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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • Public Access Policy Update

    Posted by Phil Larson on March 8, 2010 at 6:51 PM EDT

    OSTP launched a Public Access Policy Forum on Dec. 10, 2009. The forum was designed to be a public consultation on access to publicly funded research results, such as those that appear in academic and scholarly journal articles. In response to your pleas, the forum was extended past its initial Jan. 7 deadline and closed on Jan. 21, 2010.

    Since then you may have noticed some changes in OSTP’s online presence—including the disappearance of the hundreds of comments submitted during the course of the forum. Here’s what happened: After the forum closed, we transitioned from http://blog.ostp.gov—the site we used to host the forum—to our new blog at http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ostp/blog. As we noted in the introductory message on our new site, not all of our old content migrated with us, and we are still in the process of moving it to our new digs and integrating comment functionality.

    Of course, before we closed up shop we made sure to capture all of the input from our previous host, and we are gradually reposting that content.

    Today we are posting two valuable resources that are direct products of the Public Access Policy Forum. While we continue the process of analyzing the literature and comments, below you will find all of the blog posts and their respective comments, as well as never-before-seen submissions that were sent directly to our publicaccess@ostp.gov inbox.

    The past month-and-a-half has given OSTP staff the chance to sift through the mounds of fantastic input we received. We were very gratified by the amount of participation the forum generated and are diligently scouring through the data to find common themes, dissenting opinions, concerns, and suggestions that will ultimately help us craft policy recommendations.

    We’d like to again thank all of you who have contributed so generously to this process, and we look forward to reporting back on our progress toward developing policy recommendations. This has been an example of the true potential of democracy through the foundations of open government—transparency, collaboration, and participation.

    Original blog posts with attached comments:

    PublicAccess@ostp.gov submissions:

    Phil Larson is a Research Assistant in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

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  • RSS Feed for OSTP Blog Restored

    Posted by Phil Larson on March 5, 2010 at 3:45 PM EDT

    As some of our loyal readers have noticed (many thanks for contacting us), we lost the RSS feed for our blog during the transition from our old website to the new whitehouse.gov/ostp.

    Well, it’s back. If you wish to subscribe to the new OSTP Blog via RSS, please do so using http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/feed/blog/ostp — the subscribe button in the upper right corner of the page is still having some issues.

    We hope you continue reading and enjoying the many goings on here at OSTP via our blog and other areas of our site. And please, keep letting us know how we’re doing!

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  • Director Holdren Advocates for President’s R&D Budget, Science Education

    Posted by Phil Larson on March 2, 2010 at 11:48 AM EDT

    OSTP Director John Holdren holds forth in two Beltway publications today. In an op-ed for Politico entitled “The Science Budget and the Future,” he spotlights a number of FY2011 budget priorities geared towards science, engineering, and innovation and the importance they hold for our national well being and economic future.

    President Barack Obama understands the importance of the leadership role the federal government must play in nurturing the science and engineering capabilities needed to meet the challenges before us. That is why his recently released budget for fiscal year 2011 provides continued strong, strategic investments in this area, despite the overall budget austerity that our country’s fiscal circumstances require. Now we need Congress to match the president’s leadership, so that this budget’s vision for investing in science, engineering, innovation and education becomes a reality.

    Continue to Politico to read the full column.

    Dr. Holdren has also co-authored with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan an op-ed in today’s issue of The Hill that highlights the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. “How the U.S. Can Stay on Top” introduces Li Boynton and Gabriela Farfan, the two young women science students who joined the First Lady in the President’s box during the State of the Union address. It details this Administration’s Educate to Innovate initiative and events promoting STEM education, such as Astronomy Night on the White House lawn, National Lab Day, and the Education Department’s Race to the Top program.

    When we were elementary and high school students, neither of us had any idea that we would someday be secretary of education or serve in the White House as the president’s science adviser. But like Li Boynton and Gabriela Farfan, we were fortunate to have excellent teachers and well-equipped schools that nourished our curiosity and cultivated in us a passion for learning. Today we owe it to students like Li and Gabriela — and to the nation and the world — to keep that chain of opportunity alive by boldly supporting the innovative teachers and schools that will help make America, as the president has urged, once again a nation of creators and not just consumers.

    Continue to The Hill to read the full column.

