President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the White House’s top technology office pledged Thursday to advance equity and diversity in science, amid mounting concerns from both Republicans and Democrats about his record on race and gender issues and his past meetings with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A Cabinet appointment in peril: Eric Lander, Biden’s pick for director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said during a nomination hearing that he would “make full inclusion and equitable outcomes a high priority” for the office, including “ensuring that OSTP staff will look like America.” And he sought to assuage concerns about gatherings he and other scientists attended in 2012 with Epstein, whom he said he chose to have “no association” with.

“The sum total of my interactions was that I met him briefly at two events within the span of three weeks in the spring of 2012,” Lander said during a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, adding he wasn’t aware of the wealthy financier’s “sordid history” at the time. Epstein had been a convicted sex offender since 2008.

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