Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140513

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 strikes me as a strategy well worth our time. Thank you very much madam chairwoman. Senator collins. Thank you madam chairwoman. Dr. Collins first of all i wish you really were my cousin. We joke about that every time i see you. We could discover. With a little dna testing. Who knows kongo right . You mentioned in your statement that tremendous progress has resulted from the Biomedical Research into Heart Disease cancer, hiv and aids. I am concerned that we are not making that same kind of concerted investment when it comes to alzheimers disease. Today 5. 2 million americans suffer from alzheimers. That is doubled the amount that was the number that it was in 1980 and if nothing is done to change the trajectory of the disease it is estimated that as many as 16 million americans will be living with alzheimers by the year 2025. And in addition to the human suffering that is caused by alzheimers the cost of caring for people with alzheimers is absolutely at normas. Its estimated that the costs this year will be 214 billion and 150 billion comes from the federal medicaid and medicare programs. So at a time when the cost is soaring we are spending less than a third of 1 of that 215 billion on Alzheimers Research. I know that you are very familiar with a National Plan to address alzheimers which has as its primary goal to prevent or effectively treat alzheimers by the year 2025. The chairman of the Advisory Council created by that law with whom i have talked extensively says we really should be devoting 2 billion a year to Alzheimers Research instead of just 600 million. We are falling so short of the amount that has been recommended by the experts. What is your judgment . It seems to me as a talk to researchers there are a lot of promising ideas out there. The problem is not a lack of ideas. Its a lack of funding. Could you comment on whether you believe we should be doing more in this area . I would be happy to put up on the screen the scary numbers that you just referred to. The green line projecting how many will have alzheimers if nothing is done and you will see its up to a frightening number close to 14 Million People compared to 5 million now. The blue bars are what well be spending over a trillion dollars predicted by 2050 if nothing is done. We have to find a solution to prevent and treat this disease. Im passionate about this as i know many of the members on this committee that i have spoken to about this over the years. We are taking an exciting scientific time. We have come up with new strategies to understand what happens early on in the alzheimers brain to trigger this process and what we might do to intervene. I would not have been able to say that quite as confidently a few years ago. New technologies including imaging and genomics for giving us insights into the fundamental process that we need to figure out how to prevent and reverse. On top of that new ideas about therapeutics are coming along. We are running dozens of Clinical Trials. Most of them will fail. One of the things we are doing right now it becomes important to assess whether something is working or not is to start Clinical Trials at the earliest moment even sometimes to four people have symptoms at all but who are at highrisk of alzheimers. If you wait until somebody already has substantial evidence of cognitive problems and he knows you have party lost a substantial fraction of their brain cells. With the ability to make predictions about who is at risk we can start the treatments earlier. We can use biomarkers to access access assess if theyre working. A new project is a partnership of the pharmaceutical industry where they have agreed to put money in the table. Nih is put money on the table. We are working together and open access fashion to see can we identify every possible strategy that anyone can think of for alzheimers disease. This is not been tried before quite this way with lots of milestones and deliverables put in there. Your question are we spending enough . I would say it was wonderful that this congress came up with an extra 100 billion in the current fiscal year and there are people on this committee who had a big role including madam chairwoman in making sure that was there and that was a substantial increment they gave everybody a real push in my professional judgment. Do we need more if we are really going to push this at the level that could be . Yes we do. Its hard to say though over the course of this 20 out of 2025 timetable before the alzheimers plan exact way what is the funding trajectory necessary to get there. Clearly if we are going to succeed at this we will need the best and brightest scientists taking risk and we at the present time are not really doing as much as we could. Thank you. Senator murray. Chairman mikulski and Ranking Member shall be thank you golding is hearing. Im really glad to hear this conversation happening especially about how innovation strengthens our economy and the steps we need to take to secure our Global Leadership in many arenas. Ive always been a strong supporter of research and development and providing stability and relief from sequestration for federal research is part of what chairman ryan and i were to do this we crafted the bipartisan budget agreement. When budgets get tight it seems funding for research and development is among the First Priority is to be cut. Im glad that are bill was able to restore certainty to the budget processes in the eight Tutsis Tutsis and i really hope we can build on that bipartisan foundation. We have got to do a lot more now to ensure the 20th century ideas and products are developed and manufactured here in this country. Now we know theres a strong relationship between the amount that it spends on r d and the amount of Technical Innovation that results from that. Today in terms of nondefense funding for r d as a share of gdp the United States ranks sixth from the bottom out of 34 nations. Benchmarked by the urbanization and tracking corp. Development. We have recent data reported that suggest r d investment