The US-led coalition occupying Iraq has abolished the Ministry of Atomic Energy and set up a Ministry of Science and Technology in its place.

The new ministry features six directorates dealing with energy, the environment, information technology, agriculture, materials science and industrial development. It is to be led by British-trained civil engineer Rashad Omar Mandan, who served at the Iraqi oil ministry until he left the country in 1999.

Mandan was sworn in on 2 September, along with Iraq's first minister of higher education, Ziad Abderrazzak Mohammad Aswad, a US-trained engineer who previously headed Baghdad University's oil-engineering department. An American political scientist, John Agresto, is to oversee Iraq's university system.

Link to full Nature article

Reference: Nature 425, 111 (2003)