Terence Tao named to President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Terence Tao, UCLA professor of mathematics, has been selected by President Joe Biden as one 30 of America’s most-distinguished leaders in science and technology who will serve on his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

A direct descendant of the scientific advisory committee established by President Eisenhower in 1957 in the weeks after the launch of Sputnik, the council is the sole body of external advisers charged with making science, technology and innovation policy recommendations to the president and the White House to address the country’s most pressing challenges.

Tao, who holds the James and Carol Collins Chair in the UCLA College, became the first mathematics professor in UCLA history to be awarded the Fields Medal in 2006, often described as the “Nobel Prize in mathematics.” He has earned many other honors, including the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, Royal Society’s 2014 Royal Medal for physical sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Crafoord Prize and the first Riemann Prize in Mathematics, established by Italy’s Riemann International School of Mathematics. National Geographic magazine featured him in its “What makes a genius?” May 2017 issue.

The new council includes two Nobel laureates, 20 elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, five MacArthur Foundation Fellows and two former cabinet secretaries.

The council advises the president “on matters involving policy affecting science, technology, and innovation, as well as on matters involving scientific and technological information that is needed to inform public policy relating to the economy, worker empowerment, education, energy, the environment, public health, national and homeland security, racial equity, and other topics,” the White House said.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.