butte, who spoke at the October Council meeting. Butte, MD, PhD, an associate professor and chief of systems medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University, runs a laboratory which focuses on […]

CCST has released the next report in the California’s Energy Future (CEF) series, which focuses on exploring possibilities for California’s energy strategy through the year 2050. Portraits of Energy Systems for Meeting Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets examines a variety of scenarios for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. “We believe that the CEF energy system portraits report […]

CCST is seeking input from water experts on the future of California’s water plans. “Science and Technology for California’s Water Future” is a yearlong project to determine how innovations in science and technology can be used to improve California’s integrated water management. Through the use of an on-line survey CCST is working to identify innovative technology […]

The 2011-2012 group of California Science and Technology Policy Fellows has received acknowledgments from both the Assembly and the Senate, marking the program’s third year of success. “As policy makers, our most urgent priority is to create the kind of twenty-first century jobs that will restore health to California’s economy,” said Speaker of the Assembly […]

This past Sunday, August 5, people around the world watched closely as the Mars Curiosity rover executed a complex and unprecedented landing procedure to arrive safely on the Martian surface, lowered on a ‘sky crane’ kept up by booster rockets. But no one was watching more intently than the more than 1400 scientists and engineers […]

When astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, passed away this week at 61, she left behind a decades-long legacy of commitment to the science and technology community that resonates deeply in the California communities where she lived and worked. “I was privileged to know Sally Ride,” said CCST Council Member Julie Meier […]

Using digital media to improve teaching and learning is essential to the classrooms of the 21st century. However, many challenges must be overcome in order to fulfill the potential of digital education in California, as the members of the California Teacher Advisory Council (Cal TAC) discussed in a recent meeting. Cal TAC is a group […]

CCST Executive Director Susan Hackwood is co-chairing the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Task Force with Herb Brunkhorst, Chair of the Department of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education at California State University, San Bernardino, in a bid to develop a blueprint on how to improve teaching, learning, and equal access to STEM-related courses and […]

CCST’s June Council meeting featured a special presentation, a private screening of the award-winning feature-length documentary “First Generation,” narrated by Golden Globe nominee Blair Underwood. The film tells the story of four California high school students – an inner city athlete, a small-town waitress, a Samoan warrior dancer, and the daughter of migrant field workers, […]

Ensuring that California’s education institutions, research labs, and industries work collaboratively is important to translate the state’s research into products that generate jobs for Californians. A new program at in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz has offered its students just such an opportunity to work with companies such as Oracle, Texas […]

CCST has released a new overview on the status of digitally enhanced education in California in a two-volume report that covers the specifics of California’s digital education landscape and policies. Digitally enhanced education is a broad term related to the use of technology in education, including everything from instructional materials (computers or other electronic devices […]