Hertz Fellow William H. Press, a computer scientist and computational biologist at The University of Texas at Austin, has twice served as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), once each for President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden.

Press was an ideal pick. He’s been a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and its elected Treasurer since 2016. He’s also published more than 175 papers in computational biology, theoretical astrophysics, cosmology and computational algorithms. 

At UT Austin, he’s affiliated with the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, and a senior fellow emeritus at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He’s also a member of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas since 2007, a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Research Council Governing Board since 2016.

PCAST members advise the president and vice president in the many areas where understanding of science, technology and innovation is key to forming responsible and effective policy. 

Except for full-time President Biden science advisor Eric Lander, Press is the only former council member to be asked to serve both Obama and Biden. 

“They [PCAST] are the ones asking the most American of questions: What next?” President Biden said. “How can we make the impossible possible? They are asking these questions as a call to action, to inspire, to help us imagine the future and to figure out how to make it real and improve the lives of the American people and people around the world.”