Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

This past September, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced “Broadening Experience in Scientific Training” (BEST)—a $3.7 million awards program designed to help universities prepare graduate students and research fellows in the field of biomedical research for 21st century jobs, including those outside of the traditional academic tenure-track.

Today, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) took an important next step to maximize the value of the enormous amount of data collected every day about the Earth and its many environments: a call for public input to inform the development of a blueprint for future Federal investments in this increasingly important domain.

Today, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz kicked-off the latest round of the Rooftop Solar Challenge – an initiative that empowers local governments across the Nation to make it easier, cheaper, and faster for more Americans to go solar. The Rooftop Solar Challenge is spearheaded by the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative – a national collaborative effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by the end of the decade.

Today, delivering on commitments made in his Climate Action Plan, President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) to strengthen the Nation’s preparedness for and resilience to the impacts of climate change.The actions directed by the President today are common sense steps to help ensure that America’s infrastructure, communities, and natural resources are resilient to climate-change impacts that are already being felt in regions across the country.

As the solemn first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s landfall nears, communities along the East Coast continue to rebuild, taking lessons learned from an unprecedented disaster to ensure new infrastructure and services are stronger and smarter than before.The Federal Government has partnered with states, cities, communities, and other stakeholders to make the Sandy-affected region—and all of America—more resilient.

Today, OSTP released a Biological Incident Response and Recovery Science and Technology Roadmap to help ensure that decision makers and first responders are equipped with the information and tools needed to effectively respond to and recover from a biological incident—whether naturally occurring, accidental, or intentional.

The Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. Nicole Lurie, issued an innovative challenge last month. The Department is offering a prize purse of up to $10,000 to competitors who submit winning ideas for a technology that, in emergencies, could determine the location and status of life-sustaining durable medical equipment and get help to users.

Last month, President Obama met with 30 of the Nation’s top scientists and inventors—amazing middle schoolers who have paved the way for major breakthroughs in medicine, chemistry, computing, and more…but aren’t yet old enough to drive.These remarkable students have sequenced DNA to determine the genetic cause of a fatal lung condition; invented a more efficient diagnostics test to detect dengue virus; and built a computer that emits smells on cue.

Today the United States joined other member nations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in approving the Fifth IPCC Working Group Report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Change.

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the Equal Futures Partnership—a global collaboration aimed at advancing women’s and girls’ economic and political participation. For the United States, stepping up to this challenge has included important work to open doors to quality education and high-paying career opportunities for women and girls in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

When students excel in math and science—when they see themselves as the builders, programmers, discoverers and inventors of our future—they help America compete for jobs and industries of the future. To make that happen, it’s important to inspire more kids to get excited about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

One way the Administration is working to bolster broadband deployment is by reducing barriers for companies to install broadband infrastructure on Federal properties and roads. Last year, President Obama signed an Executive Order to make broadband construction projects along Federal roadways and properties cheaper and more efficient. Today, we are announcing new steps to build on this progress, including the launch of several new tools and resources to help make it easier for companies to build out high-speed Internet, particularly in underserved communities.

In President Obama’s historic 2010 Kennedy Space Center speech, as he challenged NASA to send humans into deep space for the first time, he also noted that this type of exploration would require investments in and development of breakthrough space technologies.

The Obama Administration is committed to harnessing science to understand the underpinnings of brain diseases, improve the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic injuries to the brain, and apply the latest discoveries about the neuroscience of teaching, learning, and development in educational settings across the country.