in china is projected to surpass u. S. R D Investments by 2022. I want to ask the panel is today how do u. S. Federal r D Investments stack up against the amounts that are biggest global competitors are investing in r d today and what areas are those that we are losing out on. Whoever would like to jump in and dr. Holdren if youd like to start. The United States remains the largest funder of research and development in the world in absolute terms but as you point out in terms of a fraction of our gdp or the rate of increase we are well down the list. We need to worry about that as i pointed out both in my oral statement in my written testimony. We are in real danger of being overtaken by china as you remarked senator murray. They are increasing their r D Investments at a range and rate of 20 to 25 a year. If they keep doing that and we stagnate as seems very possible in light of recent trends they will pass us well before 2022. Now there is more to Science Technology and innovation than just total spending. The chinese continue to envy us for the creativity of our system and away we seem to be able to inculcate creativity even in our educational system so we are innocents getting more bang for the buck. Ultimately we have to expect that they will learn from our playbook there as they have in other areas and we will narrow the gap and effectiveness of their spending and the effectiveeffectiveness of their stem education. We are going to have a real challenge on our hands. As i noted in my testimony there are of course many domains where it makes sense to cooperate with china and with other countries. We do a lot of that cooperation in areas like epidemic disease and areas like Climate Change research and areas like Disaster Response and recovery. But in areas that affect competitiveness and National Security we need to be very alert to the challenges that are emerging and other countries around the world. In my judgment at the moment is that we are not doing enough. We are going to take one other answer that question. Stay with us add to johns excellent points with a National Security perspective and it has to do with not just where the technologies are being invented but where they are being adopted i see it in my National Security round today at darpa as we are watching the Global Access to very powerful technologies to Information Technology to semiconductors that allows all kinds of actors. Sometimes nationstates but sometimes just individuals important over ability is for our country so those are the factors that are very much on my mind of my role at darpa. The others can respond but there are other senators waiting. See i would just like to add that is such a crucial question. Yes it certainly is and probably the biggest impact is on who will practice science and engineering of the future. We have a responsibility to our children and our grandchildren to communicate how beautiful and interesting these fields are and why they matter. If they dont sense the excitement of an investment that there are practitioners out there talking about the discoveries and their inventions than they are not going to be encouraged to go into those careers. So this hearing to me is about the future of science in engineering and how we are going to broaden that participation. It really is an investment. Its not an expenditure. Its an investment in the future very quickly as we dont have a lot of time i did want to show this beta slide which comes from a recent article in journal argued article. In terms of what is happening Biomedical Research and you can see the contrast is dramatic especially with asia but not just asia. Europe despite their economic woes have decided to protect Scientific Research and increase it because they see that as the best remedy for that economic trouble. Senator mikulski said she had trouble seeing it. The second from the top is the red and china is on the bottom. The china is increasing their investments in Biomedical Research by 30 per year. I imagine thats compounded year after year and you can see where that is headed. This brief sequester the u. S. Is dropping off. After sequester that red bar would have been further to the left. Its a dramatic contrast. If i could add one brief comment on energy. Theres a simple benchmark. We are at about a third of that benchmark. A country like japan for example has added and when we consider there is a trillion dollar a year market developing globally for these technologies we should be ahead of the train. Thank you very much and senator we owe you and senator sessions we really appreciate the fact that one of the most important things was you were able to give us a budget and you also for two years and it is sequester which i think im going to ask about the corrosive effect on that shortly but thank you very much. As we turned to senator blunt dr. Colin sino he is a bio guy. Its not only what china spends. Thats a billion people but it is what singapore spends and 6 million, thats million and they are spending i think that the rate of 10 . So little singapore with less than just about the same population of maryland is a leader. Senator blunt. The thank you chairman and thank you for holding this hearing. I think well have a sense that their research and our ability to compete and are brought ability to solve the problems that impact peoples lives as a central thing that the government can be part of. Dr. Collins i dont know if you had a chance. I had to step away for a few minutes to talk about this or not but the alzheimers question brought this back to my mind. The people that argue and comment advocate for us with disease specific research always make a compelling point and there is a great inclination to say well of course we are going to target that and the Defense Research and health and defense. There are lots of things around in various budgets. I was in the house of representatives had a time when we essentially doubled in the age Research Funding and the discussions you and i have had about that, no the concern about that is when you get to the end does that mean you are done and does that mean you are done for a long