At PCAST’s first meeting on Nov. 18, White House OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier swore in its first seven members. From left: A.N.Sreeram, Catherine Bessant, Sharon Hrynkow, Birgitta Whaley, Shane Wall, Fisk Johnson, Dario Gil, and Droegemeier.
(Image credit – OSTP)
Meeting for the first time on Nov. 18, the newly reconstituted President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology received its marching orders along with the message it has little time to waste. Observing there is only one year left in the current presidential term, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Kelvin Droegemeier told it to keep a tight focus on “important policy achievements and policy actions to make a difference.”
Droegemeier, who chairs the council, explained that for now the current iteration of PCAST will not follow its predecessors in producing detailed reports . Instead, he said it should make “actionable” recommendations to advance existing efforts in three “priority workstreams”: advancing “Industries of the Future,” bolstering the U.S. STEM workforce, and better engaging federal laboratories in the U.S. research enterprise.
As the council discussed its agenda, it became clear that its efforts will be tightly anchored to the Industries of the Future rubric. First articulated by OSTP earlier this year, the term originally encompassed four areas: artificial intelligence, quantum information science, 5G telecommunications, and advanced manufacturing. However, Droegemeier indicated that number now stands at five, with synthetic biology added to the roster.
PCAST’s objective will be to formulate a “five year plan” for the industries. White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination Chris Liddell, who was formerly chief financial officer at General Motors and Microsoft, elaborated on the administration’s expectations. “Don’t reinvent the wheel for the five year vision. Take what is already there, and coalesce it into an overall vision and strategy, and then break that down into a one year plan,” he instructed.
Liddell said the one year plan should include a “tangible deliverable” that aims to accelerate existing administration initiatives. He also said he regards the task as bipartisan and that the council’s recommendations should lay foundations for future action, regardless of the outcome of the next presidential election.
Droegemeier suggested the council might consider recommending investment priorities for facilities such as R&D centers and fabrication centers. He also reiterated his conviction that the U.S. research enterprise could operate much more productively, even under current government spending levels. Identifying excessive administrative and legal impediments as a particular concern, he remarked,
I think at the end of the day, when you boil it all down, and with all deference to the greatness of our enterprise, we [have] a lumbering, slow, cumbersome, bureaucratic framework to get anything done. Other countries are moving very, very fast because they’re not encumbered with that.
PCAST’s conversation about Droegemeier’s idea overlapped considerably with its discussion of the federal labs workstream. On that subject, the council heard from Chris Fall, director of the Department of Energy Office of Science, which oversees 10 of the 17 DOE national labs.
Fall observed that all but one of the DOE labs are contractor-operated institutions and, as such, already have substantial authority to build cross-sector relationships. He suggested that what would be needed to do more is to have a stronger push from government leaders and to enhance DOE’s capacity to follow through. He explained,
You come to a situation where folks have a lot of great ideas about a new partnership model. And we all understand that it’s possible, but meanwhile the folks that have to implement this — the contracting folks, the procurement folks, the lawyers, and so forth — have a stack this big of the things they have to do the regular way. You know, we’ve got a backlog of grants, we have to issue contracts. So they don’t have the time and flexibility, never mind the mandate, to say, ‘Pause. Go figure out this new way of doing things.’
Deliberating next steps, council members agreed they should try to identify interconnections among the Industries of the Future and treat them as a means to achieving some broader goal. Droegemeier offered the idea that “prediction” could be a unifying framework, while some council members suggested concepts such as increasing “sustainability” and ensuring a “safe” future for humanity.
Droegemeier also told the council he wants it to collaborate with the National Science Board, which is the governing board of the National Science Foundation but also has a broader mandate to advise the president and Congress on science and engineering-related matters. Droegemeier previously served on the board for 12 years and was its vice chair from 2012 to 2016.
Addressing the council, current Board Chair Diane Souvaine and Vice Chair Ellen Ochoa focused much of their attention on domestic and international trends in the evolution of the STEM workforce. Souvaine highlighted statistics showing a steep decline in the issuance of student visas in recent years. She remarked,
In light of these trends, the NSB is taking the position that we need to aggressively compete for talent while keeping security concerns in mind, and do a much better job at cultivating our STEM domestic workforce from all areas and demographics simultaneously.
Some council members suggested PCAST should address U.S. visa practices and the broader problem of retaining foreign talent in the U.S. Adding to that point, Droegemeier turned the conversation back to research security, reiterating his view that researchers must accept the values of the U.S. research system, including compliance with federal agencies’ disclosure requirements .
“If they are unable to do that, or if they basically [flout] that responsibility, then they’re out, because it’s just as bad as plagiarizing, fabricating, falsifying,” he said.
To further elevate issues relating to younger people in PCAST’s deliberations, Droegemeier said the council will soon form a subcommittee comprising 20 individuals at the student, postdoctoral, and early-career levels. He indicated an initial round of members has already been selected through private consultation and that a second round would be selected through a national call.
Meanwhile, the main council is still short of its full complement of members. In addition to the first seven announced in October, the White House has since named two more, though their appointments were not finalized prior to the meeting. Both are engineering professors: Shannon Blunt is an expert in radar systems and radio wave spectrum management at the University of Kansas, and Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska is an expert in global positioning and navigation systems at Ohio State University. With their selection, seven slots on the council now remain unfilled.
At the end of the PCAST meeting, members tentatively agreed to divide their work among three subcommittees and to begin making progress along the three workstreams Droegemeier identified in time for a second in-person meeting in February.
