President-elect Joe Biden announced today he intends to nominate Dr. Eric Lander, biologist and former leader of the Human Genome Project, to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and serve as the Presidential Science Advisor.
The Trump Administration continues to issue regulatory rule changes that impact the US higher education and research communities. Regular readers of the Policy Blog will recall that earlier this year the Administration issued multiple proclamations and other policy changes, with regard to legal immigration that impacted the US research community in some way. While the Administration backed off in some of these instances, they never did so completely; in fact, the rhetoric and desire to make lasting changes to the American immigration system remained.
CRA believes this policy is ill-conceived, cruel and will damage the U.S. research ecosystem greatly, perhaps for years to come. The uncertainty created by this policy, and by the other immigration policy decisions restricting other foreign students and researchers issued over the last several weeks, will certainly discourage more of the best minds in the world from studying and researching in the U.S., to our great detriment.
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, 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.
Today the United States Senate unanimously confirmed Dr. Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan as the next Director of the National Science Foundation. Nominated in December by the President to succeed France Córdova, Dr. Panchanathan’s nomination was possibly delayed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing social distancing disruptions to Congress’ operations. However, his nomination sailed through the Senate HELP Committee on June 3rd and quickly moved to the full Senate for today’s vote.
We oppose the banning of any foreign student or researcher unless there is clear evidence of their personal connection to wrongdoing. Indiscriminate large-scale banning of students and researchers from any particular country deprives the U.S. research enterprise of contributions by international scholars, most of whom are not involved in IP theft or espionage.
As we reported in December, the President nominated Dr. Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan as the next Director of the National Science Foundation, succeeding Dr. France Córdova, whose six-year term as Director ended in March.
CRA opposes efforts to end or suspend the OPT program, which would cause great harm to an innovation ecosystem that continues to be a crucial part of our recovery effort.
On an otherwise uneventful day, President Donald Trump yesterday announced his intention to nominate Dr. Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan as the next Director of the National Science Foundation, succeeding Dr. France Córdova, whose six-year term ends next year. Panchanathan is a computing researcher and the Executive Vice President of Arizona State University’s Knowledge Enterprise, Chief Research […]
On Wednesday, June 12 the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee convened a hearing, titled Combating Sexual Harassment in Science, to explore what the federal research agencies are, and are not, doing to confront sexual and gender harassment in the Federal research community. The committee received important insights regarding the measures that have been implemented across different Federal agencies and research fields. Though the committee agreed that the agencies need to do more to confront this issue, there was not a consensus on specific policies Congress wants to see.
