Representation from nsf and darpa as well of some of the best and brightest and most visionary neuroscientist we can identify and its an amazing team. They have been hard at work for the last year putting forward exactly the kind of answers to your question what should be the milestones and what should read the deliverables . We will hold ourselves accountable. They gave us an initial set of recommendations which gave us a chance to issue no less than six requests for applications which we have now received. Thats very exciting bunch of scientific applications and they will in june lay out a fiveyear plan with very specific intention to those kinds of milestones which we let presented in our open meeting. I think it will be ambitious but it has to be achievable as well great its going to take a lot of tools, a lot of new technologies to make measurements we need. How do you work with the biologists and the engineers in this area . A great question there as well because i will be critical for success. Theres no single discipline that will be able to do this. We need engineers and computer scientistscientist s. We need biologists. We need physiologists. We need than a technologist and other kinds of robotics approaches. Certainly with our colleagues who have some access to those disciplines and thats part of the fun. It has the same flavor perhaps as the genome project did 20 years ago trying to bring together disciplines that havent necessarily have the chance to Work Together. We have to mix their cultures up with an amazing thing things start to happen. That is what we are about. Senator harkin. The thank you very much madam chairman and these are the kinds of hearings without to have more of. But then again i think about this and all the brilliance here before us and im reminded of the fact that congress disbanded some years ago the office of Technology Assessment. That used to inform us on science and technology and quite frankly i think madam chairman we have to revise the office of Technology Assessment to give senators and congressman it was bicameral to give us more permission that we need to make their judgments. But anyway thats a little aside from this panel but it brings to my mind that we need that her information on a Science Basis and Technology Basis than what we are getting. This is fine but there are just a few of us here. And more senators and more congressman need to. Dr. Collins im glad you brought up the book. I was interested in that case he often makes of the federal government takes reinsurance risks that private investors would never touch. We have have to understand that the basic researches. We dont understand that is going to lead to anything. It may lead offshoot someplace else. And it reminded me of the early meetings on the genome project when i first met you. Relate for us again how easy it was to raise private sector money to pursue the human genome project back in 89 and 90 and 91. That was an interesting time senator and you were right in the middle of those early discussions with legendary figures like jim watson who is the initial leader of the nih component and we did this charlie with their friends at the department of energy. You know there were interests in the private sector at the early point of Something Like the genome project. This was considered very highrisk and those interests were often in the direction of well maybe if the private sector could just do this quick we all of the data that would be tied up in a database we would have to pay to see and i think ultimately that would not have been a good outcome. Frankly nobody knew how to do this. The technology for weeding out 3 billion letters of the human genome had not been invented. The idea that you would have to do something at that scale was a prodigiously audacious idea to say we could get that done. But it was a great opportunity to Bring Technology needs in front of the academic investigators and ultimately companies. Nature magazine recently wrote an article about this crediting nih in particular the Genome Institute for coming up with the right model to encourage investments by creative Small Companies about how to take dna sequencing and turning it into a highfrequency facility that would be dropping the cost down prodigiously. The outcomes include things like this dna sequencing machine that im holding up right now. The size of a postage stamp originalloriginall y. This was like a phonebooth but look at it now all because of this investment in technology. Reason i asked the question is in the early days there was a private money to do this but the private money came later. Yes. Again tell the committee the study that mattel did and relate for us again the investment that the taxpayers put into the human genome project and what that spun off in the year 2000 to 2010. About 3. 8 billion went to the genome project to train nih and d. O. E. The assessment by mattel just updated said that resulted in 970 billion in Economic Growth and United States even if you throw in inflation thats 178 to one return on that investment. I have to tell you despite how wonderful that its been for our country look where we are now. Where is the largest sequencing company in the world . Its in changing china. Its not an united United States. One last thing. Dr. Said 30 said three at one to to ask a question about funding dod. I know we have a clear responsibility to clean up contamination. The legacy of our Nuclear Weapons production but i do not understand way we are spending 40 of her d. O. E. Budget on Nuclear Weapons activities. Thats nearly as much as d. O. E. Research budget. Thats as much as your entire Research Budget that we are spending on Nuclear Weapons