CCST Newsroom

The California Senate and Assembly are honoring the National Academy of Science’s sesquicentennial anniversary with a resolution recognizing the service and contributions of the Academies. “The Legislature takes great pleasure in honoring the National Academy of Sciences for its 150 years of commitment to providing unbiased, peer-reviewed advice on science, technology, and medicine to our […]

The June CCST Council meeting focused on the impact that China’s quest to become a global science, technology and innovation leader will have on California, and the global community as a whole. The dinner speaker, Tai Ming Cheung, is the director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) at UC San Diego. IGCC […]

CCST has released the seventh and final report in its California’s Energy Future (CEF) project, “California’s Energy Future: The Potential for Biofuels“. The CEF project seeks ways the State could meet the mandated reductions of the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, exploring possible energy strategies for California through in-depth […]

On April 18, a virtual roundtable in the “Reinventors” series was held on how to tackle intractable problems in higher education. The roundtable was co-chaired by CCST Senior Fellow Mohammad H. Qayoumi, President of San Jose State University, and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kim Polese, who collaborated on a 2012 white paper on reinventing public education. […]

CCST Council Member Katherine Yelick has been honored by the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Council on Women, which has named her the 2013-2014 Athena Lecturer. The Athena Lecturer award celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. Yelick, a Professor of Electrical Engineering Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley and also the […]

Jon Kaye, who was recently recognized with a profile by The Oceanography Society, is not your typical oceanographer. He has left the traditional academic path for the world of philanthropy and public policy, helping the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation work to facilitate better science and technology related policy in California. “It boils down to a belief […]

Researchers in the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) are using a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build a high-performance digital network capable of carrying more than twenty times the bandwidth of the current research network. The project, Prism@UCSD, is the latest in a […]

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 […]