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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • OSTP Celebrates Earth Day 2010 with Public Lecture, New GLOBE Report

    Posted by Rick Weiss on April 22, 2010 at 12:11 PM EDT

    OSTP Director John P. Holdren will give a free public lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, this evening as part of the White House’s celebration of Earth Day 2010. Dr. Holdren’s talk, "Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being: Priorities and Policies in the Obama Administration," will highlight Administration initiatives that are addressing the pressing economic, environmental, energy-, and climate-related challenges facing the Nation today.

    Dr. Holdren will also note that today marks not only the 40th anniversary of Earth Day but also the 15th anniversary of a Federal program that embodies the central principles of Earth Day—the Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment, or “GLOBE,” program. OSTP today released a new report that affirms the many benefits of that environmental education program—launched on Earth Day 1995—and lays out a map for future accomplishments.

    GLOBE is a worldwide primary- and secondary-school-based science and education program designed to open up the world of scientific discovery to students by getting them into the field to make actual environmental measurements, such as air temperature, waterway acidity, and sunlight intensity. Since its launch in 1995, the program has grown to connect—in an enormous data-sharing network—more than 20,000 schools in 112 countries.

    Students in GLOBE schools, along with the 50,000 teachers that GLOBE has trained in those schools, have collected and uploaded more than 20 million environmental and climate measurements in the past 15 years—a data set that is openly available for collaborative scientific research by students and professional scientists alike.

    “GLOBE is an important tool for educating the next generation of climate and environmental scientists, giving students the opportunity to share in the excitement of scientific discovery in their own backyards,” Dr. Holdren said.

    The new report, produced by OSTP, reaffirms the value of GLOBE as part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to science education and environmental stewardship and lays out important goals for the years ahead—in particular an enhanced focus on climate education that focuses on global warming, the carbon and energy footprint, climate and human health, and ecosystems, agriculture, and biodiversity.

    For more details about GLOBE, see our full release or http://www.globe.gov.

    GLOBE is just one element in an array of programs and activities being supported by the Administration in the domain of environmental science and education, many of which are highlighted on a special Earth Day website launched this week by the White House

     

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  • OSTP Director Holdren Keynotes Engineering Academy Summit

    Posted by Rick Weiss on April 22, 2010 at 11:12 AM EDT

    OSTP Director John Holdren was a keynote speaker yesterday at the National Academy of Engineering’s “Grand Challenges for the 21st Century” Summit held in Chicago. The Summit focused on the topics of clean water; carbon, energy, and climate; urban sustainability; and global health—four of the 14 “Grand Challenges” recently identified by the Academy as requiring immediate attention by scientists, engineers, and policy makers.

    The Academy selected keynote speakers for their expertise and ability “to provide a deep understanding of the current situation and … an analysis of the problems and potential solutions.” Dr. Holdren keynoted the session on challenges relating to carbon, energy, and climate. His PowerPoint presentation is available here (pdf).

    From the session abstract:

    Humans have long confronted the pollution created by the use of energy. The current challenge is not only the visible soot from wood and coal fires, or smog from poorly combusted gasoline and diesel, which affects human health in direct and obvious ways, but also invisible greenhouse gases, which do not directly affect human health but will impact our environment significantly.

    Carbon emission contributes to global warming and climate changes affecting our water supply and quality. The impact of increasing atmospheric carbon is widely recognized, but diminution of human emissions of carbon will either require a difficult decrease in our use of fossil fuels or significant scientific and technological breakthroughs.

    The increase in atmospheric carbon represents a generational challenge of global importance.

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  • Department of Energy Announces Call for Nominations for Fermi Award

    Posted by Phil Larson on April 21, 2010 at 12:53 PM EDT

    Our colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a call for nominations for the 2010 Enrico Fermi Award. This Presidential Award is the oldest science and technology award given by the U.S. government and one of the most prestigious.

    The Fermi Award is bestowed by the President upon an individual or individuals of international stature in recognition of exceptional scientific, technical, engineering, and/or management achievements related to the broad missions of the U.S. Department of Energy and its programs. Nominations are made via an electronic submission process at http://www.orau.gov/fermi. The deadline for submitting nominations is 11 p.m. EDT on June 15, 2010.

    The award has a rich history. It started when President Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission honored Enrico Fermi with a special award for his lifetime of accomplishments in physics and, in particular, for the development of atomic energy. That award was bestowed on November 16, 1954, just 12 days before the Italian-born naturalized American citizen and winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics died of cancer at the age of 53. The Enrico Fermi Presidential Award was established in 1956 as a memorial to Fermi, who achieved the first nuclear chain reaction—and thereby initiated the atomic age—on December 2, 1942, in a squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's football stadium. The first Fermi Award recipients included physicists John von Neumann, Ernest 0. Lawrence, Hans Bethe, and Edward Teller.

    The Enrico Fermi Award is given to encourage excellence in energy science, and technology research; to show appreciation to scientists, engineers, and science policymakers who have given unstintingly over their lifetimes to benefit mankind through energy science and technology; and to inspire people of all ages through the example of Enrico Fermi himself—whose achievements opened new scientific and technological realms—and the Fermi Award laureates, who have continued in his tradition. The Fermi Award is administered on behalf of the White House by the Department of Energy's Office of Science.

    Fermi Award winners receive citations signed by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Energy, a gold medal bearing the likeness of Enrico Fermi, and a $375,000 honorarium. In the event the Award is given to more than one individual in the same year, the recipients share the honorarium.

