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President’s Immigration Order is Latest in a Series Vexing Computing Research Community

By: Peter Harsha, CRA Director of Government AffairsIn: June 2020, Vol. 32/No. 6 /

On Monday, June 22nd, President Trump issued the latest in a series of immigration and visa related orders designed to limit the involvement of foreign students and researchers, in particular those from mainland China, in U.S. research efforts. The order follows a series of other proposals and orders emanating from the White House and Capitol Hill that have raised the ire of higher-education, U.S. industry, and the computing research community over recent weeks. The proposals — two proclamations, Senate legislation and bicameral legislation — all have the stated goals of protecting U.S. jobs from foreign competition or protecting U.S. research from foreign exploitation, but in CRA’s analysis would likely do more damage to the U.S. research ecosystem than the threats they are trying to address.

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What’s Happening with the Federal Budget, Particularly with the Research Agencies, During the Pandemic?

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: May 2020, Vol. 32/No. 5 /

It should come as no surprise that the normal operations of official Washington have been heavily disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Current events have derailed almost every aspect of the usual budget process. In terms of emergency funding, the CARES Act, passed at the end of March, has about $180 million dollars in emergency research funding for NIH, NSF, DOE Office of Science, and NIST. As well, there was about another $86 million for three agencies (NASA, NOAA, and NIST) to support “continuity of operations;” i.e., any operations that were disrupted by the pandemic, such as rescheduling a space science mission at NASA. Additionally, there was support for higher education, in the form of about $14 billion; however, that isn’t set aside for research and by all reports is being used by colleges and universities for administrative purposes (meaning, keeping the lights on). All that funding was directly related to responding to the pandemic.

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Computing Researchers Fly-in to D.C. to Make the Case for Computing

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: October 2019, Vol. 31/No.9 /

On September 11, 21 computing researchers from across the country visited Washington, D.C. to make the case for federally funded computing research. The volunteers, traveling from as near as Virginia and Maryland, and as far away as Wyoming and Montana, participated in over 50 House and Senate meetings. Their message to Congress was very simple: Federally supported computing research is vital to the nation’s future. Using their own research and individual stories as support, and reinforced with additional information from CRA, they made the “Federal case” for computing to Members of Congress and their staff. Those Members of Congress now know more about the expertise and interesting (and important) computing work that occurs in their districts and states, and our participants have a sense of just who represents them in Congress. And they’ve hopefully started a lasting dialogue on both sides.

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CRA Hosts 2019 Tisdale Fellows

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: August 2019, Vol. 31/No.7 /

On Tuesday June 25th, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2019 class of Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellows to the CRA office. These fellows, undergraduates at universities and colleges from across the United States, spent the summer at high-tech companies, firms, or trade associations in Washington, learning the intricacies of technology policy. At the CRA office, the fellows attended a presentation by Brian Mosley, policy analyst in CRA’s Office of Government Affairs, covering the policy concerns and issues that the association works on and attempts to influence at the federal level.

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“Second Place America?” Major Report Detailing the Nation’s Declining Leadership in Research and Technology Released at Capitol Hill Event

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: June 2019, Vol. 31/No.6 /

On Tuesday May 14th, the Task Force on American Innovation (TFAI), an alliance of leading American companies and business associations, research university associations, and scientific societies, released a major report assessing the United States’ investment in science and engineering research. The report, titled “Benchmarks 2019: Second Place America? Increasing Challenges to U.S. Scientific Leadership,” is the fourth such “benchmarking” report that TFAI has released since it’s founding in 2004. The report found that the trends found in the original Benchmarks report in 2005, and the two subsequent follow-up reports, persist and the U.S. continues to lose ground to other nations in investments in science, technology, and talent.

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Call for Nominations! — 2019 CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute

In: May 2019, Vol. 31/No.5, June 2019, Vol. 31/No.6 /

As part of its mission to develop the next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the fifth offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI). The workshop is intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We seek nominations for participants. LiSPI will be centered around a two day workshop to be held November 21 – 22, 2019, in Washington, DC. Full details of LiSPI are available here. The nomination deadline is June 14.

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Midterm Election Impact: Mixed Results for Science and Research

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: November 2018, Vol. 30/No.10 /

The long, long awaited 2018 Midterm elections have come and (mostly) gone. As you’ve probably heard, the Democrats have gained control of the House of Representatives, while the Republicans have increased their majority in the Senate. But what does this mean for science here in Washington? Find out more in this article.

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Computing Researchers Visit D.C. to Make the Case for Computing

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: October 2018, Vol. 30/No.9 /

On September 13th, 11 computing researchers from across the country visited Washington, D.C. to make the case for federally funded computing research. The volunteers, traveling from as near as Virginia and Pennsylvania, and as far away as Washington and Ohio, participated in nearly 30 House and Senate meetings. Their message to Congress was very simple: Federally supported computing research is vital to the nation’s future. Using their own research and individual stories as support, and reinforced with additional information from CRA, they made the “Federal case” for computing to Members of Congress and their staff. Those Members of Congress now know more about the expertise and interesting (and important) computing work that occurs in their districts and states, and our participants have a sense of just who represents them in Congress. And they’ve hopefully started a lasting dialogue on both sides.

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Eben Tisdale Fellows Attend Policy Presentation at CRA Government Affairs Office

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: August 2018, Vol. 30/No.7 /

On Friday, June 29th, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2018 class of Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellows to the CRA office in Washington, D.C. These fellows, undergraduates at universities and colleges from across the United States, spent the summer at high-tech companies, firms, or trade associations in Washington, learning the intricacies of technology policy. This year’s Tisdale Fellow for CRA is Amita Shukla, who is a rising junior at Columbia University, pursuing a major in computer engineering with a minor in political science; she is also a Presidential Global Fellow.

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Award Winning NSF Funded Data Research Presented at the 2018 CNSF Exhibition

By: Brian Mosley, CRA Policy AnalystIn: June 2018, Vol. 30/No.6 /

On May 9th, the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), an alliance of over 140 professional organizations, universities, and businesses, held their 24th Annual Capitol Hill Exhibition. CNSF supports the goal of increasing the federal investment in the National Science Foundation’s research and education programs, and the exhibition itself is a great way to show members of Congress and their staff what research the American people have funded. This year CRA, a member of CNSF, sponsored Jingrui He and her graduate student, Dawei Zhou, from Arizona State University.

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Science Fares Well in Final FY 2018 Spending Bill

By: Peter Harsha, CRA Director of Government AffairsIn: April 2018, Vol. 30/No.4 /

Though it required negotiations that stretched nearly seven months into the fiscal year it is designed to fund, the FY 2018 Omnibus Appropriations act won the approval of a sizable majority in Congress and the reluctant approval of the President at the end of March, providing substantial boosts in Federal spending, including healthy increases to science investments across the government.

Passage of the omnibus bill was made possible by an agreement in February to increase statutory limits on discretionary spending for FY 2018 and FY 2019. That extra spending room ensured that congressional appropriators could boost military spending sufficiently to satisfy a majority of the GOP and increased non-defense spending sufficiently to woo enough congressional Democrats to overcome opposition from the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House. In the end, the 2,000+ page bill boosts Federal discretionary spending to $1.3 trillion in FY 18, and boosts Federal R&D efforts by nearly 13 percent.

While appropriators generally do not spread funding increases evenly throughout the bill, overall, science agencies fare well in the bill, in many cases receiving meaningful increases for the first time in several years.

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