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  • Global Engagement from Paris to the Persian Gulf

    Posted by Bill Lawrence on March 1, 2010 at 2:58 PM EDT

    [Ed. Note: The program referenced in the following blog was first announced by the President in Cairo on June 4. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the first three envoys in Marrakech in November: Bruce Alberts, Editor of Science, former National Academy of Sciences (NAS) president, and UCSF biochemistry professor; Elias Zerhouni, former National Institutes of Health director and Johns Hopkins professor; and Ahmed Zewail, who in addition to his academic work is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Other prominent U.S. scientists will be invited to join the U.S. Science Envoy program in the coming months, expanding the scope of the program to countries and regions around the globe.

    The envoys are scheduled to meet with heads of state, ministers, and representatives from the scientific, education, nonprofit, and business communities to identify opportunities for new partnerships in science and technology. They will investigate opportunities in all areas of science and technology, including math, engineering, health, energy, climate change research, and green technologies. Although the envoys are private citizens, they will share what they learn on these trips with the U.S. Government, and the relationships they build will help reaffirm our renewed commitment to global engagement. This dispatch was filed on Feb. 17.]

    After catching a flight out of Washington just a half an hour before the Blizzard of 2010 shuttered National airport for the 2nd time in a week, I arrived to frigid pre-dawn temperatures at Paris’s Charles De Gaulle airport. Before long I was at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where I was joined by U.S. Science Envoy Elias Zerhouni. Dr. Zerhouni, former Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a senior advisor to the Gates Foundation, is the second in a series of Science Envoys being sent by President Obama to build bridges and partnerships with Muslim communities and seek common solutions to global challenges—fulfilling a promise the President made in his New Beginning speech in June in Cairo.

    Snow was looming on the Parisian horizon, but Dr. Zerhouni was warmly received by senior diplomats and officials from Muslim majority countries spanning the crescent from Nigeria and Morocco through Saudi Arabia to Malaysia. He also met with UNESCO General Director Irina Bokova to discuss how international cooperation in science and technology could help alleviate such pressing problems as food and water insecurity, impending shortages of teachers, and lack of access to health care as the world’s population grows to a projected 9 billion by 2300.

    Next, Dr. Zerhouni met with the Paris press corps, including a number of radio and new media outlets that cater to diasporic Muslim communities in Europe. He also recorded a podcast reflecting on how he began his American life as an immigrant with an Algerian medical degree and few English skills and rose to running the NIH, the crown jewel of Federal biomedical research facilities, with 27,000 employees.

    Later, Dr. Zerhouni and I parted ways on Place de la Concorde: I was on a mission to deliver two large containers of equipment to help a NASA engineer repair Morocco’s main teaching telescope located near a high dam in the mountains east of Rabat, and he had a meeting to attend in Zurich. But we met up again in Doha, Qatar, where Dr. Zerhouni continued his Envoy duties—this time teamed up with Secretary Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry, Special Representative Farah Pandith, Pradeep Ramamurthy of the National Security Council, U.S. Envoy Richard Holbrooke, and 150 other participants at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum for dialogue on U.S. relations with the Muslim world.

    President Obama addressed the crowd by videoconference, amplifying the message of collaboration he offered in Cairo. And for three busy days Dr. Zerhouni helped fuel the process of turning that Presidential commitment into reality. He met informally with the Science and Environment Working Group at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, whose representatives—from Muslim-majority countries across Africa and Asia—were crafting a report with recommendations to the United States and other governments. He met with the Emir of Qatar and several members of the royal family. And he met with the Prime Minister and other key ministers as well as scientists, officials, local leaders, and young people from this dynamic coastal city on the Persian Gulf. Wherever he went, he was met with a combination of enthusiasm and energy not often seen at science and technology meetings; there was a palpable sense in every forum that shared interests in science and technology have real potential to help bring diplomatic priorities to fruition.

    Among the major themes discussed were the importance of education and innovation, including the need for job creation for hundreds of millions of young people in Muslim communities; the need to develop online communities of learning and exchanges of information; and the value of working together to solve issues related to food and water security, climate change, science policy, and public health. Dr. Zerhouni has now arrived in Riyadh, and will continue on to Kuwait City and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia before returning to the United States, where he will brief the President and help inform an effort to achieve some of the goals developed through this unprecedented outreach program.

    Bill Lawrence is Senior Advisor for Science Partnerships at the State Department

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  • Protecting Kids from Tobacco and Improving Public Health at Home and Abroad

    Posted by Bob Kocher, Tino Cuellar, and Tom Kalil on February 26, 2010 at 5:45 PM EDT

    One billion people are projected to die this century from tobacco-related causes, including more than 400,000 Americans each year. These deaths are preventable.

