The new class, which includes five scientists of colour, will add 10 women, three black scientists, and three Latino scientists to the board’s 24-member roster.
Biden announced the pending appointment of seven women and one man to the National Science Board eight vacancies (NSB) on January 13.
The composition of the presidentially appointed body that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF) was skewed toward white men under former President Donald Trump. However, President Joe Biden took a significant step last week toward restoring its previous diversity.
The new class, which includes five scientists of colour, will add 10 women, three black scientists, and three Latino scientists to the board’s 24-member roster. There were only three women on the current 16-person roster, no black scientists, and one Latino scientist.
“The president’s appointments will make this the most diverse National Science Board in history,” says Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the president’s science and technology assistant.
The NSB is unique among federal agencies in that it both sets policy for the $10 billion NSF and weighs in on critical issues affecting the entire research enterprise.
Its biennial Science and Engineering Indicators report provides massive amounts of data to politicians who set the direction of US science policy as well as informing the general public.
Members of the board serve six-year terms, with one-third being replaced every two years. During Trump’s presidency, he appointed 12 men and four women to fill the board’s 16 vacancies. Of that group, none was black, and one was Latino.
In order to address the imbalance, Biden drew from the pool of previous board members to fill a portion of the new class. Deborah Ball, a math educator, and Vicki Chandler, a plant biologist, were appointed by then-President Barack Obama in 2012 and 2014, respectively, but were not reappointed when their terms expired in 2018 and 2020. (Board members can serve two terms before rotating off, which many do.)
Biden’s second chance to reshape the board came with the new class, which will serve until May 2028. He reappointed two board members to new terms last year, one man and one woman.
The number of vacancies was higher than usual because two NSB members left in 2021 to join his administration: chemist Geraldine Richmond to become undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy and planetary scientist Maria Zuber to be co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.