Alex Dehgan was appointed science and technology adviser at the US Agency for International Development in March as part of USAID administrator Rajiv Shah’s pledge to rebuild the agency’s S&T capacity. Another step in that rebuilding will be the hiring of more scientists and engineers at USAID, which will distribute about $21 billion of assistance to developing nations this fiscal year. And in October, Shah unveiled a “development innovation ventures” fund at USAID to support commercialization of new high-risk technologies that could have big payoffs for the developing world.
Dehgan, a PhD biologist and lawyer, helped set up a “virtual science library” in Iraq (see Physics Today, November 2005, page 24) that is now accessed by thousands of Iraqi scientists; he also helped put an end to illegal wildlife trafficking at US airbases in Afghanistan. A former science policy fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of...