    For more information about the Enrico Fermi Award, visit: http://www.science.doe.gov/fermi/index.htm.

    For a complete list of recipients, visit: http://www.science.doe.gov/fermi/html/Award.htm.

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  • Resubmit Grand Challenge Ideas If Your E-Mail Bounced

    Posted by Phil Larson on April 19, 2010 at 11:04 AM EDT

    Wow!

    OSTP received a large number of e-mails and attachments in response to our request for information on the “Grand Challenges of the 21st Century”—and unfortunately, our e-mail inbox overflowed.

    If you tried to submit an idea via e-mail to challenge@ostp.gov, but received an error message stating the recipient’s inbox was full, we encourage you to send again. Just forward the error message—along with your submission—to challenge@ostp.gov. We will leave the inbox open until Friday, April 23rd. You must include the error message for your late submission to be accepted.

    Please review the “Request for Information” for more details, and sorry for the inconvenience.

  • Grand Challenges of the 21st Century -- Your Ideas Welcome

    Posted by Thomas Kalil on April 13, 2010 at 10:14 AM EDT

    One of the goals of President Obama's Strategy for American Innovation is to harness science and technology to address the "grand challenges" of the 21st century in areas such as health, clean energy, national security, and education and life-long learning. Grand challenges are important national goals like putting a man on the Moon or sequencing the human genome that require advances in science and technology to achieve. They also have the potential to drive sustainable economic growth and the creation of quality jobs.

    Examples of specific goals that have been previously articulated by the President and others include early detection of dozens of diseases from a saliva sample, solar cells as cheap as paint, and educational software that is as compelling as the best video game and effective as a personal tutor.

    In February 2010, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council  released a "Request for Information" to collect input from the public regarding the grand challenges identified in the President's innovation strategy, other possible grand challenges, and the partners (e.g. companies, universities, non-profit organizations) that would need to collaboration to achieve these ambitious goals. The deadline for responses is Thursday, April 15th.

    Harnessing the expertise of the American people is a key element of President Obama's open government agenda.

    I'm delighted that Expert Labs, a project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has developed some great tools to help the government (and anyone else, for that matter) capture the ideas and insights of participants in social networks. For example, you can send your idea via twitter by replying to @whitehouse and including the #whgc hashtag (a tip: check out other ideas with this search).

    You can also email your ideas to challenge@ostp.gov.

    We are really looking forward to reviewing your ideas, and to sharing the progress that we make in the weeks and months ahead to reach these ambitious goals.

    Thomas Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

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  • President Announces Choices for New Bioethics Commission

    Posted by Rick Weiss on April 8, 2010 at 5:09 PM EDT

    President Obama yesterday released the names of ten individuals whom he intends to appoint to the recently created Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The ten will join the previously named chair and vice chair—University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and Emory University President James Wagner—in exploring bioethical issues anticipated to emerge from advances in biomedicine and related areas of science and technology. In a statement released with the names of the new Commissioners, the President said; “I am grateful that these impressive individuals have decided to dedicate their talent and experience to this important Commission. I look forward to their recommendations in the coming months and years.”

    The new Commission differs in several ways from bioethics commissions created by previous Administrations. First, according to the terms of Executive Order (pdf) that created the new Commission, it is limited to a maximum of 13 people (with a total of 12 now named, President Obama has the option of appointing one more at a later date). That’s a smaller number than previous commissions, in part to keep the group nimble and facilitate discussion and consensus building.

    Second, the Commission is tasked specifically with the goal of making practical, policy-oriented, ethics-based recommendations to the President, rather than devoting much of its time engaged in arcane philosophical discussions. Related to that goal, the Commission includes three members with science and bioethics expertise who work for Federal agencies—a significant shift from usual practice and one that is expected to help the group as it strives to provide advice that can be implemented in practical ways within the complex framework of Federal policymaking processes and procedures.

    Third, the selected Commissioners are highly diverse in terms of professional backgrounds, geography, and experience. In a break from past practice, most are not professional bioethicists, but rather have worked and demonstrated extraordinary proficiency in an array of fields burdened with difficult challenges at the intersection of science, technology, and ethics. And although the Commission bears the word “bioethics” in its name, some members—including the vice chair—were selected in part because of their familiarity with ethics challenges raised technology as much as by biology. That reflects a growing society-wide recognition that many of today’s most difficult decisions at the boundaries of science and society are not just about biology and medicine but involve hardware, software and related technologies such as robotics.

    The newly named individuals are listed below, and short biographies can be found at: http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts-4-7-10

    • Lonnie Ali, wife of Muhammad Ali and has been an outspoken advocate working to raise awareness of Parkinson’s disease
    • Anita L. Allen, Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
    • Barbara Atkinson, Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of Kansas Medical Center and Executive Dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine
    • Nita A. Farahany, Associate Professor of Law and Philosophy at Vanderbilt University
    • Alexander G. Garza, Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs and Chief Medical Officer for the Department of Homeland Security
    • Christine Grady, Acting Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center
    • Stephen L. Hauser, Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of California – San Francisco
    • Raju Kucherlapati, Professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics and in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital
    • Nelson Michael, Director of the Division of Retrovirology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Director, U.S. Military HIV Research program
    • Daniel Sulmasy, a Franciscan Friar and associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago

     

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