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What’s Ahead
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| Lia Merminga pictured next to a test stand for Fermilab’s Proton Improvement Plan II project. (Image credit – Reidar Hahn / Fermilab) |
Accelerator Physicist Lia Merminga to Lead Fermilab
Accelerator physicist Lia Merminga will take over as director of Fermilab on April 18, the lab announced last week. Merminga is currently the director of the Proton Improvement Plan II project, a roughly $1 billion effort to upgrade Fermilab’s accelerator complex in preparation for the Department of Energy’s flagship Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment project. Merminga has a long history with the DOE national labs, having first come to Fermilab as a graduate student in 1987 to conduct research on the Tevatron accelerator. She later held leadership roles at SLAC and Jefferson Lab, as well as Canada’s particle accelerator lab. Merminga will be the first woman to lead Fermilab and the seventh director since its founding in 1967, replacing Nigel Lockyer, who announced in September he was stepping down after eight years in the role.
New Directors Incoming for NIST, USPTO, and Defense Programs
The Senate confirmed several of President Biden’s nominees for science and technology leadership roles by voice votes last week, including Laurie Locascio as director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kathi Vidal as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Marvin Adams as head of defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, Bill LaPlante as the Defense Department’s weapons acquisitions lead. Locascio, a bioengineer, spent most of her career at NIST before departing in 2017 to serve as vice president for research at the University of Maryland’s College Park and Baltimore campuses. Vidal is a leading patent litigator in Silicon Valley and has a background in electrical engineering. Adams is a nuclear engineering professor at Texas A&M University and a longtime advisor to NNSA, while LaPlante is president of Draper, a nonprofit engineering lab, and served as the Air Force’s lead acquisition official in the Obama administration.
Table Set for USICA/COMPETES Act Conference
Just prior to adjourning for a two-week recess, on April 7 congressional leaders named who will serve on the conference committee tasked with negotiating a compromise between the House’s America COMPETES Act of 2022 and the Senate’s U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA). The House appointed 50 Democrats and 31 Republicans, and the Senate appointed 13 Democrats and 13 Republicans. The conferees include the chairs and ranking members of committees with jurisdiction over science, energy, foreign affairs, commerce, and tax policy, among other areas. Among the other appointees are Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who were lead sponsors of the Endless Frontier Act that was later merged into USICA. In a statement on his selection, Young emphasized that the Senate bill “focuses on directly confronting China’’ and that he would work to “ensure the final legislation reflects the Senate bill.” The extent to which the legislation is framed around competition with China will be one of many tension points in the negotiations. The conference committee includes several members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, including its chair Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), who upon being selected issued a statement indicating she would “work to ensure that the final legislation does not include broad xenophobic, anti-China rhetoric that could endanger the lives of Asian American communities here at home.”
FY23 Budget Rollout Continues
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In Case You Missed It
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| Projections of median global warming under various scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. (Image credit – IPCC Sixth Assessment Report) |
IPCC Report Charts Steep Path to Limited Warming
On April 4, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a nearly 3,000 page analysis of the prospects for mitigating future global warming and an associated summary for policymakers, representing the third and final working group report from its sixth assessment cycle. The working group concludes that the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is close to being out of reach and that it likely cannot be met without global greenhouse gas emissions peaking by no later than 2025 and nearly halving by 2030. Limiting warming to 2 degrees would likewise require emissions to peak before 2025 and be reduced by a quarter by 2030. Absent a strengthening of decarbonization policies in place as of 2020, the working group states that models project, with medium confidence, median warming of 3.2 degrees by 2100. The report introduces some new features not found in earlier assessments, including analysis of social and political factors underlying economic drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as an examination of how innovation policies can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The other IPCC working group reports already released this assessment cycle address the impacts and physical underpinnings of climate change, and this fall the IPCC plans to publish a capstone synthesis report.
Richmond Stresses DOE Focus on Bridging Basic and Applied Research
Speaking to the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee last week, DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geri Richmond highlighted the Biden administration’s focus on intertwining basic and applied research through the Energy Earthshots initiative. She remarked, “These Energy Earthshots are focused on RD&D that is necessary and urgent — necessary and urgent — for the next decade where we need additional breakthroughs to be on track for the technologies that we need to be scaled by 2050 to reach our net-zero carbon goals.” Elaborating in conversation with the committee, she said, “I’ve been very proud of how the [DOE] Office of Science has been embracing the idea of their incredible discoveries being so instrumental that they need to be able to pass them over [to applied R&D]. Now, is there a political danger to that? Mmm, maybe. But on the other hand ... I would guess, if we asked everybody in this meeting where you would put the end of basic and the beginning of applied, not everyone would agree on that either. So in many respects we understand [that fundamental science] can be use-inspired and still be fundamental science and still have value.” Richmond made similar observations when she appeared last month before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Basic Energy Sciences program director Linda Horton told BESAC the fiscal year 2023 budget request includes more than $100 million for the program’s contribution to the Energy Earthshots initiative, split between multi-institution Energy Earthshot Research Centers and support for smaller research groups. The latter will advance use-inspired fundamental science relevant to multiple Earthshots, in areas such as next generation membranes and predictive modeling of material chemistries.
