CCST meets three times a year. These meetings inform state leaders about CCST's ongoing projects and initiatives and focus attention on other S&T related issues. Visitors and guests include heads of state agencies, Legislators, and leading experts from a variety of scientific and technological disciplines. Each meeting features speakers who are experts in their field.

OCTOBER 2003
Major theme: Counter-terrorism

Neil Smelser

Counter-terrorism poses unprecedented and difficult challenges at the state and national level alike, according to Neil Smelser, and requires effective communication and coordination between the scientific community and policymakers. During 2001-2002, Smelser, a National Academy of Sciences member, assumed responsibility for organizing the contribution of the National Research Council (NRC) to the understanding of contemporary terrorism from the perspective of the behavioral and social sciences. He chaired two panels on the topic and edited the two corresponding reports from the NRC

Smelser's talk, The Nature of the Terrorist Threat and Dilemmas Involved in Responding to It, explored the implications of the fact that terrorism poses a unique type of threat - rare events perpetrated in the context of extreme uncertainty and maximization of surprise. Several dilemmas of preparing, warning, responding, and recovering were explored. Reference was made to the role of science and technology, always, however, in the context of human and organizational factors. Smelser is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the former director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

FEBRUARY 2004
Major theme: California's Position as High-Tech Leader

R. Sean Randolph

California has long been the nation's high-tech leader, with a commanding percentage of leading research institutions and high-tech industry clusters. It is still unmatched in most respects worldwide, though there are signs that this dominance may be in jeopardy, particularly with regards to its science and technology workforce, according to R. Sean Randolph, president of the Bay Area Economic Forum. Randolph described how the multi-faceted economy and increasing number of large companies in the Bay Area have helped ensure that the region remains a substantial economic driver for the state even as high-tech industry throughout the nation suffered a downturn in 2002-2003. However, even in the Bay Area there are issues that need to be addressed.

"When the cost of living is factored in, the Bay Area's lead in productivity is significantly diminished," acknowledged Randolph. "This is something that needs to be looked at in the long term."

Randolph's talk stressed that the education level of the workforce is a key to the strength of this region and the state in general, and that the infrastructure that produces and attracts qualified professionals to the Bay Area and to California needs to be shored up and expanded over the long term.

MAY 2004
Major theme: Space Exploration

Charles Elachi

Charles Elachi, director of NASA's and Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), provided a vision for the future of space exploration in the first decade of the twenty-first century in his talk, Challenges of Robotic Space Exploration in the Next Decade.

After briefly summarizing the first 46 years of exploration using unmanned robotic spacecraft, and describing currently operating missions in orbit and on the surface of Mars (Mars Global Surveyor, Odyssey, Spirit, Opportunity), retrieving comet and solar material (Stardust and Genesis), and space telescopes studying the universe in the infrared (Spitzer) and ultraviolet (Galaxy Evolution Explorer or GALEX), Elachi emphasized the themes that will guide space exploration for future missions to Mars, to other solar system bodies, to search for planets around nearby stars, to study the origins of galaxies and of the universe, and to study and protect our own planet. He also emphasized the longstanding relationship JPL enjoys with the California research community in general.

"In addition to our association with Caltech, JPL has benefited enormously from the high density of aerospace companies and universities in the area... California is a magnet for top research talent and visionaries," said Elachi. JPL has dominated headlines for much of 2004, first with its resoundingly successful Mars missions in March and then with the arrival of the Cassini-Huygens probe in orbit around Saturn in July.