Cassell has been intimately involved in establishment of science policy and legislation related to biomedical research and public health. She is the chairman of the Public and Scientific Affairs Board of ASM, is a member of the Institute of Medicine, has served as an adviser on infectious diseases and indirect costs of research to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and has been an invited participant in numerous congressional hearings and briefings related to infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and biomedical research. She has served on several editorial boards of scientific journals and has written over 250 articles and book chapters. Dr. Cassell has received several national and international awards and an honorary degree for her research in infectious diseases.

STEVEN CHU [NAS] is the director of E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a professor of physics and cellular and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, he held positions at Stanford University and AT&T Bell Laboratories. Dr. Chu’s research in atomic physics, quantum electronics, polymer physics, and biophysics includes tests of fundamental theories in physics, the development of methods to laser-cool and trap atoms, atom interferometry, and the manipulation and study of polymers and biologic systems at the single-molecule level. While at Stanford, he helped to start Bio-X, a multidisciplinary initiative that brings together the physical and biologic sciences with engineering and medicine. Dr. Chu has received numerous awards and is a cowinner of the Nobel Prize in physics (1997). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Academica Sinica and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korean Academy of Science and Engineering. Dr. Chu also serves on the boards of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Rochester, NVIDIA, and the (planned) Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. He has served on numerous advisory committees, including the Executive Committee of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Physics and Astronomy, the National Institutes of Health Advisory Committee to the Director, and the National Nuclear Security Administration Advisory Committee to the Director. Dr. Chu received his AB degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of Rochester, a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a number of honorary degrees.

ROBERT M. GATES has been the president of Texas A&M University, a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant university, since August 2002. Dr. Gates served as interim dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999 to 2001. He served as director of central intelligence from November 1991 until January 1993. In that posi-