President-elect Joe Biden, right, listens as his nomineefor the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and adviser on science Eric Lander speaks during an event at The Queen theater, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. Biden also named two prominent female scientists to co-chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Biden picked Alondra Nelson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, a social scientist who studies science, technology and social inequality, as deputy science policy chief. The president-elect noted the team's diversity and repeated his promise that his administration's science policy and investments would target historically disadvantaged and underserved communities. The job as director of science and technology policy requires Senate confirmation.

President-elect Joe Biden picked a pioneering geneticist to be his science advisor and elevated the job to his Cabinet. Saying “science will always be at the forefront of my administration,” Biden said he is boosting the science advisor post to Cabinet level, a first in White House history. The job as director of science and technology policy requires Senate confirmation. Science organizations were also quick to praise Lander and the promotion of the science post. Biden chose Alondra Nelson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, a social scientist who studies science, technology and social inequality, as deputy science policy chief.

The Nobels, with new winners announced starting Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, often concentrate on unheralded, methodical, basic science. It’s that type of basic science that the Nobels usually reward, often years or decades after a discovery, because it can take that long to realize the implications. Basic research comes first. “Without basic science, you won’t have cutting-edge applied science,” said Frances Arnold, a Caltech chemical engineer who won the 2018 Nobel in chemistry. John Mather, who won the 2006 physics Nobel for cosmology, which is the study of the origin of the universe and is thus the ultimate basic science, said nearly everything we use around us is there because of basic science.