time . My question would be one have you had a chance yet to talk about an idea where we could reverse that trend and how we do that on annualized basis and two anything you would like to say that helps us understand those Research Decisions may be better made by nih having increased funding that they can work with rather than too many directions for the congress for the reasons we think you should be working on. Senator i appreciate both parts of that question. Certainly we have learned over the years that advances in one area of Disease Research dont always come from projects we thought were relative to that. Many of the things we are now excited about in terms of cancer were discoveries that were made studying some other aspect of basic science or even some other disease. The more we learn about the molecular patterns that undergird diseases the morphine realize they are overlapping and now there are drugs we develop. It turned out to work great for totally different disease. Maybe one of the worst things we could do if you want to find a cure for alzheimers disease is to say we will spend all of our money on things we know are exactly what we understand about that disease. We would miss the opportunity for that unexpected discovery to come from another direction. The importance of having a broad landscape investigation because we are not smart enough and nobody else on the planet is either to know exactly whether whether where the discoveries will lead. We appreciate over the years that congress is understanding that and very reluctant to do what youre marking for medical or Scientific Research. Ives shouldve said the hundred Million Dollars put into the budget for fy14 for alzheimers was for alzheimers and other diseases of aging in part because the congress wanted to be very clear. You were not making this a very precise. It has to be exact way on this one thing and we appreciated that also. In terms of what you are asking about what would be a stable trajectory and that is the main point i would love to make it this hearing the worst thing you can do for Biomedical Research or any Scientific Researches this feast or famine this rollercoaster where you ref up the engine and you take away the fuel. The young scientists are left wondering do i want to stay on this rollercoaster or do i want to do Something Else . Science is not a 100yard its a marathon and need that stable predictable support for people take risks to do research thats going to have to pay off but not next year. Maybe five years from now. We have not had that kind of situation. If you look at the projection that im putting up now for what has happened with the nih budget what im showing you there and in jello is the actual spendable dollars corrected for inflation since 1990. You can see that doubling in the middle there. That was 1998 to 2003 but then you can see what happened after that. We basically have been losing ground ever since and we are we are now down 20 from where we were 12 years ago. That is based on spendable dollars and inflation. And inflation. The dotted line is the course that nih was on before. If we had simply stayed on that course which had been true since 1970 which is about inflation plus 4 we would actually now be 10 billion above the budget at the present time. You can see why those of us looking at that situation really have wondered if we are talking about a future. Maybe we should talk about a stable predictable trajectory that would give scientists a chance to take those risks to make those investments to approve the best and brightest of the lubbock confidence of the grid to follow. I dont quite see why Something Like Scientific Research has to be in the hobbled state that it is by progressive cuts. Is the health of our nation discretionary . I think the average person in this room would go really . That seems like a funny label to attach to all of this and that is the end of my speech. Thank you chairman. Thats pretty good. We are now going to turn to our defense guys returning to senator durbin and that is going to be followed by senator cochran. It wasnt planned but there is a senator unit to this. Thank you very much madam chair. I visited nih a couple of months ago with my colleagues with dr. Cordova and dr. Prabhakar and meeting with dr. Moniz in a few days and dr. Holdren thank you for joining us. I asked the same question the senator blunt just asked and that is what is the number . I gave me the number and i went back and wrote a bill. Called the american cures fund. The number you suggest it was real wrote a 5 a year for 10 years. The question is in the Biomedical Research we committed ourselves to real growth for 10 straight years affecting nih, cdc the department of defense and the Veterans Administration medical research and how much would it cost and the answer is 140 billion in 10 years total. Senator collins brought it up and im glad you did. We spend over 200 billion last year on alzheimers and the notion that we cannot afford to make a 5 commitment when we are spending these math massive amounts of money in the wake of human suffering just seems nonsensical. You probably know if you have caught the exchanges that have gone back and forth here there are differences on how to come up with money for research spending. There are profound differences. On one side you are taking for mandatory programs from Social Security and medicare and medicaid and we are glad to sign it. You can imagine that is not warmly received on this side. On our side of the table i would flat out say 95 on all Tobacco Products would generate half the money we need and over the course of 10 years 900,000 americans will stop smoking. And it will save lives in the process. I would sign up for that in second. The question really challenges us is not to cheer you on, all if you you want it to come up with a rational way of increasing our commitment to research and innovation. I think if we can do it cant, if we can find a way to do it between us democrats and republicans who will have a profound impact on the United States in the world in the second i will make and i would like your comments whoever would like