CCST focused on water science and policy at the October 2008 council meeting, where Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi spoke about California's water crisis. The meeting was held in collaboration with the National Academies and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. Water science and policies were examined in more detail.

"Most of the recent attention on climate change has focused on mitigation and energy issues, and much less on what we must do to adapt," said CCST Council Chair Charles Kennel. "For California and many other parts of the world, adaptation means, first and foremost, water."

Climate changes are already impacting California's overstretched water supply system, as water content in the Sierra Mountain snowpack, a key source of water for the state, averaged only 67 percent of normal in 2008 after the state experienced its driest twomonth period on record.

"Given the extreme uncertainty with respect to how climate will treat California, the most important thing is to build resiliency into our systems," said Soroosh Sorooshian, UC Irvine distinguished professor and director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing. "Much of the water system is decades old. The bottom line is that the flow of population to our state has not stopped. Traditional approaches to build resiliency are no longer viable. We really have to become more creative."

Personalized medicine and healthcare information technology (HIT) were the focus at the February 2009 meeting, which explored issues ranging from the confidentiality of medical records to the financial and logistical barriers necessary to overcome in order to implement a more widespread HIT network.

Kathleen Behrens, keynote speaker at the February CCST meeting, commented that personalized health "has the potential both to positively impact the increasing costs of healthcare and to decrease the rate of new medical product development." Behrens served as a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) from 2001-2009, working on multiple national policy matters. Behrens chaired PCAST's Subcommittee on Personalized Medicine and led a two-year study that culminated in the September 2008 report, Priorities for Personalized Medicine. This study identified several obstacles to effective implementation of personalized medicine, including regulatory systems that are not designed to accommodate complex genomics-based diagnostics.

Despite the obstacles, increased use of personalized medicine and HIT holds significant potential benefits both in cost savings and quality of care. Kathryn Lowell, Business, Transportation and Housing Agency's (BT&H) deputy secretary for Health Systems and Life Sciences, commented that "With the advancement in personal health records, we are interested in exploring how to incorporate personalized health information in a manner that can lead to better patient identification, health outcomes and improved quality of care while reducing healthcare costs."

The State budget was the primary focus of the May meeting, as predictions for the budget deficit continued to get worse despite the promise of federal stimulus funds. At the time of the meeting it was apparent that the majority of ballot measures on the May 19th Special Election would fail, forcing California to cut more than $21 billion from its budget. This May council meeting focused on strategies and opportunities that it might make sense to explore. The meeting goals were to identify crucial short-term and long-term structural S&T policy issues that can be addressed during a recession.

A panel discussion with experts in economics lead by Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University; public policy lead by John Ellwood, professor of public policy at UC Berkeley; and political science lead by Thad Kousser, associate professor of political science at UC San Diego. The discussion helped put California's volatile budget in perspective, bringing together state policymakers - legislative and executive branches - and S&T experts to look at the new face of financial systems, and new federal initiatives planned.

In addition to the keynote discussion, economically oriented panel discussions the next day focused on healthcare information technology, environmental and energy policy during a recession, and education funding.