WEEK OF DEC 23, 2024

What’s Ahead

Michael Kratsios sits at a laptop during a web conference for the Greek Economic Summit. — Former acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Kratsios speaking during the Greek Economic Summit in 2020.

DOD / Marvin Lynchard

Trump names nominees for OSTP and DOD R&D

President-elect Donald Trump announced his picks for several science and technology adviser positions in a series of posts on Truth Social over the weekend. He has selected Michael Kratsios as his nominee for director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Like current OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar, Kratsios will also serve as assistant to the president for science and technology, a position that does not require Senate approval, unlike the OSTP directorship. Trump’s last OSTP director, Kelvin Droegemeier, did not hold the APST title but was chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. During Trump’s first term, Kratsios served as OSTP’s chief technology officer and later became acting undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.

Trump selected former Uber executive Emil Michael as his nominee for under secretary of defense for research and engineering. Michael served as an assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and as a member of the Defense Business Board during the Obama administration.

Trump tapped Lynne Parker to be the executive director of PCAST and to serve as counselor to the director of OSTP. Parker is another former member of OSTP from Trump’s first term, having served as deputy chief technology officer and the inaugural director of OSTP’s National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office, positions she held through the first half of the Biden administration.

Trump also announced that Sriram Krishnan will serve as senior policy advisor for AI at OSTP. Krishnan is a tech podcast host who previously worked for several major tech companies and Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He is reportedly close to Elon Musk and has expressed support for greatly expanding access to H-1B visas for tech workers and removing country caps on green cards. Trump said he expects Krishnan to work closely with his recently announced “crypto-czar” and PCAST director, David Sacks.

Congress punts FY25 budget deadline to March

President Joe Biden signed a continuing resolution on Saturday that keeps the federal government funded until March 14, 2025. The CR is a narrower version of a bipartisan bill that was upended after Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump expressed opposition to it. The original bill was 1500 pages, while the passed resolution is only 120. Trump’s primary demand was that Congress use the CR to significantly raise the federal debt limit so that he could avoid the issue until at least the 2026 midterm elections, but the passed version includes no such provision.

The CR still contains roughly $100 billion in funding for disaster relief, including money for research facilities damaged in recent years by severe storms. Those funds include $740 million for NASA facilities, $244 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facilities, $41 million for Army research facilities, $69 million for Air Force research facilities, and $2.7 million for U.S. Geological Survey facilities.

Numerous science- and research-related provisions that made it into the original agreement were cut from the final bill. These include:

The Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act would have authorized $150 million for the Treasury and Commerce departments to develop restrictions and reporting requirements for outbound investments in certain Chinese tech companies.
The reauthorization of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration would have authorized increased funding for the NTIA through 2026 and added several responsibilities and initiatives to the original 1992 authorization.
The Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness and Response Act would have authorized tens of millions in additional funds for pandemic preparedness programs.

Two other notable pieces of research-related legislation, the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act and the Department of Energy AI Act, failed to make it into either the initial or final CR.

Biden administration updates visa policies

The Department of Homeland Security issued a series of visa policy updates this month that could impact STEM workers and students looking to work and study in the U.S. A final rule published on Dec. 18 focuses on “modernizing” the H-1B program, which offers visas to skilled workers, and adding flexibility to the F-1 student visa program. For instance, the rule expands the definition of specialty occupation positions that fall under the H-1B visa program and updates the criteria whereby nonprofit and governmental research organizations can hire workers using H-1B visas without being subject to the annual numerical cap on the program. Previously, such organizations were exempt from the cap only if their “primary mission” was research, but the new rule says that they can qualify if research is a “fundamental activity” but not their primary mission.

The new rule also requires H-1B visa applicants to hold degrees “directly related” to the job they want to perform. Some organizations petitioned DHS to drop that language, arguing that it could unduly exclude people whose degrees are highly relevant to the work in question but the connection is not obvious from the degree name. DHS declined to drop the language but added a clarification that the intent is for there to be a “logical connection” between the degree and the job.

Also this month, the State Department released an update of the Exchange Visitor Skills List, which determines whether J-1 visa holders must return to their home countries for at least two years after completing a work or study program in the U.S. The updated list removed dozens of countries from this requirement, including China and India, meaning that J-1 visa holders from those countries are no longer required to return to their country of origin before applying for another U.S. visa.

Science agencies finalize updated public access policies

The National Institutes of Health announced the publication of its updated public access plan last week, laying out the agency’s plan for all NIH-funded research to become immediately accessible to the public at the time of publication. All federal agencies that fund R&D are currently working to publish their updated public access plans in response to the Office of Science and Technology’s 2022 Nelson Memo. Agencies are expected to publish their plans by the end of this month and implement them by Dec. 31, 2025. In addition to the updated policy, NIH published supplemental guidance on publication costs and the government use license and rights, as well as a plan addressing how researchers and institutions should use metadata to consistently identify themselves and their research outputs. NIH is accepting comments on its plan to make research more findable through the use of metadata until Feb. 21.

The Department of Energy published its public access plan last year and recently published related guidance on scientific and technical information management. The National Science Foundation also updated its Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide this month to reflect changes laid out in its NSF Public Access Plan 2.0, which was published last year.

House AI task force releases broad blueprint

A bipartisan House task force on AI released a report last week that proposes guiding principles for advancing U.S. leadership in AI. The report does not include specific spending targets, in contrast to a similar blueprint released by a bipartisan Senate task force in May, which argued for a total federal AI R&D budget of $32 billion per year and proposed a new cross-agency AI research initiative.

The House report says NIST should continue leading the development of guidelines for federal AI systems and speaks positively about DOE’s AI development initiatives, such as the Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence for Science, Security and Technology program, but is circumspect about how Congress should support these programs in the future. The report argues generally that Congress should support the development of infrastructure and data resources needed for AI development. It suggests that the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource pilot program at NSF could be a vehicle for delivering more of this support but does not overtly recommend additional resources for the program, simply saying that Congress should “examine” the program as it considers a bill that would turn the NAIRR into a full-scale project.

Also on our radar

DOD and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a report earlier this month that proposes a system for sharing access to the 37 GHz band. The report recommends DOD retain priority access to a portion of the band but calls for expanding non-federal access to the rest of the band. It also recommends protecting the adjacent 36-37 GHz band due to its significance for Earth observations by DOD’s environmental satellites.
OSTP released a National Cislunar Science and Technology Action Plan last week. The plan was accompanied by a policy memo that directs NASA to work with other agencies and international partners to establish lunar reference systems.
The Biden administration awarded the Enrico Fermi Presidential Award to three scientists last week — Héctor Abruña, Paul Alivisatos, and John Nuckolls, for their work in electroanalytical chemistry, nanoscience, and fusion, respectively. A ceremony hosted by DOE will take place on Jan. 10.
The Department of Commerce announced more than $8 billion in CHIPS Incentives Awards this month to advance domestic chip and semiconductor production, with recipients including Amkor Technology , Texas Instruments , Samsung Electronics , SK hynix , GlobalWafers, and Bosch.