to if you wish its not just about money. Its about people. The researchers, the talent and we need to have more homegrown talent in america for sure and im committed to that. We also need to tap into the enormous pool of brilliance from foreign students who come to the United States to be taught and end up with advanced degrees in a variety of fields prater spoke to the Student Technology commencement a few years back. Why the m. Whited a lawyer i dont know but as i passed across the stage the man was trying to pronounce all of those indian names. We were figuratively handing a diploma and instructions on how to go to ohare and leave america. What a waste that would bring this talent to america trained them and then invite them to leave. The immigration bill we passed in the senate which i helped to draw up a number of democrats and republicans said if you get an advanced degree in stem and you have a job that america you will get a green card. We want you to stay. If we can combine fat infusion of talent along with their own increased homegrown talent with a commitment to resources we can recapture it in no time. It should not be behind us. There is a person here on the this side of the table that does agree with the premise. The internet through darpa. Thank you. All of the work of the National Science foundation. Three the field of energy for sure but even in Computer Science in so many different areas. How complementary this all this and it just troubles me. Let me just ask, you talk about losing the last 12 years or 20 of your spending tap power to award grants for research for Biomedical Research. What does next year look like . Is it true that the amount that you were going to be allocating in the president s budget is 8. 7 increase over the current budget . Thats correct. And the anticipated inflation for next years 1. 7 so we will fall behind another year. Make it 21, 22 years falling behind. I dont know if the same is true for other agencies represented here but i would like your comments on the talent pool question on the h1b visas on those coming to this country to study and how we can do our best to have the men and women we need in each of the departments. Thats a great question and when you look at americas Success Story is remarkable how it has been benefited by her ability to recruit and obtain incredible talent from overseas. Look at nova noble prices that have been given how many of those that are american citizens were not born and came to the u. S. To do their work. Certainly today when you look at the exciting science going on in our laboratories it is increasingly the case that the talent that is there is not going to stay. I can tell you an example of an extremely talented postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory at the university of michigan. In many peoples view one of the smartest kids that is, along in a long time is originally from china and speaks very clear and excellent english. In any other circumstance would be fought over by institutions in the u. S. But right now with everything so tight and jobs are hard to come by meanwhile at peking university who has offered this individual and incredible deal millions of dollars of Research Support beautiful laboratories all the talent he could possibly dream up because everybody wants to work with him. What is he going to do . He is going back to china and that story is being repeated over and over again in the current climate. Certainly the visa situation is a big part of the issue. It would be great to get that fixed but even if thats fixed and people dont see theres a future for these people that effort will not bear the fruit that we expect the thats also true of the second dimension of our approach to this challenge and that his inclusion, doing better providing opportunities and success for women and other underrepresented groups in science and engineering. If you look at the numbers theres a big talent pool in this country that we are not fully exploiting but again while we have a lot of programs do that and we are seeing some success we also need the opportunities and the salaries and the facilities to put those people to productive work. The third i would make very quickly as the opportunities both in Security Initiative and the president submitted to the congress along with his budget would have ended 970 million for nih in fiscal year 15 as well is nearly a billion for nasa and another 5 billion for nsf. We really hope the congress will take that opportunity seriously. Senator cochran. You have been very patient. Madam chairman thank you. My question is related to the natural disasters and we have all witnessed on television and heard about or read about in the newspapers. My state and throughout the southeast caused by weather related disasters known as hurricanes. I wonder whether or not we have any Research Underway in terms of identifying and being prepared to withstand more effectively the effects and damages often caused by weather related disasters particularly devastating tornadoes and hurricanes. I wonder if there are situations where the federal government has undertaken specific investments of grant opportunities for this kind of research. Would there be a market for or an interest in that type of funding by anybody on the panel that you know about . To help us better predict and protect against and recover from natural disasters such as we have witnessed in the gulf of mexico. I can take a shot at that and others may want to add things. The federal government really has been making very substantial investments in improving weather forecasting to give more notice of events like the tornadoes that struck a substantial part of our country in the past few days. Those investments include better instrumentation. They include investments in maintaining and enhancing our Weather Satellite system. They include investments in better forecasting models using our ever improving supercomputing capacity. It includes increaseD Investments on weather and climate research. If you look at the most recent and tragic events they would have been much more tragic had we not had close to six days