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What’s Ahead
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| Image credit – Intel Free Press, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 |
Congress Set to Establish Microelectronics and AI Initiatives
Last week, Congress unveiled the final compromise version of the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes provisions establishing major interagency initiatives in microelectronics R&D and production and in artificial intelligence. Among the components of the microelectronics effort (Secs. 9901–9908) are a national semiconductor technology center, which will support public-private R&D projects, and a Treasury fund for supporting multinational projects to develop “measurably secure” microelectronics and establish associated supply chains. It also creates a Department of Commerce program to award subsidies of up to $3 billion each, or larger in exceptional circumstances, for “facilities and equipment in the United States for semiconductor fabrication, assembly, testing, advanced packaging, or research and development.” The legislation does not make specific recommendations on how much funding Congress should provide for the overall initiative or its component elements.
The AI initiative (Secs. 5001–5501) is similar to the National Quantum Initiative that was enacted two years ago, authorizing an array of departments and agencies to establish AI research institutes, with the National Science Foundation taking a leading role. The provision recommends Congress appropriate $868 million to NSF for these activities in the current fiscal year, equal to the agency’s request, and rising to more than $1 billion by fiscal year 2025. Considered a must-pass bill, the National Defense Authorization Act makes numerous other updates to defense policy, including a variety of provisions focused on science and technology. President Trump has said he will veto the legislation over issues such as its requirement to rename military bases named after Confederate leaders and because it does not remove internet companies’ liability protections for content on their platforms. However, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has vowed to move ahead with the bill regardless and the House is scheduled to bring it to the floor as soon as Tuesday.
Lawmakers Look to Combine Budget and COVID Relief Bills
With stopgap funding of the government expiring on Friday, Congress is expected to pursue a one week extension to buy time for negotiations on final appropriations for fiscal year 2021 as well as another round of COVID-19 relief funds. House and Senate leaders have expressed interest in passing the two measures as one bill before the current Congress ends in January. On COVID-19, conversations are now centered on a roughly $908 billion bipartisan framework proposed last week, which according to a summary includes $16 billion for “vaccine development and distribution and COVID-19 testing and tracing” as well as $82 billion for “K–12 schools and colleges/universities.” President-elect Joe Biden has endorsed the proposal as a “down payment” on a broader relief bill he plans to pursue. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a cosponsor of the relief proposal, said yesterday that President Trump has “indicated that he would sign a $908 billion package.”
Biden Names Picks for Public Health Roles
On Monday, President-elect Biden named Massachusetts General Hospital infectious diseases chief Rochelle Walensky as his choice for director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and former National Economic Council Director Jeffrey Zients as his White House COVID-19 response coordinator, which are both positions that do not require Senate confirmation. He also announced his intent to nominate California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra as secretary of health and human services and physician Vivek Murthy to return as surgeon general with an expanded portfolio. Murthy is one of three co-chairs of Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board, and another co-chair, Yale University public health professor Marcella Nunez-Smith, will be tapped for a role focused on health disparities. Last week, Biden said he had also asked Anthony Fauci to serve as a chief medical adviser on COVID-19 and remain as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he has led since 1984. Fauci said in an interview that he accepted the offer “on the spot.”
DOE Fusion Panel to Vote on Long-Range Plan
The Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee is meeting this week to consider the long-range strategic plan it is preparing for the Department of Energy, the culmination of a two year effort to develop a consensus strategy for the U.S. fusion energy and plasma physics community. A draft version of the strategy the planning subcommittee released on Dec. 4 outlines investment priorities under three budget scenarios, all assuming continued participation in the ITER fusion facility currently under construction in France. Arguing the U.S. should “move aggressively toward the deployment of fusion energy,” the strategy prioritizes facilities and programs needed to develop a pilot fusion power plant by the 2040s. These include a neutron source for testing fusion reactor materials and a new U.S.-based tokamak facility, called EXCITE, to study approaches for handling extreme heat fluxes. Under the “unconstrained” budget scenario, the report also recommends the U.S. build a mid-scale stellarator facility as a “risk mitigation” for the tokamak approach to fusion as well as new facilities for fundamental plasma science, such as a solar wind research facility and a multi-petawatt laser. The committee will vote on the report on Thursday.
Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee Convening
The Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee is meeting on Wednesday to review a recently completed assessment of the Department of Energy’s chemical sciences, geosciences, and biosciences programs and another of its Energy Frontier Research Center and Energy Innovation Hub programs. The committee will also discuss ongoing work on a report due next summer assessing the international competitiveness of DOE facilities and research efforts in the basic energy sciences and whether the department should adjust its strategic approach. DOE Basic Energy Sciences program head Linda Horton will provide a general update on program activities, which would include any news the department may have concerning pandemic impacts on construction projects and user facility operations.
National Science Board Exploring Pandemic Impacts on Women
The National Science Board’s meeting this week will kick off on Wednesday with a panel discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on women in STEM, covering topics such as work–life boundary management, tenure clocks, research productivity, and how impacts have varied among types of institutions and by race and ethnicity. The agenda also includes a session on how the broader impacts of research are evaluated as part of the National Science Foundation’s merit review process, which the board oversees. Through its Vision 2030 strategic roadmap released this summer, the board indicated it would consider how the broader impacts criterion might be adjusted to “better meet societal needs.” On Thursday, NSF leaders will brief the board on efforts to improve research translation, expand partnerships, and address the “missing millions” from underrepresented groups in the STEM workforce. This will be the board’s first meeting since the appointment of the final members of its 2026 cohort.
Chinese and Japanese Sample-Collection Missions Return to Earth
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| A collection team from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency retrieves the asteroid sample from the Hayabusa2 mission after it landed in the Australian desert over the weekend. (Image credit – JAXA) |
China’s Chang’e 5 mission is heading back to Earth this week having successfully landed a craft on the Moon, collected a surface sample, and executed a rendezvous with a service module in lunar orbit. It marks the first time since the 1970s that a spacecraft has lifted off from the Moon,* and, aside from returning the sample, the mission demonstrates the burgeoning capabilities of the Chinese space program. Following Chang’e 5’s launch in November, House Science Committee Ranking Member Frank Lucas (R-OK) argued the mission adds to the case for continuing to support the U.S. space program, remarking, “The nation that leads in space will dictate the rules of the road for future technological development and exploration, and the influence of the People’s Liberation Army in the Chinese Communist Party’s space program makes China a particularly irresponsible and dangerous candidate.” Separately, this past weekend the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 successfully returned a sample it collected from the asteroid Ryugu in 2018, capping off a six year mission. Through an agreement with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA will receive a portion of the sample in exchange for a portion of the asteroid sample its OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to return in 2023.
*Correction: This item previously indicated the last liftoff from the Moon was NASA’s Apollo missions, which concluded in 1972. The successful Soviet sample return mission Luna 24 took place in 1976.
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In Case You Missed It
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| Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Frank Lucas (R-OK) at a March 2019 hearing on U.S. leadership in science and technology. They are respectively returning as the committee’s chair and ranking member in the next Congress. (Image credit – Cable Risdon / Risdonfoto, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences) |
House Picks Committee Leaders For Next Congress
House Democrats voted by a 148 to 79 margin last week to elect Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) as the next Appropriations Committee chair, following the retirement of Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), who has held the position since 2012. DeLauro, who previously chaired the appropriations subcommittee for the National Institutes of Health, beat out two other contenders for the position, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and the most senior member on the committee, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). The House Science Committee will retain its current leadership, with Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) returning as chair and Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) returning as ranking member. In a statement, Johnson said her priorities for the next Congress include addressing climate change and better preparing the U.S. workforce for “21st century jobs.” Among other moves on the Republican side of the House, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) will be the new Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member, replacing retiring Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) will move up from the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee to be ranking member of the full committee, replacing retiring Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX).
