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What’s Ahead
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| Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) at a hearing in 2019. (Image credit – Aubrey Gemignani / NASA) |
Hearing to Probe Federal Scientist ‘Brain Drain’
The House Science Committee’s oversight subcommittee is holding a hearing on Wednesday to examine the state of the federal scientific workforce and reports of “brain drain” connected to staff departures during the Trump administration. The witness panel includes Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy organization that released a report in January detailing decreases in the number of scientists over the past four years at an array of federal agencies. Also testifying are Betsy Southerland, a former senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency who has protested the treatment of EPA staff experts under President Trump, and Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, an advocacy organization that recently released a “roadmap for renewing the federal government.” Candace Wright, the acting director of the Government Accountability Office’s science and technology unit, rounds out the panel. The subcommittee is chaired by Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL), a former Fermilab physicist who last month floated the idea of creating a program to temporarily call back federal workforce retirees to mentor the incoming generation of scientists.
Procession of Climate Hearings Marches On
Congress is continuing its wide-ranging examination of climate change impacts and mitigation strategies this week, with a focus on the transportation and industrial sectors. On Tuesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is holding a hearing on transportation technology R&D that will include testimony from the acting head of the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The next day, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is highlighting actions by companies to reduce emissions in the surface transportation sector. In parallel, the House Appropriations Committee is holding a pair of hearings on options for promoting domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies and on the national security implications of climate change in the Arctic. Then on Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is discussing industrial decarbonization initiatives proposed in the CLEAN Future Act, a sweeping policy bill that Democrats on the panel reintroduced this month. The same day, the Senate Banking Committee is examining ways climate change may impact the financial system.
Physicists Log On for APS March Meeting
The American Physical Society is holding its annual March meeting in a virtual format this week, marking one year since APS cancelled the 2020 March meeting at the last minute due to the then-escalating pandemic. A recent APS analysis used changes in the volume of submissions between the two meetings as a metric of disruptions to the research enterprise, finding a 9% overall drop in abstract submissions from U.S. researchers and steeper drops from experimentalists and early-career women. Among the meeting’s policy-focused sessions is a workshop on Tuesday on a recently released toolkit for “departments under threat” and a best-practices guide for physics department leaders on issues such as recruitment and retention, mentoring, and departmental culture. Other sessions include a town hall presenting preliminary findings on the global competitiveness of the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences program and facilities; a science diplomacy session that includes a talk by Temple University professor Xiaoxing Xi in association with his receipt of the Sakharov Prize from APS; and an event reflecting on the 30th anniversary of the arXiv preprint server.
NOAA Advisory Board Advancing Research Priority Studies
At its two-day meeting this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Science Advisory Board will review a number of pending and recently completed studies offering recommendations on research and infrastructure priorities for the agency. The board is kicking off a study that will recommend weather research priorities for the next decade, which Congress mandated in lieu of commissioning a decadal survey by the National Academies. It will also vote to approve a report on NOAA’s cloud computing and data management strategy, a white paper on Earth system prediction, and another on decision making under “deep uncertainty.” In addition, it will hear NOAA’s responses to the board’s reports on data archiving and improving subseasonal-to-seasonal predictions. Also on the agenda is an update on NOAA’s diversity and inclusion initiatives from Acting NOAA Administrator Ben Friedman.
Advocates Beat the Drum for Strategic Innovation
The Center for a New American Security think tank is hosting an event on Tuesday exploring how to craft a U.S. “national technology strategy,” building on a report it released in January. Panelists include CNAS co-founder and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon, and acting Under Secretary of the Navy James Geurts. Simultaneous with that event, Michael Brown, the director of the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit, is speaking about “the next five years of defense innovation” with Eric Schmidt, who was formerly CEO of Google and chair of the Defense Innovation Board. Schmidt is currently promoting a congressionally mandated study he led on artificial intelligence and innovation policy that recommends the U.S. vastly expand R&D funding and implement a wide range of policy changes to encourage more effective technology development. Next week on March 22, Brown and House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith (D-CA) are participating in a panel discussion hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank, titled, “Time for a New National Innovation System for Defense and Competitiveness.”
European Innovation Council Moves Into Next Phase
The European Innovation Council is holding an event on Thursday to mark its launch as a part of the European Union’s latest flagship research-funding program, Horizon Europe, which runs through 2027. The council was originally created as a pilot project in 2017 and was allocated €3 billion over three years to fund high-risk technology R&D projects and business ventures. Now, within Horizon Europe’s seven-year budget of €95.5 billion, the council has been allocated €10 billion with direction to favor efforts addressing climate change and pandemic recovery. Thursday’s event will feature panel discussions with leaders from European technology companies and the venture capital community, and on Friday the council will hold information sessions for potential applicants.
