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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • Global Change Research to Benefit the Nation

    Posted by Tom Armstrong on March 7, 2013 at 10:17 AM EDT

    Today, the Administration’s interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) delivered its annual report to Congress for fiscal year 2013: “Our Changing Planet.” The report highlights recent activities by 13 Federal agencies to strengthen our scientific understanding of global changes—including climate change—the threats and opportunities they present, and how they are likely to evolve over time.

    USGCRP’s scientific portfolio spans multiple systems and scales, from organisms to ecosystems to the entire planet—including changes brought about by human behavior as well as by larger natural forces. It incorporates information from nearly all forms of scientific work, including laboratory experiments, field research, computer modeling, scientific assessment, and observations of Earth from land, air, sea, and space. This vast body of work has been carried out by 13 government agencies—all working together to paint a clearer picture of global change so that citizens and decision makers have the information they need to plan, prepare, and respond.

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  • Meet a PIF: Kara DeFrias

    Posted by John Paul Farmer on March 1, 2013 at 6:19 PM EDT

    “I think anyone who wants to make a difference should consider becoming a PIF."

    The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during focused “tours of duty” on solutions that can deliver game-changing results within just six months. This "Meet a PIF" series features members of the first class of PIFs.

    John Paul Farmer:  Kara, you were the user experience guru on the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) MyUSA team – tell us about yourself.   

    Kara Defrias: Originally from New Jersey, but have been living in San Diego for a while now. My undergrad was Theatre and English education. For grad school, I studied instructional design, which is about creating tools that companies use to train their employees.  That went well with my career at the time in the insurance industry, and it continues to serve me well today, whether through my work with the TurboTax web team on improving the user experience to make it easier for people to do their taxes, or in creating Design for Delight ideation sessions, which focus on identifying user-experience pain points in business systems and figuring out a way to delight customers with a solution.

    John: What drives you in your creative work?

    My career has brought me to exciting places – though, interestingly, never into government until becoming a PIF. Memorable moments include watching the cast of Chicago rehearse when I worked on the post production team at the Oscars, and feeling the frenetic energy of the crowd while standing on the field when I was a production coordinator for Super Bowl XXXVII. The most rewarding work, though, is anytime I get to be part of something that helps make a difference—whether it's doing pro-bono work with non-profits like Team Rubicon or inspiring people to make a difference in their world by curating an eclectic collection of speakers when I produce TEDx shows.

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  • Creating What You Can Imagine, Changing the World

    Posted by Lauren Andersen on March 1, 2013 at 5:26 PM EDT

    Girls Engineering Day 2013

    Dot Harris, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity meets with students at Argonne National Laboratory’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (Photo by Argonne National Laboratory)

    As we celebrate the historic accomplishments of women during Women’s History Month, there is no better time to engage and empower the next generation of girls to rise up as leaders of our democracy and economy.

    In that spirit, last week, schools, companies, universities, and National Labs across the country engaged in a range of activities aimed at getting girls excited about classes and careers in the field of engineering—all part of the 13th annual “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day.”

    Women today earn only 18 percent of the America’s undergraduate degrees in engineering—a disparity that suggests the Nation is not taking full advantage of the spectrum of creative energy that could be applied to this important field. To help correct this imbalance, the Administration and a wide range of collaborators in the private sector have been working to spark girls’ interest in the engineering disciplines, which have contributed so much to our economy overall and to such important sectors as medicine, energy, environmental protection, and national security.

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  • Medicines Patent Pool and ViiV Healthcare Collaborate for Children with HIV

    Posted by Robynn Sturm Steffen on March 1, 2013 at 3:15 PM EDT

    On Wednesday, ViiV Healthcare—a joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Shionogi—announced it would grant a voluntary license to the Medicines Patent Pool to enable low-cost supply of a key pediatric HIV medicine in the 118 countries in which 98.7% of all HIV-positive children reside.  It also announced that promising new pediatric medicines in the ViiV Healthcare product pipeline will also be eligible to be licensed to the Medicines Patent Pool for the same 118 countries, once approved by regulatory agencies.

    The Medicines Patent Pool is a UN-backed initiative that negotiates voluntary licenses based on a public health perspective and creates a pool of relevant patents to enable the manufacture and sale of generic medicines in developing countries. Voluntary licenses like the one announced this week play an important role in making affordable HIV medicines available in developing countries and stimulating innovation for those markets. That’s why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) became the first entity to share patents with the Medicines Patent Pool in 2010 and why President Obama joined other leaders of the G8 in encouraging other patent owners—public and private—to follow suit. 

    To learn more about the 3.4 million infants and children currently living with HIV and the full breadth of activities underway to promote public-private partnerships to address their unique needs, please visit the PEPFAR blog.

    Robynn Sturm Steffen is Senior Advisor to the Deputy Director for Policy at OSTP

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  • Meet a PIF: Henry Wei

    Posted by John Paul Farmer on February 26, 2013 at 7:00 PM EDT

    “My initial impression of the other PIFs was ‘holy cow, these folks can get things done like you wouldn't believe.’”

    The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during focused “tours of duty” on solutions that can deliver game-changing results within just six months. This "Meet a PIF" series features members of the first class of PIFs.

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  • Taking Action for a Stronger, Smarter, Cleaner Electric Grid

    Posted by Nick Sinai and Rick Duke on February 26, 2013 at 9:25 AM EDT

    Today, the Obama Administration’s National Science and Technology Council released A Policy Framework for the 21st Century Grid: A Progress Report—an update highlighting the Administration’s most recent achievements to make the Nation’s electric grid stronger, smarter, and cleaner than ever before.

    In his State of the Union address this month, President Obama recognized that “no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy.” As part of his plan to grow the economy and create middle class jobs, the President called for continued investment in infrastructure, including “self-healing power grids.” In the same address, he also warned against ignoring the “overwhelming judgment of science” that the threat of climate change is real and demands attention. These two calls to action—each independently important to our country’s future—intersect at the Nation’s electric system.

    To date, the Obama Administration has taken a number of important steps to help the Nation prevent and recover quickly from power outages, including by working closely with industry partners to upgrade the electric system with “smart grid” technologies that can detect and prevent outages, improve system efficiency, and better integrate clean energy sources. While we’ve come a long way, recent extreme weather events have reinforced the reality that our work is not done. Many Americans suffered power loss during the spate of strong storms, droughts, and record high temperatures of the past year—all of which, to varying degrees, threatened the operation of the Nation’s electric grid. We can do better.

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