Valérie La Traverse has been science and technology counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Washington since 2005. Her role is to represent Canadian government S&T departments and agencies, monitor S&T policy developments in the US, advise Canadian policymakers, and develop partnerships between Canada and the US.

Prior to arriving in Washington, she opened a Canadian Consulate in Phoenix, Arizona. The core of her work focused on developing a business and government contact base, forging business leads and strategic alliances, and promoting R&D collaboration primarily in information technologies, biotechnology, and aerospace and defense. Prior to Arizona, La Traverse worked at Industry Canada and managed the information highway programs ("Connecting Canadians," electronic commerce) for the Ontario region, working mostly with small and medium-sized companies based in Ontario. She also served as executive director of the New England-Canada Business Council, a Boston-based international trade and membership organization, from 1995 to1998.

La Traverse graduated with a B.A. in international relations from McGill University and a M.B.A. in international business from Concordia University in Montreal (1992). Upon graduation, she was recruited into the Government of Canada's Management Trainee Program and assigned to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. She worked in Ottawa for several years, specializing in Middle East trade and working on issues such as the creation of the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation, the reopening of the Canadian Embassy in Lebanon, and the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement.

• Canada and the United States: the Science and Technology Counsellor Perspective (April 10, 2009)

Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger is Associate Professor of German at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where she has been teaching since 1992. She offers a wide range of courses, including courses in Business German, Women’s Studies, German Language, Literature and Culture Studies.

Prior to assuming her current position, she gained academic teaching experience at Rice University. In addition, she worked for the American Institute of Music Students in Austria and the Goethe Institute in Houston, Texas. Margarete is the author of a number of books and articles on German literature. Her latest book entitled Visions and Visionaries in Contemporary Austrian Literature and Film was published in 2004. She is also a specialist on Austrian author and 2004 Nobel Prize winner for literature, Elfriede Jelinek.

Margarete holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a Master´s degree in German Literature from Rice University in Houston, Texas.

• Elfriede Jelinek: Contemporary Literature's 'Cassandra' (December 7, 2004)

Julia Lane is the program director of the Science of Science & Innovation Policy program at the National Science Foundation.

Her previous jobs included senior vice president and director, Economics Department at NORC/University of Chicago; director of the Employment Dynamics Program at the Urban Institute; senior research fellow at the US Census Bureau; and assistant, associate, and full professor at American University. Lane has published over 60 articles in leading economics journals and authored or edited five books. She is one of the founders of the LEHD program at the Census Bureau, the first large-scale linked employer-employee dataset in the United States. She is also the PI of the NORC data enclave, a remote access collaborative environment for researcher access to sensitive business micro-data.

Lane earned her undergraduate degree in economics and Japanese from Massey University in New Zealand; her M.A. in statistics and Ph.D. in economics are from the University of Missouri in Columbia.

• The Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program at the US National Science Foundation (July 17, 2009)

Christina Leb is a researcher at the Law Faculty at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and works as an independent consultant in the field of transboundary water resources management and international water law with international governmental and non-governmental organizations such as the World Bank and World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Her research focuses on governance of transboundary watercourses and aquifers, and state cooperation in international law. Previously, she has worked at the World Bank as a member of a multi-sectoral team that supports cooperation and water resources development among the ten riparian countries of the River Nile.

Christina Leb earned an M.A. in conflict management and development economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in 2001, and holds a law degree from the Karl-Franzens University Graz, Austria. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in international water law at the University of Geneva.

• International Water Law and Climate Change: Avoiding Disputes Over Water (July 1, 2008)

Since 2004, Muriel Lederman has been associate professor emerita at Virginia Tech. A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1977, Lederman has served as a teacher and adviser to numerous undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students during her career. She focused her research on parvoviruses and on the social and gender studies of science and teaching. Lederman served as the coordinator of the Biological Sciences Initiative and as a faculty affiliate in the Women's Studies Program.

Ms. Lederman, among others, received the Finalist for Diggs Teaching Scholar Award (2001) and the Advancing Women Award, Women's Center (2003) from Virginia Tech. She is the author of numerous publications in the field of social and gender studies of science and pedagogy, as well as in virology. On May 9, 2006. Prof. Lederman held a presentation on Teaching Science with the Social Studies of Science for Equity at the Office of Science and Technology's EU Presidency Meeting on "Innovative Approaches To Science Education."

Muriel Lederman holds a Ph.D. in biological sciences and an M.A. in zoology from Columbia University.

• Science as a Social Acitvity (June 29, 2006)

Since the autumn of 2007, Oliver Lehmann has been in charge of Communications and Media Relations at IST Austria.

During his career, he has written for the Berlin-based daily newspaper taz, the Vienna city newspaper Falter, the art and travel magazine Merian and the weekly Stern – both in Hamburg, Germany, the News in Vienna, and the BBC World Service. Prior to going to IST Austria, Lehmann was editor-in-chief of Universum magazine in Vienna, Austria’s leading popular science publication.

