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| FYI: Science Policy News from AIP |
| THIS WEEK |
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| What’s Ahead |
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| Monica Bertagnolli, President Biden’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health, speaking at an event with former NIH Director Francis Collins in December 2022 prior to her nomination. (Milken Institute) |
NIH Director Nominee Gets Hearing After Delay by Sanders
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday to review President Joe Biden’s nomination of oncologist Monica Bertagnolli to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bertagnolli currently directs the National Cancer Institute, a role she has held for the past year, and previously she was chief of surgical oncology at the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School. NIH has lacked a Senate-confirmed director since former director Francis Collins stepped down at the end of 2021. Biden nominated Bertagnolli in May, more than a year after Collins’ departure, and HELP Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) then refused to hold a hearing on her nomination until the Biden administration offered a “comprehensive” plan for lowering drug prices. In September, Sanders agreed to move forward after the administration struck a deal with pharmaceutical company Regeneron that caps the price of a prospective treatment for COVID-19. Meanwhile, Committee Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is mounting a campaign to reform NIH and is soliciting input on ways the agency could “improve its process for approving federal research grants, better support the biomedical research workforce, bolster collaboration across academia and industry, and increase transparency into agency activities.”
DOE Grant-Vetting Procedures Under Senate Scrutiny
The Department of Energy’s “due diligence” process for vetting prospective grant and loan recipients will be the focus of a hearing on Thursday by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY) has pressured DOE to expand the vetting process after it selected the battery technology company Microvast to receive a $200 million grant despite the company’s connections to China. Microvast disputed claims about the extent of its ties to China, but DOE ultimately rescinded the selection in May without offering a public explanation. Among the witnesses for the hearing is David Crane, DOE’s first under secretary for infrastructure, a role it created to distribute the hundreds of billions of dollars of grant and loan authority provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act. Also testifying are Jigar Shah, director of DOE’s Loan Programs Office, which received a ten-fold increase in loan authority from the IRA, and DOE Inspector General Teri Donaldson, who has said she needs more resources to properly oversee the acts’ implementation.
Rollout Begins for Nuclear Weapons Commission Report
Leaders of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States are presenting their final report at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday and at the Atlantic Council think tank on Friday. In light of China and Russia’s buildout of their nuclear weapons arsenals, the commission recommends the U.S. urgently expand its industrial base for nuclear weapons production and the associated weapons-science infrastructure. The commission comments at length on workforce retention and knowledge transfer challenges faced by the National Nuclear Security Administration and offers various recommendations for maintaining the necessary pool of skilled personnel. It also calls for complementary efforts to develop expertise in emerging technologies such as generative AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology to avoid “strategic surprise.” Former NNSA Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon chaired the 12-member commission with former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) as the vice chair.
Experts to Testify on AI Security and Safety
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is kicking off a series of hearings on artificial intelligence, beginning with one on Wednesday on data privacy and another on Thursday on the uses of AI in the energy sector. The committee plans to explore AI applications “across every sector of the economy,” listing telecommunications, healthcare, and emerging technologies as topics for subsequent hearings. Meanwhile, the House Science Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday titled, “Balancing Knowledge and Governance: Foundations for Effective Risk Management of Artificial Intelligence.” Among the witnesses is Elham Tabassi, associate director for emerging technologies at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which released an AI Risk Management Framework early this year. Also testifying are Michael Kratsios, who served as U.S. Chief Technology Officer during the Trump administration; Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington; and Caleb Watney, co-CEO of the Institute for Progress think tank. Separately, the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee managed by NIST will meet on Thursday to receive reports from its working groups and an update from its law enforcement subcommittee.
DOE Biological and Environmental Research Advisors to Meet
The advisory committee for the Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research program will meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss progress on two reports the committee is preparing. The first will inform BER’s work to reestablish a research program on the effects of low-dose radiation on human health, and the second will recommend a strategy for creating a “unified framework” for data management and analysis across the biological, environmental, climate, and Earth system sciences. The committee will also hear an update on the recent AI for Science, Energy, and Security report prepared by DOE national lab staff and a presentation on “building a culture of safety and trust in team science.”
