All posts tagged: chief

NASA Just Fired Its Chief Scientist, Won’t Hire Another One

NASA Just Fired Its Chief Scientist, Won’t Hire Another One

NASA has eliminated key science offices — its chief scientist and her office — according to an internal email obtained by Axios. The news comes less than a week after Ars Technica reported that the Trump administration is expected to slash the space agency’s science budget by as much as 50 percent, an “extinction-level event for space science and exploration in the United States,” as Planetary Society chief of space policy Casey Dreier told the publication. Now that chief scientist Katherine Calvin has been let go, the future of space science in the country is as uncertain as ever. In the email, acting NASA administrator Janet Petro said that the cuts were in response to president Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at slashing budgets across departments. Apart from the office of the chief scientist, the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility branch of NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity was cut as well, affecting around 20 people, per Axios. NASA’s office of the chief scientist was created to ensure that the agency’s scientific endeavors …

Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Former Chief Technology Officer, Starts Her Own Company

Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Former Chief Technology Officer, Starts Her Own Company

Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI who unexpectedly left the company in September, has helped found a new artificial intelligence start-up called Thinking Machines Lab, adding to the wave of young companies that have been formed in the race to lead A.I. Thinking Machines Lab aims to “make A.I. systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable,” according to a blog post from the new company. It said it would freely share its technologies with outside researchers and companies, a practice known as “open source.” Thinking Machines Lab declined to say if it has raised money. Ms. Murati, 36, was among OpenAI’s top executives and researchers who left the company after the surprise ouster of its chief executive, Sam Altman, in November 2023 and his reinstatement five days later. Some of them had clashed with Mr. Altman over the direction of OpenAI and its philosophy over A.I., a powerful technology that has implications for jobs and society. Other former OpenAI executives, including the co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, have since …

Bauckham confirmed as permanent chief regulator

Bauckham confirmed as permanent chief regulator

The former academy trust CEO has served in an interim capacity for over a year The former academy trust CEO has served in an interim capacity for over a year More from this theme Recent articles Sir Ian Bauckham has been confirmed as the permanent chief regulator of exams watchdog Ofqual, the education secretary has announced. Parliament’s education select committee agreed in December that Bauckham, who has served a interim chief regulator at Ofqual since last January and was the government’s preferred candidate to lead it permanently, should be given the top job. On Friday, the education secretary announced Bauckham had been formally appointed to the five-year role, after the privy council has confirmed his appointment. This followed a recruitment process “conducted in line with the requirements set by the commissioner for public appointments”, said the DfE. The education select committee said in December it hoped Bauckham would serve the full five years in the top role and help “restore much-needed stability” to Ofqual, following a churn of chief regulators in recent years. Bauckham said …

Spain’s Supreme Court clears new soccer chief of malfeasance

Spain’s Supreme Court clears new soccer chief of malfeasance

MADRID : Spain’s Supreme Court has upheld an appeal by the new president of the country’s scandal-ridden soccer federation (RFEF), Rafael Louzan, against his conviction on charges of malfeasance and a seven-year ban. The decision saves the RFEF from further embarrassment and the need for a new election. Louzan was elected in December despite a previous lower court verdict against him after more than a year of turmoil at the football governing body following the downfall of former chief Luis Rubiales and his right-hand man Pedro Rocha. The Supreme Court, which had taken up Louzan’s appeal before his election, said on Thursday it had annulled the lower court ruling that barred Louzan from holding public office for seven years in a case involving a contract to improve a football pitch in the northwestern city of Morana in 2011. The contractor undertook improvements not initially foreseen and after the works were completed, the provincial authority of Pontevedra, led by Louzan, called a new tender with the intention of awarding it to the company that had already …

DOGE Staff Had Questions About the ‘Resign’ Email. Their New HR Chief Dodged Them

DOGE Staff Had Questions About the ‘Resign’ Email. Their New HR Chief Dodged Them