    In June, President Obama signed into law the bipartisan Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act to curb the ability of tobacco companies to market products to children, and to reduce tobacco consumption in the United States. The Act adopts many of the evidence-based policies recommended by the World Health Organization and embodied in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The Act stops tobacco companies from using appealing flavors such as strawberry and chocolate to market cigarettes to children; it implements new warning labels on cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products; it forces companies to more clearly and publicly acknowledge the harmful and deadly effects of products they sell; and it allows scientists at the FDA to take steps to reduce the harmful effects of smoking. With this law, the U.S. government has taken strong steps to reduce the single most preventable cause of death in America.

    Protecting kids and the public from tobacco is also important around the world. There are 1.2 billion smokers already worldwide, and tobacco use in developing countries is on the rise. Reversing this trend—through proven interventions such as monitoring tobacco data, protecting people from tobacco smoke, offering help to people who want to quit tobacco use, applying sensible limits on tobacco advertising, raising the price of tobacco, and warning the public about the dangers of tobacco—will save millions of lives.

    In his remarks at the signing of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, President Obama committed to work with the U.S. partners at the World Health Organization and other nations to fight the tobacco epidemic. Many U.S. agencies are already active in this area—for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention helps conduct surveys on tobacco use around the world, and the Fogarty International Center sponsors cutting-edge research relevant to global tobacco issues. The Obama Administration considers these efforts important and is exploring ways to better support countries in implementing commonsense public health measures to reduce the harms of tobacco.

    This week marks the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control, a treaty to reduce tobacco's devastating health consequences around the world. We join with others across the world who are concerned about public health in their own countries and recognize the urgency of curbing the tobacco epidemic. All nations, including our own, should work to save lives by helping communities take on this most preventable cause of death.

    Bob Kocher is Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare & Economic Policy
    Tino Cuellar is Special Assistant to the President for Justice & Regulatory Policy
    Tom Kalil is Deputy Director for Policy at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

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  • Students Meet President Obama, Speak With Astronauts

    Posted by Phil Larson on February 24, 2010 at 4:39 PM EDT

    Last week, President Obama made a long distance call to astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Building on the "Educate to Innovate" campaign, the President welcomed middle school students from Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, and Nebraska to the White House to participate in the call and ask questions of the astronauts.

    The students were in town for the “Future City” engineering competition—an event that drew seventh and eighth graders from across the nation to Washington, D.C., to discuss innovative ideas and designs for a city of tomorrow.

    Two students from St. Thomas The Apostle Catholic School, which is near Miami, Florida, wrote the following blog posts for us about their experience of visiting the White House, meeting the President, and speaking with astronauts aboard the ISS.

    When I first passed through the gates of the White House, I could not stop thinking about how lucky I was to have this kind of opportunity. The White House was spectacular, stunning, and it reminded me of scenes in history as I passed through famous rooms such as the Roosevelt Room. Meeting the President was a great honor. He was a very kind and casual man. Talking to the astronauts in space was the most amazing thing, especially when you’re thinking about how they’re outside of Earth, in zero-gravity, doing research next to stars and other objects in space. When I had the chance to ask them a question about their mission, I decided to ask them about their feelings and emotions. I was curious about what the experience is like in outer space. Talking to the astronauts inspired me to consider pursuing a career in astronomical studies.

    Barbara Marquez, 7th grade
     

    Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to go to the White House. I never imagined I would also be in the same room with the President while he placed a call to the astronauts in outer space! My team members and I were in Washington, D.C., for an engineering competition when our teacher, Ms. Chu, told us that there was a possibility that we would get to meet the President. At the time we were told not to hope too much because it would probably not happen. Next thing I know, I am within touching distance from the President. It was a very overwhelming experience. The entire time I was trying to convince myself that it was really happening and that I wasn’t dreaming. Finally, when the call was over, the President invited us into his office for a photograph. At this point, we were all on the point of hyperventilating. This one chance encounter made my trip to D.C. one of the most memorable vacations of my life.

    Alexandra Dominguez, 8th grade

     

    Students with the President for ISS call

    President Barack Obama is joined by Congressional leaders and middle school students from Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, and Nebraska in the Oval Office after congratulating the astronauts onboard the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Endeavour on their successful ongoing mission, Feb. 17, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) February 17, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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