Arecibo Advocates Look to Rebuild After Telescope Collapse
On the morning of Dec. 1, the 900-ton instrument platform of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed after the cables suspending it gave way following two earlier failures. The National Science Foundation has posted two videos of the collapse, including one taken by a drone that was inspecting the cables at the moment they snapped. NSF had already decided to decommission the telescope after deeming it unsafe to repair, and since then backers of the iconic telescope have quickly worked to build support for reconstructing the facility, including through a petition to the White House that has already garnered over 40,000 signatures. Ray Lugo, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida, which manages Arecibo, told CNN he has already met with dozens of congressional members to advocate for rebuilding the facility, which he estimates would cost about $400 million. In a press briefing on the collapse, NSF indicated that any decision to seek funding for a new facility would be routed through its major research facility construction process, which weighs input from the scientific community and other stakeholders. The American Astronomical Society’s statement on the collapse anticipates that the astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey, which is due for release this spring, will provide guidance on the matter.
DOD Seeks Guidance on Research Protection Strategy
Last week, the National Academies convened the inaugural meeting of the National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable, which Congress created to foster dialogue between the science, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. Bindu Nair, director of basic research at the Department of Defense, a panel co-sponsor, said one area she would like the roundtable to consider is whether the U.S. should modify its approach to protecting sensitive areas of fundamental research, in part because of how research in certain emerging fields can translate rapidly into applications. Nair said she is interested in the roundtable’s views on whether the U.S. should revise or reaffirm NSDD-189, a directive issued by President Reagan that states fundamental research should generally be unrestricted and establishes classification as the preferred protection mechanism. She also noted DOD has increasingly used the “controlled unclassified information” designation, an intermediate sensitivity level, yet is aware of the drawbacks of the method given that some universities refuse to accept work with such restrictions.
Judge Strikes Down H-1B Visa Restrictions
On Dec. 2, a California judge struck down two Trump administration rules that would have tightened eligibility requirements for H-1B visas, including by significantly increasing the salaries that must be paid to visa holders. The suit, which was brought by a group of universities and business associations, argued the rule changes threatened to “sever the employment relationship of hundreds of thousands of existing employees in the United States [and] virtually foreclose the hiring of new individuals via the H-1B program.” The judge ruled that the administration bypassed the required notice and public comment period in its implementation of the rule in October. While the administration argued the change was an emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic, the judge disagreed, stating, “The COVID-19 pandemic is an event beyond defendants’ control, yet it was within defendants’ control to take action earlier than they did.”
Senate Passes Bill Eliminating Country Caps for Green Cards
The Senate passed an amended version of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act by voice vote on Dec. 2. The bill, which the House passed last July, would phase out country-level caps on green cards to clear lengthy backlogs faced by immigrants from countries with a large number of applicants, such as India. Among other changes it makes to the House version, the Senate version extends the caps’ phase-out periods. Without referring to specific changes, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), chair of the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee and author of the original bill, stated she opposes the amended bill and would push to negotiate a version that can pass both chambers by year’s end. Some critics of the bill have argued that eliminating the country caps without raising the overall number of visas available would significantly increase wait times for immigrants from smaller countries.
High Energy Physicists Cope With Budget Pressures
At its meeting last week, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) approved a new independent assessment of the Department of Energy’s HEP program. The assessment gives high marks to the program’s management while reiterating longstanding concerns about the program’s funding for researchers and for the development of accelerator and detector technologies. Noting recent funding increases have gone to high-priority facility projects and major experiments as well as new research efforts in quantum information science and artificial intelligence, it recommends DOE now plan to restore spending on traditional HEP research and technology programs to earlier levels. The assessment approves of the new initiatives in QIS and AI, encouraging their integration with the traditional programs, though it notes the broadened HEP portfolio has contributed to “worrisome levels” of burden on HEP program staff. Also at the meeting, Chris Mossey, U.S. project director for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, reported the flagship project is now seeking to establish a baseline cost and schedule about one year from now and that DOE is working with partners to include a second detector module in the project’s baseline scope. The facility is designed to accommodate four detector modules, but cost increases and shortfalls in partner contributions have led DOE to pare back its ambitions for the project’s initial capabilities.
