About a year ago, we had an idea to make science more prominent on the campaign trail this election cycle: ScienceDebate2008 was born.

It wasn’t long before a lot of folks took notice and the initiative grew rapidly. Eventually, the presidential candidates weighed in.

This week, ScienceDebate2008 co-hosted Innovation 2008 with the Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota–a conference bringing together academics, policy makers, business leaders, scientists, educators, artists, students, and the public to discuss solutions to the major challenges facing the United States revolving around science and technology policy. It was an excellent forum inspiring all sorts of ideas and unique collaborative efforts. The 2008 election may be weeks away, but for ScienceDebate this is only the beginning…

We’ll have details from the conference up soon, but in the mean time, a photo from Monday featuring much of the force that founded SD08:

[left to right: Darlene Cavalier, Shawn Lawrence Otto, Matthew Chapman, Lawrence Krauss, Chris Mooney, Erik Beeler, Sheril Kirshenbaum]