Four New Council Members Join CCST

The California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) begins its 26th year with the addition of four new Council members, bringing new perspective and expertise from academia, the federal research lab, and the private high-tech sector.

CCST is an independent, nonpartisan organization dedicated to providing California with sound analyses and reports on science and technology issues with public policy implications, in order to help the State develop well-informed policies concerning these issues and to help sustain the state’s economic development and competitiveness. To do so, CCST leverages the expertise of its Board of Directors and Council, who consist of members representing many facets of California’s science and technology community.

“The strength of CCST lies in its ability to bring together an extraordinarily talented group of scholars and experts from California’s diverse science and technology communities,” said CCST Council Chair Corey Goodman. “We are fortunate to have benefited over the years from the passion and expertise of many such experts. The four new members who join us this year exemplify the diversity of expertise and experiences that make the Council such an effective organization.”

New Council members this year include the following:

• Dona Crawford, Associate Director for Computation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Crawford leads the Laboratory’s high performance computing efforts. This includes managing a staff who develop and deploy an integrated computing environment for petascale simulations of complex physical phenomena such as understanding global climate warming, clean energy creation, biodefense, and non-proliferation.
• Ziyad Durón, Department Chair and Jude and Eileen Laspa Professor of Engineering, Harvey Mudd College. Durón is an expert full-scale field-testing of large structures; he has headed more than 20 field tests on a variety of structures, including concrete dams, buildings, bridges, tunnels and launch vehicles.
• David W. Martin Jr., MD., Chairman and CEO of Avidbiotics Corporation. In addition to current leadership roles in Varian Medical Systems, Inc., Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and the BayBio organization, Martin brings a wide range of experiences to the Council, including being a former tenured faculty member at UCSF, head of research and development at Genentech and Dupont Merck, and CEO of multiple small biotech startups. He has previously served one term as a Council member and returns after a hiatus.
• Prasad Ram, Founder, CEO and Chairman, Gooru. While working at Google, Prasad Ram (Pram) devised a prototype to address his problem of finding age and topic appropriate educational resources on the web. What began as one of Google’s famed “20% efforts” evolved into a year-long pilot in India that included 1,000 students across 25 classrooms. He subsequently left Google to pursue Gooru as a non-profit education technology start-up.

Council members are appointed for three-year terms, and may serve up to two terms.

“CCST depends on the dedication of unpaid volunteers who serve the State of California and its Science and Technology Community,” said CCST Board Chair Charles F. Kennel. “It is somewhat astounding, and very reassuring to me, to me to see the lis of distinguished people who have been members of this Council. I welcome four new members to this distinguished company, and thank them for the service they are about to give.”