Organizers Considering Putting ‘Snowmass’ Meeting on Ice
Last week’s HEPAP meeting concluded with a discussion of preparations for the next “Snowmass” summer study meeting, at which panel members raised the prospect it should be delayed by up to a year. Snowmass is the principal mechanism members of the U.S. high energy physics community use to hammer out a vision for the field’s future, and it is the most important input into HEPAP’s Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5), which shapes the agendas of the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. Young-Kee Kim, one of the Snowmass organizers, reported the plan is still to hold the meeting this summer, but that a decision would be made in February on whether to convene virtually or in Seattle as planned, depending on the status of COVID-19 vaccine distribution. However, some panel members stressed the value of meeting in person for building consensus around the community’s strategy, asserting a delay might be prudent. DOE HEP program head Jim Siegrist said the pandemic will push back schedules for new projects in any case and that it is important to maximize community input. Accordingly, he indicated he is willing to push back the start date for the next P5 process to accommodate a delay. Gordon Watts, local co-organizer for Snowmass in Seattle, noted that any decision to delay should also be made by February to avoid incurring high cancellation costs.
NSF Selects Kendra Sharp to Lead International Office
The National Science Foundation announced last week that it has selected Kendra Sharp to lead its Office of International Science and Engineering. She will take over the role from Rebecca Spyke Keiser, who was tapped in March to serve as NSF’s first chief of research security strategy and policy, a role created as part of the agency’s response to a JASON study it commissioned on the topic. Sharp is currently an engineering professor at Oregon State University, where she specializes in humanitarian engineering and sustainable water and energy systems and serves as the university’s senior advisor for global affairs. Previously, she held research and teaching positions in the Netherlands, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, and Thailand.
Widely Derided Coronavirus Adviser Scott Atlas Resigns
White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas resigned from his role last week, ending a short and inflammatory stint that began in August. A radiologist by training, Atlas has been widely criticized by epidemiologists and public health officials for his advocacy of allowing COVID-19 to spread among young people and arguing incorrectly that masks are ineffective against the virus. In a letter announcing his decision, Atlas stated he has “always relied on the latest science and evidence, without any political consideration or influence,” while also continuing to oppose lockdowns and school closures as a method for protecting public health. Earlier this month, after Atlas called for Michigan residents to “rise up” against the state’s coronavirus restrictions, the Stanford University faculty senate passed a resolution condemning Atlas for statements that “promote a view of COVID-19 that contradicts medical science.” Atlas, who has been on leave as a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution think tank, responded by stating he was “disappointed” by the move and rejecting the notion his social media statements contradicted public health advice or were intended to promote violence.
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Events This Week Monday, December 7
Tuesday, December 8
Wednesday, December 9
Thursday, December 10
Friday, December 11
Monday, December 14
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Opportunities NIST Seeking Diversity and Inclusion Director
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is accepting applications for a director of diversity and inclusion, responsible for developing and implementing an agency-wide strategy on the topic. Applications are due Dec. 22.
STPI Hiring Earth Research Policy Analyst
The Science and Technology Policy Institute is seeking a research analyst with a background in Earth, atmospheric, climate, ecosystem, or environmental science. The institute provides policy analysis support to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and federal science agencies. Applicants must have a doctorate in a science or engineering field and at least five years of subsequent research or policy experience.
Medical College Association Seeking Science Policy Specialist
The Association of American Medical Colleges is seeking a senior science policy specialist to monitor developments related to the National Institutes of Health, medical research infrastructure, and promoting diversity and combatting sexual harassment in the STEMM workforce, among other areas. Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree in science, public policy, or a related field and at least five years of related work experience.
Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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