Nina Fedoroff is preparing to take up the reins of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February next year. Having finished a three-year stint as science adviser to US secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton this July, Federoff is getting back to her roots in plant genetics by heading up a new centre for desert agriculture in Saudi Arabia. Nature caught up with her at the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Montreal last week.
What did you achieve as the State Department's science adviser?
The biggest impact I made was in bringing more scientists to our embassies — through my own travels, the State Department Jefferson fellowships and the AAAS science fellowships, as well as the new Science Envoys [six senior scientists sent by the State Department around the world]. People were enormously appreciative. Especially in countries where there are scientists in top government positions — they appreciate dealing with a government representative who's a scientist. We sought funding for the State Department to place more scientists in embassies. Will they get funding? I think so. But these things don't happen overnight.
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