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Alondra Nelson | |
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Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy | |
Acting | |
In office February 18, 2022 – October 3, 2022 | |
President | Joe Biden |
Preceded by | Eric Lander |
Succeeded by | Arati Prabhakar |
Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy for Science and Society | |
In office January 20, 2021 – February 17, 2023 | |
President | Joe Biden |
Preceded by | Position established |
Personal details | |
Born | Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. | April 22, 1968
Education | University of California, San Diego (BA) New York University (MPhil, PhD) |
Alondra Nelson (born April 22, 1968) is an American academic, policy advisor, non-profit administrator, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. Since March 2023, she has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.[1] In October 2023, she was nominated by the Biden-Harris Administration and appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.[2][3]
From 2021 to 2023, Nelson was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where she performed the duties of the director from February to October 2022.[4][5] She was the first African American and first woman of color to lead OSTP.[6] Prior to her role in the Biden Administration, she served for four years as president and CEO of the Social Science Research Council, an independent, nonpartisan international nonprofit organization. Nelson was previously professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science,[7] as well as director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She began her academic career on the faculty of Yale University.
Nelson writes and lectures widely on the intersections of science, technology, medicine, and social inequality. She has authored or edited articles, essays, and four books including, most recently, The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome.