The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is still vacant — but the Trump administration doesn’t plan to kill it

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has sat dormant for more than seven months under President Donald Trump — but the Administration says it’ll staff up and resume its work soon.

Chartered in its modern form in 2000, PCAST long has operated as the White House’s main interface with academics, industry experts and others who can help shape the government’s approach on a wide array of complex, cutting-edge issues. Under President Trump, though, there’s no one on the council. It’s one of many science-and-tech advisory arms at the White House that’s still severely depleted in staff, a series of vacancies made all the more striking by the president’s previous push to cut federal research spending. In the meantime, PCAST’s charter, technically, is set to run out: Obama’s executive order authorizing the council expires at the end of September. Apparently, President Trump is on track to sign his own executive order re-establishing PCAST in September. The process of staffing it will then fall to the leader of the White House’s other research team, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. But that office, known as OSTP, still has no director, and the President has offered no timeline for when he’ll nominate someone for the job. Even then, filling the ranks of PCAST might prove especially difficult in the coming months.