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| In Case You Missed It |
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| President Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, left, visited Philadelphia on Oct. 13 to announce the winning proposals in the Department of Energy’s hydrogen hub competition. (The White House) |
DOE Allocates $7 Billion for Regional Hydrogen ‘Hubs’
- Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2) in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey
- Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania
- Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES) in California
- HyVelocity Hydrogen Hub in Texas
- Heartland Hydrogen Hub in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota
- Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen (MachH2) in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan
- Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub (PNW H2) in Washington, Oregon, and Montana
Each of the hubs will employ “clean” production methods, such as sequestering the carbon emitted when hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels or using renewable or nuclear energy to electrolyze water. The $7 billion they will collectively receive, pending successful award negotiations, represents the single largest initiative to commercialize energy technology funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. DOE intends to spend the rest of the $8 billion the act provided in total for the hub initiative on projects aimed at establishing demand for the hydrogen the hubs produce. The infrastructure act is also providing $1.5 billion for separate initiatives to support clean hydrogen electrolysis, manufacturing, and recycling, and last year the Inflation Reduction Act established tax credits to further boost clean hydrogen.
DOE’s Final Earthshot Targets Home Energy Efficiency
The Department of Energy announced its eighth and final Energy Earthshot on Oct. 12, this one focused on lowering energy bills in affordable housing. The Energy Earthshots Initiative comprises a set of ambitious cost reduction goals for specific technology areas. The Affordable Home Energy Shot aims to reduce the cost of energy-efficiency retrofits by at least 50% and decrease residents’ energy costs by at least 20% within the next 10 years, with a focus on homes occupied by people making less than 80% of the median income in their surrounding area. Late last month, DOE awarded $264 million to 29 basic research projects linked to the first six Energy Earthshots, covering areas such as hydrogen production, carbon storage, offshore wind, and decarbonization of industrial heating processes. DOE will hold a virtual summit to discuss the objectives of the industrial decarbonization Earthshot on Oct. 23.
Board Picked for National Semiconductor Technology Center
Jim Plummer, former dean of Stanford University’s Engineering School, will be the inaugural chair of the National Semiconductor Technology Center’s board of trustees, who will create a non-profit entity to operate the NSTC. Plummer and six other trustees were announced last week by an independent selection committee established by the Commerce Department in June. The other trustees are technology entrepreneur Robin Abrams, former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, former national security official Reginald Brothers, retired IBM executive Nicholas Donofrio, technology entrepreneur Donna Dubinsky, and Carnegie Mellon University engineering and public policy professor Erica Fuchs. Among the board’s first tasks is hiring the executive leadership team for the NSTC, which will aim to boost U.S. semiconductor research and prototyping capabilities via a network of facilities and R&D centers. The CHIPS and Science Act allocated $3 billion to start up the NSTC, with billions more to follow.
Watchdog Criticizes Regulators’ Oversight of Research Reactors
Last month, the Office of Inspector General for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a report from a “special inquiry” that deems the agency’s oversight procedures for research and test reactors to be “outdated” and “inadequate.” The inquiry started as an examination of NRC’s oversight of the research reactor operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which only began restoring operations last spring following a February 2021 radiation incident caused by errors during refueling. The report states that NRC inspectors had not identified earlier incidents in fuel handling at the reactor that could have presented opportunities to address the issue. Expanding its scope to other research and test reactors, the inquiry found it is common for NRC not to directly inspect fuel movement and other activities important to safety. The report spotlights two other facilities where the agency failed to identify problems with fuel operations: the now-decommissioned Aerotest research reactor in San Ramon, California, and the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, which notified NRC last year it had operated its reactor for nine months with improper fuel.
Psyche Launches, Mars Sample Return Meeting Moved to This Week
NASA’s Psyche mission launched successfully on Oct. 13 after adverse weather caused it to miss its Oct. 12 target date. The spacecraft is scheduled to reach its namesake destination, a metal-rich asteroid, in 2029 and will undertake observations there for at least two years. Due to the launch timing, an advisory panel discussion of NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission that was set for Oct. 13 will now be this Friday. This past summer, Senate appropriators broached the possibility of canceling the flagship mission, and last month an independent review concluded it is facing at least a two-year delay and will likely cost billions of dollars more than expected.
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Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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| Opportunities |
Science Societies Seeking Policy Fellows
Science and Technology Policy Institute Hiring Fellows
The Science and Technology Policy Institute is accepting applications for its two-year fellowship. Fellows will support research that informs leaders in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as well as various federal research agencies. Applications are due Jan. 15, 2024.
Academies Environmental Research Boards Hiring Director
The National Academies is hiring a director for its Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and its Polar Research Board. Applicants must have at least ten years of related professional experience, with five years in a supervisory capacity. Applications are due Oct. 25.
Know of an opportunity for scientists to engage in science policy? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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