Yesterday, President Biden announced 30 of America’s most distinguished leaders in science and technology as members of his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Today the United States Senate confirmed Dr. Eric Lander as the next Presidential Science Advisor and Director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). Nominated in January by President Biden, Dr. Lander, a world-renowned biologist and former leader of the Human Genome Project, will be the first Science Advisor in history to be a member of the President’s Cabinet.
As we’ve noted previously, President Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan includes some pretty large proposed investments in R&D — on the order of $180 billion over the eight years of the plan. But that’s not the only aspect of the plan that might be relevant to computing researchers. Also included is a $400 billion […]
CRA commends President-elect Biden for his announcement today that the Presidential Science Advisor will be a member of the Cabinet for the first time in history. We applaud his commitment that “science will always be at the forefront” of his administration, and we look forward to working with the highly talented and qualified team of advisors he named today. We are confident they will contribute a strong scientific voice to the myriad challenges facing our country.
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.