warning that was produced by the u. S. Weather service. The day six of their weather outlook predicted on april 22 that these events would be unfolding on the approximate timescale that they did. That warning was put to very good use. We have had dozens of deaths but the death rate would have been far higher if the governors and state authorities and the local authorities have not had the amount of warning they had. They had that in part because noah completed and upgrading of all 2200 radars of its weather radars with a new technology called dual polarization radar which is better at detecting and pointing tornadoes and extreme weather events hale and so on. There is Research Going on on a on on a more defense Radar Technology called multipolar station phased array radar that will be the next generation of improvements in this domain and will give us more notice. The Weather Service no one has requested an additional 3 million in fy15 budget for the u. S. Weather Research Program and i certainly hope that congress will treat that favorably because there are many further advances that can be made that will give us greater warning time in the case of tornadoes. Its the single most important factor in reducing deaths. There are other things we can do to better prepare and a number of those other activities are part of the president s Climate Action plan but we are really this is an extremely important domain and we are investing in that we would like to invest more. Any other comments plaques. I will go next. In the Energy Sector we were also putting a strong focus on these issues for increasing the resilience of our Energy Infrastructure when we have such events of the type that you mentioned. In particular this year we are having a major effort across the Administration Department of energy is playing the secretary role on looking at this Energy Infrastructure. It will have a very strong Regional Focus because the risks that we see are very different in different parts of the country to our infrastructure. As part of that this will develop an agenda. At the end of the year we expect to have the first part of the process completed. As part of it because the risks are so regionally dependent they will have a minimum of 15 regional meetings around the country. We have the first one of those i think it was last week actually in providence. We will definitely be down on the gulf coast sometime in the next couple of months for one of these meetings to understand what are the regional issues that one must respond to. I will give you technical example that we are already working on. In this case its in new jersey postsandy. It is the development of microgrids as a way of Getting Better resilience and the electricity system. Put it in key areas so if the greatest going down key areas can be hopefully isolated and or recover more quickly so those are the kinds of technologies also. Senator cochran the National Science foundation has an 18 milliondollar program in its fy15 request which is an Interdisciplinary Program that involves engineering and Computer Science and also the social and Behavioral Sciences as you know that they would have a big influence in a response in the case of a disaster. This program is focused on understanding and design of independent Critical Infrastructure systems and processes expected to provide essential goods and Services Despite disruptions and failures from any cause natural technological or malicious and to create the knowledge renovation in these Critical Infrastructures. The program is called critical resilience interdependent Infrastructure Systems and processes and you might wonder why it has such a long title but its acronym is crisp. Senator cochran. Thank you. Also a good bit of Science Research occurs at nasa. They are holding their appropriations this thursday. Nasa has been cut 186 million. Godard has been cut 200 million we invite you to come. Youve raised a very important point. Senator udall you bet been here for the whole program. Almost. We are going to go to you and then senator moran and then ive got murkowski but since murkowski is not here we will go to mikulski. Jack reed. Yes. We have got you. Sorry. En execution and plan that it was asked to do than years ago from the Energy Policy act of 2005. By a understand officials of the department concurred with the findings and they estimated the department would complete each action by july 31st of this year. It is about three months away from the day in response i have three questions on this topic. But the first is his is the department on track to complete these actions on schedule . As conferred with the Energy Policy act . We will certainly try. Yesterday we brought on board had outstanding Senior Adviser for Technology Transfer and we have sat down and ready to lay out some myth that is promising to hear. Will the deal we comply with the 0. 9 Technology Transfer that the report that the doe had not done in past years . This is correct. The program did implement that for one year but looking forward we like to work force you and others as to how we implement that. There is a little ambiguity how a signs that fund i would say around 30 million is the ball park. Right now using a different mechanism, we have 742 cooperative Research Developments in the industry that constitutes more funding than the 30 million. We need to see witchhunt mechanisms we used most effectively. And reedy to look at our measurements. We can get together on that. The person you appointed is it the coordinator mentioned did in the statute . Would you a point that individual in the near future . To make that is an additional appointments. We have the nominee for the of position and hopefully that will happen soon and we will make the Bright Transitions for addressing the nominee transfer. We hope you can get that coordinator in place very quickly. And it sounds like it is headed in that direction. Especially with the ad hoc basis. So to talk about photonics and bring you fracturing cubs looking at bipartisan in legislation and maya understanding is that doe is already moving ahead and will select a Manufacturing Institute