Discerning President Bush's likely biotechnology policies is still mostly a matter of guesswork. By early January, he named Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson to head the Department of Health and Human Services and New Jersey governor Christine Whitman to direct the Environmental Protection Agency, but still had not even hinted at who will be the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, which has important biotechnology-related regulatory responsibilities, or the next director of the National Institutes of Health, which invests a great deal of resources in basic and some applied research that brings benefits to the industry. Although Governor Whitman has said little publicly about biotechnology and the environment, Governor Thompson declared “the economic potential for biotechnology and high-technology companies is incredible.” Indeed, to attract more investment by the private sector, in early 2000 he announced a new masters degree in biotechnology at the University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI), as well as a $317 million investment into building biotechnology research centers there.