Dr. Comtesse proposed the mission to the Swiss government in 1997, when he was the science counselor at the Swiss Embassy in Washington.
"This is good news for a change," said Jin Xiaoming, science counselor at the China Embassy, at a crowded arrival ceremony, bubbling with the sort of innocent delight last exhibited by Washingtonians at Monica Lewinsky sightings.
Now, however, their growing labs and industries, plus modern telecommunications, allow them to offer real opportunity at home, noted Marco di Capua, Science Counselor for India at the U.S. Department of State.
The number of full-time science counselors at embassies, for instance, has slipped from 22 in the 1980s to about 10 today.
That's important in a world dominated by technological or scientific issues, he said, in part because many U.S. embassies lack science counselors.
The tribe of some 400 neuroscientists, computational biologists, physicists, physicians, ethicists, government science counselors, and private funders convened at The Rockefeller University on Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York City.
The total number of full-time science counselors at all embassies, for instance, slipped from 22 in the 1980s to about 10 today.
The panel also recommends setting up an external advisory committee, training all diplomats on technical issues, strengthening the department's ties with research-oriented agencies, and assigning 25 new full-time science counselors to key outposts abroad.
For the next forty years I served as an elementary teacher, middle school mathematics and science teacher, school counselor, elementary school principal, and as a teacher of future teachers and administrators at North Carolina State University.
They set out to recruit every educator in the building — not just English, but math, science, even guidance counselors — to teach those skills to students.
Investigators were multi-lingual, college-educated, Sierra Leoneans trained as teachers, nurses, social sciences graduate students, a guidance counselor and a linguist.