based on advanced materials. The administration is considering other topics for other such manufacturing is to share its. Of publicprivate consortium came together to have photonics including the national lab and states and local governments and it is a Key Enabling Technology that includes medical imaging, and nextgeneration display screens and wealthy with administration consider this for the institute . Research of the photonics is a good example of the manufacturing technology. We receive funding for the fyi budget. I am sorry senator hart can had to leave because i want to invite you can to see how the Nuclear Weapons program are kept safe and reliable and the relationship they have and how they do in a costeffective way. Thank you very much. Chairman. Thank you to you and the Ranking Member for your leadership on this issue. It is an aspect of federal spending that is one about your pay and excitement and opportunity. To create a growing economy and enhance the future of our nation. I have the most familiarity with dr. Collins as we Work Together with the Labor Committee appropriation process palatable to many other witnesses to visit with me and my staff. If there are ways to be hopeful to have a better understanding to enhance research to our country and its people love it be very interested to work with you to accomplish that. We face tremendous challenges. But i am convinced regardless of your attitude this is a place that investment does matter. As i have said before you can be the most compassionate caring person for research or conservative and desire efficiency for research. But we have introduced legislation to try to jumpstart the economy with more startups in the entrepreneurship and clearly these are related if we can do research on going applicable to the Business Community that they could be commercialized our economy will grow. The challenges we face to appropriate so many things could be solved if we had a growing economy. That is a huge consequence. If you questions parts you were in front of the subcommittee not too long ago about the nih funding and still trying to figure out what role congress should play that you havent monished us not to be dizzies specific whereto rude conduct research jam up the science take as where we ought to go. But yet i know diseases out there have huge consequences. Says still trying to figure out with similar issues what is the criteria what is the list of things to make a determination . You take cost, prevalence of the disease . The chance of success . How likely research will result . I assume as you allocate the funding that we provide there is no longer set of criteria. What are the things you might consider . But you have already enumerated those trying to figure of how to make most of those dollars. But without cost to the economy that is why alzheimers is so high on the list but opportunity is a big part of the mix that if we throw money at something give there is not credible ideas of where to go may not be a wise idea for the navy pilot efforts but not a Crash Program until you are sure you have a useful way to proceed. But if we focus on such things as prevalence the Rare Diseases would get lost in the shuffle. Because of the wonderful work done in kansas because of rare causes of cancer some time studying those rare causes it makes of a discovery that has broader implications that we have seen over and over so we want to be sure Rare Diseases, the present as with unique scientific opportunities get their chance. That is a constant struggle. We dont have to do a from top down all 50 states and some come for word every day. To subjects that to peer review which is the antidote from being toots top down and heavyhanded. The critical part of what we do that information is vigorously pursued because that is the future where we have to make the discovery today. It is a complicated calculus. I cannot answer is less than three days but i hope that gives some idea sematech is made more to think about before i have to ask the question again. [laughter] and very quickly if i can ask for help from the director the agricultural bioScience Research facility is partially funded to be built in manhattan campus. But congress has appropriated money and the president s budget request that i hope we could appropriate this time. But my request is there is money ready to put into the project but we need a contract. We need a discussion with the absence of full funding this project could be entered into. But Homeland Security says we cannot do that because of a policy and omb says security has the authority for this past session talks about incremental funding. But the timeline is may 2014. That delayed only cost more money in precludes the state for putting their resources into the project. I need someone to bring them together. And was not familiar with the details of the contract discussion but since you have brought it up but i will be certain to look into it to see if we can help bring the parties together because certainly in my office we join you to be interested to see this get done. I will see what i can figure out. The administration has been very helpful with the contract can be entered into and construction can start now. Think you. Let me think mr. Moniz for his quadrennial review. I really appreciate it. But dr. I had the privilege to serve with him at the smithsonian in to have someone of this talented thank you very much a doctor. We have talked about the future of this country and this then to take future also related to the economy but the localities. And historically we had areas they had built a couple betty scientificullll infrastructure like boston cambridge, new york city we have invested. But there are at least two programs that have tried to provide Institutional Support and poillon is the National Science foundation. But can you talk about what you do to make sure if way raise up the budget levels to adequate heights this will be invested in a diverse way to institutions that are not just of boston or the new york city or, etc. I appreciate the question is something we are proud of what has contributed to sign an sale of a