As a trained science journalist, Lehmann is also a lecturer in science communication at the Faculty for Interdisciplinary Research and Advanced Training at the University of Klagenfurt and moderator for roundtables and conferences related to the public understanding of science.

• New Tales from the Vienna Woods – Institute of Science and Technology Austria Opens Campus (July 17, 2009)

Dr. Lensch is an Instructor in the Pediatrics Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children's Hospital Boston and the Department of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School.

His post-doctoral work began with George Q. Daley, M.D., Ph.D. at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT, and is now within the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children's Hospital Boston and the Department of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lensch's current research revolves around the use of human embryonic stem cells as platforms for understanding genetics, development, and diseases of the blood-forming system.

Matthew received his Ph.D. in molecular and medical genetics from Oregon Health Sciences University for research with Grover Bagby, M.D. This work refined the understanding of the role of unique selective pressures in the leukemia and cancer predisposition syndrome Fanconi anemia.

• Clear Science, Uncertain Future? (April 14, 2005)

Josef Lentsch is currently completing a two-year Master of Public Administration program at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he focuses on innovation in secondary and higher education.

Prior to Harvard, Lentsch cofounded Austria´s largest academic career network, UNIPORT (www.uniport.at), which he led as managing partner from 2000 to 2007.

Lentsch was born in Eisenstadt, Austria, and holds a master´s degree in psychology from the University of Vienna.

• The Invisible Gold: What Nonprofit Organizations Can Learn From Facebook and Co. (July 17, 2009)

Will Lintner is the project manager for the federal sector for the Laboratories for the 21st Century Program and a staff member of the Federal Energy Management Program within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy within the Department of Energy (DOE).

He has more than 20 years experience in the energy and utilities management fields. In addition to managing Labs21 for DOE, he also participates in DOE's Departmental Energy Management Team. He was named one of DOE's Energy Champions for the Year 2000 for his significant contributions to reducing the annual operating costs of DOE's own facilities by $100 million through the installation of energy conservation measures. Prior to working at DOE, Lintner was a senior engineer for steam systems for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. As such, he was responsible for providing technical assistance to the Navy's shore installations to improve the performance of Navy heating plants and distribution systems. His responsibilities included such initiatives as the "Clean Steam" program to deliver purified steam to the Navy's ships while in port. He is a registered mechanical engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is currently chairman of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Northern Virginia Section.

• Moving Laboratories into the 21st Century (September 20, 2005)

Marie Céline Loibl coordinates the initiative, ResearchEducationCooperation, at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.

She is an expert on the evaluation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and qualification processes, and gives seminars on transdisciplinary working methods.

Loibl holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Göttingen.

• Junior Colleagues Research and Education Joining Forces: Introducing the Austrian Research Program "proVISION: Precaution for Nature and Society" (December 2006)

Dr. Johannes Loschnigg is currently a Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Energy and Environment Division, focusing on climate policy, energy and space issues. Loschnigg has previously been a Visiting Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as a consultant for the National Academy of Sciences Space Studies Board.

He was formerly the Staff Director for the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics on the House of Representatives Committee on Science until early 2007, where he previously served as a Professional Staff Member. In the 109th Congress he authored numerous sections of the 2005 NASA Authorization Act (P.L. 109-155). Loschnigg first came to Capitol Hill as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) congressional science and technology policy fellow in 2002, working in the office of Senator Lieberman. From 1998-2002, he was affiliated with the University of Hawaii, where he initially worked as post-doctoral fellow and later became a visiting researcher, concentrating on coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling of the Indian and Pacific oceans, as well as the impacts of climate variability on disease and human health. In addition, he has held positions as graduate research and scientific assistant at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the NASA Ames Research Center, the Department of Physics at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Loschnigg holds a B.A. in Physics and International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and both a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

• NASA's Budget Outlook: Having Too Much to Do with Too Little? (June 29, 2006)
• A Capitol Hill Perspective on the Federal R&D Budget for 2005 (April 20, 2004)

Thomas Lörting is currently heading a research group dealing with supercooled water, amorphous water and ice.

Previously, he did research on nanotechnology and surface science with Prof. Erminald Bertel at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Innsbruck. From October 2001 – October 2003, Dr. Lörting worked with Prof. Mario J. Molina at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, investigating the interaction of atmospheric trace gases with ice crystals to better understand the processes which cause the annual springtime formation of the ozone-hole above Antarctica. Following the completion of his Ph.D. in 2000, Dr. Lörting joined the research group of Prof. Andreas Hallbrucker and Prof. Erwin Mayer in Innsbruck. Together they discovered a high-density form of amorphous ice named VHDA.

Lörting holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Innsbruck, Austria in the field of theoretical chemistry.