activities. So again im not convinced this is the most appropriate balance of investments. Could you help us out here . Why are we spending so much on Nuclear Weapons development . Clearly one of our responsibilities is to maintain a safe and reliable weapons stockpile. How much does that cost a year . The Weapons Program per se. To maintain the program. About a billion dollars. Eight million . Yeah so as long as we have the weapons and we are decreasing in numbers but as long as we have them we have to keep them safe and reliable and of course we do that without tee reasons are science and Technology Enterprises so critical. In fact if you would permit me sir i would just make a comment adding to francis comment was senator udall here as well to note that actually the first meeting for the human genome project was in los alamos with nih scientists and i think what it showed was exactly this feature that we have to work across our boundaries because we brought a technologybased that nih shouldnt have been nih of course have the problem set and it was a wonderful collaboration. Thank you. Im going to turn to senator alexander but i think i want to just show the bipartisan efforts that have been here. I think senator harkin and senator specter doubling nih. Senator kit bond and i worked on doubling bnsf but i think rather than picking in a teensy like noahs arc to buy do we go to champion it we have to use the overall innovation. Senator alexander. Thanks manager and thanks for your long support for this and this hearing. I would like to make a preamble and then ask one question. Here is the preamble. In 2005 that was sitting at the end of a long day of the Senate Budget hearing and i was watching and listening to the rise of mandatory spending in twothirds of the budget and wearing about the other third of the budget which included all the things we are talking about today. I remember it reminded me of my time as governor 30 years ago when i was trying to hold down medicaid spending so i could put more money into higher education. I walked down to the National Academies and said i believe if you would tell us 10 things to do that would make our country more competitive we would do them. They gave us 20 in something called rising above the gathering storm. 70 of Senate Bipartisan way ports and it took us two years to pass it. It made progress but as obama funded it her goal was to double our funding in National Science foundation d. O. E. And nst. Compare that to going to china with senator Stevens Stephen inouye in 2006 and we went to the blew the top men in china and after we left they were talking about competitiveness. They went down to the great wall of china and set a role for the next 15 years of war of their gdp for what we have spent two years trying to do. We spent less than 1 of our gdp. Now there are differences. That is the kind of competition but the point i want to make in this preamble is what senator shelby said. We have to face the fact that the real truth is that unless we deal with the mandatory spending side of the budget we are going to squeeze out all the money for all the things youre talking about. Thats not an obama problem. Thats been true were 10, 15 or 25 years. We cannot let the twothirds of the budget go up 80 over the next 10 years in the discretionary side go from 35 to 23 is that well take your funding down not up. Although 135 agencies and the people who are here together are going to have to help us deal with this problem. We on this committee are going to have to do it. I met with ms. Burwell this morning the new head of the health and Human Services if she is confirmed. Shes going to be in charge of spending more money than the entire congress will madam chairwoman. She spent over chilean dollars thats automatically on mandatory spending and if we do our job will barely appropriate that amount of money for everything we do. Im not saying this is a political statement. Im just saying based on what ive seen over 30 years of the state and federal level we have to find a way to agree on that. We are going to render our engineering and science and research and a good it is obsolete and we are going to render this committee obsolete. Thats a very important part of what we have to do. Another thing we have to do is to make sure of the money we spend, we spend it well and my question is of dr. Prabhakar and secretary moniz darpa and arma e. A fledgling cousin in the department of energy you have a little different method of funding and a little different method of accountability. Its been enormously successful. The internet gps stealth and all these things. What can we learn from the way you fund and hold your investments to accountability that might be applied to other agencies . First darpa and then arpae. Thank you senator alexander for the question. I know well your support of arpae building on the darpa model and its been a delight to see that young agency get off to such a terrific start. I believe that there are a few core reasons that darpa has had outsized success over a number of decades. It begins with our mission which is to focus on breakthrough technologies. We are not in the business of incremental improvement. We are really looking for things that can create huge advances in capability. In our case of course that is for the National Security. That mission has allowed us to do a number of things that ive led to our success. One is to bring people in from the broad technical community, not to service full career in government but to come to us typically for three to five years to bring their passion, to bring their insight and their perspective, their hands on knowledge of a specific technical area. That has been