Chemist Franklin Tao Convicted, Though Judge Questions Charges
University of Kansas chemistry professor Franklin Tao was convicted on April 7 for failing to disclose on conflict of interest forms his employment with Fuzhou University in China. The verdict followed a three-week trial and a day and a half of deliberations by a jury, who found him guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements, half the charges brought against him by the Department of Justice. DOJ argued the omission effectively defrauded the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, who were funding Tao’s research under the premise he was working full-time at the University of Kansas. Prosecutors also asserted Tao deliberately concealed the arrangement, pointing in part to an email in which he said he was at a conference in Europe when he was actually at Fuzhou University.
Tao’s lawyers argued that Tao fulfilled his obligations to DOE and NSF, that his work with Fuzhou University amounted to mere “moonlighting,” and that DOJ had turned an administrative infraction into a serious crime only because the case had a nexus to China. In a statement on the verdict, his lawyers noted that after the trial the judge ordered further briefing on the nature of the charges, saying she “saw ‘significant issues’ with the government’s evidence on the issues of materiality [and] intent to defraud.” Tao was among the first academics charged through DOJ’s China Initiative and is the second to be convicted, the first being Harvard University chemist Charles Lieber, who is seeking for his verdict to be voided partly in view of DOJ’s decision last month to disband the China Initiative. DOJ raised the bar for pursuing research integrity cases and broadened the initiative’s scope to encompass additional countries, after concluding that the initiative created a chilling atmosphere that is damaging the U.S. research system and that the China-specific scope created a “perception” the department has a lower standard for bringing cases connected to China.
DOD Pitches Budget Reforms to Speed Technology Adoption
Top R&D officials from the Department of Defense testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week on ways to speed DOD’s development and adoption of emerging technologies. Defense Innovation Unit Director Michael Brown stressed that of the 14 critical technology areas identified by DOD, 11 are driven by the commercial sector, a dynamic he argued requires the department to adopt a “fast follower” approach. Among his specific proposals, Brown stated in written testimony, “DOD needs to establish dedicated organizations for each of the commercial technologies (e.g., drones and counter-drones, digital wearables, and satellite imagery), which are not and do not need to be service-specific. … This is different from a program of record, which reflects a rigid requirement and often a single vendor. This is a ‘capability of record’ where the need for the capability is ongoing such as for small drones. … If Congress approves a budget supporting ‘capabilities of record’ then we eliminate the DOD-unique valley of death, which unfolds when we ask successful vendors to wait for the [Program Objective Memorandum] cycle to catch up — a process that can take up to two years and be death for a small company focused on cash flow.” Separately, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu highlighted the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER), a new mechanism to support technology acquisition projects that meet pressing operational needs. Brown and Shyu framed the moves as remedies to shortcomings of DOD’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process, for which a congressionally chartered commission has just been empaneled to suggest reforms.
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Events This Week
All times are Eastern Daylight Time, unless otherwise noted. Listings do not imply endorsement.
Monday, April 11
Tuesday, April 12
Wednesday, April 13
Thursday, April 14
Friday, April 15
Monday, April 18
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Opportunities NIST Seeking Members for Advisory Committees
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is seeking nominations for members to serve on seven of its advisory committees, including the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology, which oversees the entire agency. The other committees focus on topics such as earthquake hazards reduction, building safety, manufacturing, and information security. Committee members are generally appointed to three year terms, which can be renewed. Nominations will be considered on a rolling basis.
Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable Hiring
The National Academies is seeking a program director and a program officer for its Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, which is a forum for dialogue for leaders from each sector. Applicants for the program director position should have an advanced degree in a related field, ten years of relevant professional experience, and experience raising funds from nonprofits and federal agencies. Applicants for the program officer position should have a master’s degree and three years of professional experience.
UCLA Seeking Director for Space Institute
The University of California, Los Angeles is hiring an executive director for the Space Institute, an interdisciplinary research organization. The executive director will work with the faculty director to manage the institute’s strategic planning and development activities and facilitate its science and technology programs. Applicants must have a doctorate in space physics, planetary science, or a related field and experience managing large research projects and development initiatives. The application review window runs from April 6 to Aug. 31.
Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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