On Friday, staff at what was formerly the United States Digital Service and is now part of Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative met with Stephanie Holmes, who identified herself as a part of the DOGE team and as the staff’s new HR representative. Throughout the meeting, which started at noon ET, dozens of USDS employees lobbed questions at Holmes related to last week’s “Fork in the Road” email offering federal workers “deferred resignations,” according to documents detailing the meeting obtained by WIRED and corroborated by sources in attendance. The questions covered issues ranging from the future of staff projects to whether the return-to-office mandates would apply to fully remote workers, as well as the exact nature of the offer the federal government was making employees. Holmes—who did not immediately respond to a request for comment—could fully answer only a few of the questions. She said, when asked, that the offer was “lawful,” and later said, “We believe the offer is lawful,” and could provide little additional guidance beyond that. At one point, she was asked if …

Confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s intel chief pick, set for Thursday : NPR

Confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s intel chief pick, set for Thursday : NPR

Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence, arrives for a meeting at the Hart Senate Office Building on Dec. 10. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images We’re following the confirmation hearings for the incoming Trump administration. See our full politics coverage, and follow NPR’s Trump’s Terms podcast or sign up for our Politics newsletter to stay up to date. Who: Tulsi Gabbard Nominated for: director of national intelligence You might know her from: A former U.S. representative from Hawaii, Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 before shifting right, officially joining the Republican Party and backing President Trump in October 2024. She does not have an intelligence background.  She’s a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, previously serving in the Hawaii Army National Guard and deploying for tours in Iraq and Kuwait. She has generally been critical of U.S. involvement abroad, particularly in the Middle East. While serving on the House Armed Services Committee, she called for a tougher response to global terrorism while urging a U.S. withdrawal from foreign interventions …

Canada’s trade chief warns oil and gas exports could be in play

Canada’s trade chief warns oil and gas exports could be in play

If President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his threat to impose tariffs on Canadian goods, Ottawa is prepared to retaliate with levies that could take aim at the energy sector, Canada’s minister of international trade, Mary Ng, said Thursday. “Everything is on the table,” Ng told global markets reporter Seema Mody on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” This includes dollar-to-dollar retaliation. Canada’s trade chief also refused to rule out an export tax on Canadian oil and gas bound for the United States. “I don’t actually think Americans want us to not be selling electricity, oil and gas to America, because you know, I’m here in New York, the lights on Broadway, lots of it is Canadian electricity,” said Ng. “If you’re going to put tariffs on Canada, what it actually will do is make things more expensive for Americans,” she added. Trump has threatened a 25% blanket tariff on all Canadian exports when he takes office Monday. The threat is similar to one made towards Mexico, the three parties to the USMCA trade agreement. Trump …

Anthropic’s chief scientist on 5 ways agents will be even better in 2025

Anthropic’s chief scientist on 5 ways agents will be even better in 2025

2/ Agents will understand context   “Claude needs to learn enough about your particular situation and the constraints that you operate under to be useful. Things like what particular role you’re in, what styles of writing or what needs you and your organization have. ANTHROPIC “I think that we’ll see improvements there where Claude will be able to search through things like your documents, your Slack, etc., and really learn what’s useful for you. That’s underemphasized a bit with agents. It’s necessary for systems to be not only useful but also safe, doing what you expected. “Another thing is that a lot of tasks won’t require Claude to do much reasoning. You don’t need to sit and think for hours before opening Google Docs or something. And so I think that a lot of what we’ll see is not just more reasoning but the application of reasoning when it’s really useful and important, but also not wasting time when it’s not necessary.” 3/ Agents will make coding assistants better “We wanted to get a very …

New Evidence & Policy Editors in Chief – Evidence & Policy Blog

New Evidence & Policy Editors in Chief – Evidence & Policy Blog

We are pleased to introduce the new Editors in Chief of Evidence & Policy: Dr Mariah Kornbluh, University of Oregon, and Dr Dan Mallinson, Penn State Harrisburg. A message from the Editors in Chief: Evidence & Policy is a leading journal in disseminating how research can inform social policy and practice across global contexts and subject matters. We have had the privilege of serving as Associate Editors for the last two years. During this time, we have reviewed cutting edge articles across disciplines and geographic spaces that systematically and empirically document efforts to disseminate research beyond the confines of academic journal pages and into policy and practice with the aim of improving the lives of others. We seek to continue the traditions of Evidence & Policy in maintaining its place as a top journal. We plan to operate this journal by key guiding values and aims: (1) transdisciplinary coverage of research use and evidence with implications for policy from diverse geographic contexts and communities; (2) a diversity in research approaches, epistemologies and methodological orientations; (3) …