CCST Newsroom

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 […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) released a report today advising the State of California to use security screening systems, similar to those in airports, in state prisons before investing millions in untested technology intended to block calls by inmates from contraband cell phones. (Click here to get the report.) […]

When major federal laboratories such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories were established, they were designed to be the most advanced science and technology research centers in the world. Currently, while these centers remain among the foremost research institutions in existence, a great deal of cutting-edge research is also flourishing outside the […]

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) and the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) have unveiled a public database of climate change research projects and programs taking place in California, focusing on projects or programs receiving federal funding. The California Climate Change Research Database includes research in a wide range of fields, including air […]

CCST has released a new publication as part of the California’s Energy Future (CEF) project, a study designed to help inform the decisions California state and local governments must make in order to achieve California’s ambitious goals of significantly reducing total greenhouse gas emissions over the next four decades. California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of […]

Harnessing the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education has become a goal for many in the education system at the local, state, and national level. However, finding the best ways for the education system to take advantage of rapid and significant advances in information technology […]

The increasing ability to track, store, and analyze biometric data has offered many possibilities for those interested in monitoring their own health. At the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), numerous projects are underway exploring the potentials that inexpensive, ubiquitous biosensors offer. For Calit2 UCSD Division Director Ramesh Rao, the exploration has been […]

CCST Senior Fellow F. Sherwood Rowland, who passed away on March 10 at age 84, was known for many significant accomplishments. A founding professor of the Chemistry Department at UC Irvine, he was a widely acclaimed scientist who won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that chlorofluorocarbons damage and could destroy the Earth’s ozone layer. But […]

California’s perennial shortage of qualified science teachers is nothing new. Addressing the shortage has long been a priority for the state, with both the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) spending considerable resources in recent years to improve the quality and quantity of credentialed science teachers. Despite these efforts, however, demand continues […]

The Federal Laboratory Consortium – Far West Region has awarded the 2011 Outstanding Partnership Award to a multi-institutional collaboration including NASA Ames Research Center, California State University-Fresno, California State University-Monterey Bay, and the University of California Davis, as well as the California Department of Water Resources. The project, “Water Management in California: A NASA-CDWR Partnership,” […]

Physicist and supercomputer expert Larry Smarr is known for big, forward-thinking ideas about the future needs of scientific research. The initiator of an unsolicited National Science Foundation proposal that led to the creation of five supercomputer centers and onetime director of the National Computational Science Alliance, Smarr has been directing the inter-institutional California Institute for […]

At the February Council meeting, CCST announced its changes in membership for the new year, with Atul J. Butte, M.D., Ph.D. Associate Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) and Pediatrics at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research joining the Council. “We are pleased to welcome Atul to the Council,” said CCST Council Chair Miriam John. […]

The California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) is one of very few state-level organizations in the nation designed to offer expert advice to the state government and to recommend solutions to science and technology-related policy issues. There are some issues however which need to be addressed at a national, rather than state, level. One […]

Mobile technologies are likely to have a profound impact on health care and biomedical research, according to Robert Kaplan, Director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the NIH and NIH Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. “This is an emerging trend that’s become apparent across many areas of […]

California, the nation’s leading high-tech state in many respects, is trailing the nation when it comes to support for digital education – the enhancement of education, both in and out of the classroom, with technology. According to a recent assessment by the Digital Learning Now, a project that assesses states’ support and readiness for digitally […]