UW’s Constance Steinkuehler shapes the White House’s videogame policy

Aaron R. Conklin:

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in March, and the woman the White House has tabbed to craft its national videogames policy is just a little stressed out. Her weekly flight from Madison to Washington, D.C., has been canceled, leaving only pricey last-minute alternatives flickering on her Macbook screen. And in less than an hour, she has to introduce her boss, Carl Wieman, associate director for science of President Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, to a crowded room of dignitaries at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
So it’s not surprising that she begins the interview with her right hand unconsciously pressed to her forehead, sinking back onto a couch in Aldo’s Café like it’s a life raft. “His research deals with lasers and atoms,” she says of Wieman. “I can start there, right?”