the earlier comments about whats in Important Program this is with trading because that next generation of talent does not grow up in boston theyre all over the country i just recently met with the Kansas Program with research there it was exciting to see what was possible with those dollars with states traditionally did not have a high proportion of the institution. The current funding is 273 million in the budget and we use those to encourage universities to link up with each other and to develop core facilities to be used to make better training opportunities. It has been a successful enterprise. Obviously we love to say it see it get bigger but we have to make the point we are based primarily on a a meritocracy but that happens all over and the idea is an emblem of the ways that can be supported. So to hope that is an incubator for researchers and institutions to find some solace in the upper ranks that is an isometric of success. Senator it is great to see you here today. Committed to the program i personally want to be much more involved. Because mr. Holdren mentioned the untapped talent pool we have in this country mainly women and minorities and like to help that to be a role model for that. But falling on the point from dr. Collins with the Untapped Potential just to who i would say denis states of america is fortunate to have people of your caliber serving with this government that had the great sacrifice of time and energy and financial reward. There are 10 or 15 other agencies that are very active in research and development ranging from nasa or the bridge of justice places you would not ordinarily think they do research. But we want to focus on these agencies because in some ways they go after the most basic. So thank you for your service and your dedication. This is a great honor because in maryland we have some of the greatest federals the National Institutes of health, the National Institutes of standards, met fda, the space agency, i could go on. Also to look down my own window to see Johns Hopkins and within walking distance of the space telescope and a week away from the university of maryland in the work that they do. I am within walking distance to nobel prize winners. It is great to see these people and when they talk to me they want to be engaged to make sure they can choose a job but they were educated to do. Whether 28 or 68. Whether they presided over the greatest laboratories for the young scientist. And they tell me that is one of the things that weve talked about. My very first question to call the deal linear thinking. But to apply for grants and are disappointed. Then they are discouraged they keep applying and then they reach despair then they give up and they detoured to another field. So lets recruit people to staple the green cards to the recent graduates but we need to use the graduates that we have. We need to use the graduates that we have. This goes to my question talking about the funding of research and development. 1,305,000,000,000 buddie essentially we are holding our own but barely. But you find fewer grants and those that you do find are usually for richer of leadership or richer research. My question is, of prairie du think your agencies come from funding for the young researchers . Dr. Cordova could you elaborate on that 2 billion that does not get funded . Then we will go down. From a the ph. D. But they wonder is there a future in science. Were all concerned about that senator. Going back to the rise one group that composed that it report from the American Academy of sciences that we identified two major things that we thought the country would Pay Attention to. That was one of them to other was highrisk research. Natalie and up but enough to reward investigators but also the statistics how well theyre doing and i would be happy to have this to you. Let you could not find 2 billion . 2 billion of proposals come up to the National Science foundation every year with the review process we just dont have the funding. I would like to have a snapshot of exactly where radar. Stem at this as well wakes me up at night. Our most critical resource is a talent pool in the future that it comes into the workforce and to have a very hard time. When you turn your Young Investigator away they will not come back and we are at serious risk. At the nih we have implemented a number of programs here to protect early stage investigators but it gets harder like after sequester tueber limits the blows that they feel. They compete against each other instead of the established investigators that have a track record that gives the early stage jay in make up but still we can only find like 16 percent of applications. Stock. Less than 20 . Is that of all people that apply to nih you can only find 20 percent . 16 . That means 84 percent are turned away. So can you share with that 84 percent, is that like the description that they are rated very high by the peer review process and can you tell me where you think the younker investigators are . With Breakthrough Ideas . And very much i cannot tell the difference between a grant from the 22nd or 40th percentile we have done the research but we throw away about half of the are really good stuff we should find about onethird of what comes to us and that too stringent but we only find 16. We know were losing that talent. So to encourage people to come forward with innovative ideas but they dont have to have a of a track record and we have so great talent but it is a small fraction. Ophthalmology which is on my mind but i recall this time last year when i was visiting around sequester time, you have created the innovation program, 22 innovative grants from the bionic eye to what ever. Is that the kind of research you are talking about that is, not that all research is pulpits is that the type youre talking about . Yes. The new innovator awards his but now it is across all nih but it is a relatively modest program. We try to encourage investigators who have talent to go straight for their doctoral degree to the independent position so that people dont become independent until theyre 40 so that turns out to be dramatically exciting