incredibly valuable. Coupled with that has been their ability once they are at darpa to go engage the entire technical community. We dont have labs in infrastructure of our own but that deans the world is our oyster. We are able to go find amazing talents and universities and labs of all sorts in Companies Large and small. Those are some of the factors that have been really critical in our ability to make these investments. At the end of the day our mission means we have to reach for a huge impact in that inherent in that is taking risks. We dont like risks. We try to beat it down and tried to get out ahead of it but at the end of the day we know that some of the things we invest in are going to fail and we are going to willing to tolerate doubt that because the ones that s the arpae managers also work with the awardees at every stage of the process. Its quite different from the way a standard grant is issued. Furthermore another feature that is different is their ease a specific crow graham. Its essentially a mentoring program of the awardees on tech to market because that is ultimately the breakthrough happening. So far in a relatively Young Program there are 24 companies that have been produced in the program. Still too early to get the final scorecard but it looks very promising. Also something i said earlier. I think the program really got the entrepreneurial spirit in the Country Energy technologies going. If we were called the very first solicitation in 2009 which was an open solicitation. It was acrosstheboard for a novel potential breakthrough technology. The funding level was 1 of the applications. Roughly 37 out of 3000 plus. We have a lot of talent out there ready to go if we can help a little bit them get going. We are now going to turn to the next few people will be senator coons and senator collins. Thank you m we need a whole ecosystem and be stronger and you play a central role in making that happen. If i could within nsf there is a particular Interesting Program to me that supports science Engineering Education for Sustainability Program and within it sustainable Chemistry Initiative that has dramatic attention when terms of replacing ray or Strategic Minerals with more commonly available reengineering the basic processes of Industrial Production and making them of a lighter footprint and more costeffective for us in the United States. Tell me if you would how you see that cross disciplinary issue making a difference going forward. Senator i dont know a lot about the details. I know that its been a high priority. It was a onetime program that would last for a certain number of years. I believe on the order of the decade. We put a lot of investment into it and then it would have seats that would initiate other programs. So i know that we are still continuing to fund it. It has a life course and then it will what is produced will be taken hold of another ways that we are learning from that model. Its been as you said enormously reductive thing. Actually its one of the things that has been explained to me and this is my first month as director. A new kind of more risky initiatives that we do for a certain amount of time that can guilt our great fruit. We take from that lessons in order to be able to have calls further proposals that use the same kind of methods. But in perhaps a different way. Speeders increased interest and investment in the private sector to the point senator harkin made earlier. Doing basic science is about taking risks that the private sector wont take in scaling up the things that have been developed as a sustainable Chemistry Initiative. It strikes me as well worth our time if i might dr. Said three. The idea in the core programs are of interest to me because they broaden the circle of who can compete for and are just debate in federally funded research. Speak to me for a moment if you would about how as core has made a difference in broadening the range and reach of Research Institutions and individuals and strengthening the innovation pipeline to the United States. Thank you senator coons. One editorial remark. The kinds of materials that you raised. Obviously we got a rude awakening a few years ago with the chinese and rare earth and i think any people did not realize how ubiquitous the rare earths were and now we have a major hub at the Ames Laboratory at iowa state which is focused exactly on that problem as well i think very complementary to the nsf. With regard to ebb score i frankly am a fan of ebb score. I was actually involved in the first years of ebb score in south carolina. So with ebb score we have a chance to have states that do not have as much funding in research as others with some matching funds develop programs competitively. I will give the example that i was involved in and ended up with the Biology Program and a physics program. The latter became nationally competitive as a result of that. Another thing i like about ebb score so much and i think we can increase our focus on undergraduates participating in the research because frankly we have undergraduate talent all across this country and many of them dont have the access to their resource opportunities that others do. I appreciate your comments and continuing to work in partnership to build out and strengthen stem disciplines at the undergraduate and graduate Level Research capabilities at a water range of colleges and universities in the tech transfer capabilities of the National Labs is Something Worthy of all of our attention. You mentioned in passing hubs. I would simply say manufacturing hubs that allow us to coordinate federal investments in cuttingedge Technology Research and translated directly into advanced manufacturing and i stayed strik