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In Case You Missed It
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| Then-National Science Foundation Director France Córdova speaks at a 2020 symposium marking the 75th anniversary of the report, Science, The Endless Frontier. (Image credit – Karen Sayre / Eikon Photography, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) |
Former NSF Directors Endorse ‘Spirit’ of Endless Frontier Act
All seven living former directors of the National Science Foundation sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) last week praising the “spirit” of the Endless Frontier Act, a bipartisan bill Schumer is championing that proposes to pump up technology-oriented R&D at NSF. The directors highlight the agency’s history of standing up programs that support the translation of research into the marketplace, such as its longstanding Engineering Research Centers and Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers, and the more recently launched Innovation Corps and Convergence Accelerators. They also note that changes to “important details” in the initial version of the bill are under consideration and add, “We are confident that NSF can meet the goals of this proposed legislation and deliver the expected outcomes if given sufficient resources and discretion in implementation.” The version Schumer introduced last year proposed to rename NSF as the National Science and Technology Foundation and create a new technology-focused directorate with a recommended budget of $100 billion spread over five years. Schumer has not yet reintroduced the bill, but has said he is aiming for the Senate to vote on it this spring as part of a legislative package focused on increasing U.S. competitiveness with China. The letter is also signed by seven former chairs of NSF’s governing board.
Biden Signs Pandemic Relief Bill
President Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion pandemic response package into law on Thursday after it was approved by Congress with only Democratic support. The bill focuses mostly on public health and economic stimulus measures, but contains some funding for bolstering research, including:
- $600 million for the National Science Foundation to “fund or extend new and existing research grants, cooperative agreements, scholarships, fellowships, and apprenticeships, and related administrative expenses to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus”;
- $150 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to support “awards for research, development, and testbeds to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus”;
- $1.75 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for efforts to sequence and track variants of the pandemic coronavirus, and another $500 million to support “data surveillance and analytics infrastructure modernization initiatives” and efforts to modernize systems for forecasting biological threats;
- $45 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a national wildlife disease database and improve early detection of outbreaks; and
- $100 million for the Institute of Education Sciences to research “learning loss” among K–12 students due to the pandemic.
Academies Report Outlines Pandemic Impacts on Women in STEM
A National Academies report released last week describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the wellbeing of women working in STEM fields, including its impacts on productivity, work–life boundary-setting, networking, and mental health. The report finds the pandemic has posed significant challenges for parents and caregivers that disproportionately affect women due to the gendered division of nonemployment labor, and suggests “structural racism” and social isolation may have amplified impacts among women of color and others with overlapping marginalized identities. In addition, the report finds that many institutional decisions were made quickly and unilaterally during the pandemic, including financial decisions such as lay-offs and furloughs aimed at contingent and non-tenured faculty positions, which it states are more often held by women and people of color. It further argues that many institutional supports offered during 2020, such as extensions of tenure clocks, did not necessarily align with the needs expressed by women and may have exacerbated underlying inequalities. The report’s findings are based on five commissioned research papers, including a survey of around 900 women faculty that was conducted in October.
‘Quad’ Nations Create Technology Policy Working Groups
Following a virtual summit last week of leaders from the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan — known as the “Quad” alliance — the White House announced they have formed coordination groups focused on vaccines, climate change, and “critical and emerging technology.” The technology working group is charged with developing a “statement of principles on technology design, development, and use” and will coordinate relevant activities across the countries’ national standards bodies. The working group will also “monitor trends and opportunities in critical and emerging technology” as well as “convene dialogues on critical technology supply chains,” including by promoting efforts to diversify supply chains for telecommunications technologies. In a press briefing, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the group would work to “make sure that we don’t have shortages of critical materials going forward, whether it’s semiconductors or rare earths.”
DOE Advances Grid Storage and Quantum Infrastructure Projects
The Department of Energy announced last week that it has given the go-ahead for the design and construction of the Grid Storage Launchpad, a facility incorporating 30 research labs that Pacific Northwest National Lab aims to open in 2025. In its latest appropriation, Congress provided $23 million for the project, which is expected to cost $75 million altogether. Separately, DOE also announced it is planning to spend $30 million over three years on competitively selected quantum information science research and infrastructure projects at its five Nanoscale Science Research Centers. The new infrastructure will complement other efforts DOE is pursuing as part of the National Quantum Initiative, such as its five QIS research centers and the nascent “quantum internet.” A group of House Republicans reintroduced twin bills last week that would provide statutory backing for the quantum internet project as well as for a program providing researchers access to quantum computing resources. The bills were originally introduced last year with Democratic co-sponsors.
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Events This Week Monday, March 15
American Physical Society: March meeting
(continues through Friday)
Tuesday, March 16
Wednesday, March 17
Thursday, March 18
Friday, March 19
Monday, March 22
Carnegie Mellon University: Energy Week
(continues through Friday)
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Opportunities National Academies Hiring Climate Security Analyst
The National Academies is hiring a program officer to support a new Climate Security Roundtable that will “convene academic and civilian climate scientists together with members of the intelligence and defense communities to identify emerging issues at the intersection of climate and national security.” Applicants must have a current security clearance and at least three years of relevant professional experience.
American Meteorological Society Seeking DEI Director
The American Meteorological Society is hiring a director of diversity, equity, and inclusion responsible for developing a DEI plan for the society. The director will also serve on the AMS’s new Culture and Inclusion Cabinet and Board on Representation, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity. Applicants should have at least five years of DEI-related experience.
American Geosciences Institute Seeking New Head
The American Geosciences Institute, a federation of geoscience associations, is hiring an executive director. Applicants should be scientists with demonstrated leadership in the natural sciences, preferably a doctoral degree in a geoscience discipline. Applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis.
Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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