[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PART I:
OVERVIEW AND OVERSIGHT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 9, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-07
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
BILL POSEY, Florida ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky AMI BERA, California
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia JERRY MCNERNEY, California
GARY PALMER, Alabama ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia PAUL TONKO, New York
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana BILL FOSTER, Illinois
DRAIN LaHOOD, Illinois MARK TAKANO, California
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
JIM BANKS, Indiana CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana AMI BERA, California
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
JIM BANKS, Indiana EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
C O N T E N T S
March 9, 2017
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Barbara Comstock, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 4
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 8
Written Statement............................................ 10
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 12
Written Statement............................................ 14
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 16
Written Statement............................................ 18
Witnesses
Dr. France Cordova, Director, National Science Foundation (NSF)
Oral Statement............................................... 20
Written Statement............................................ 22
Ms. Allison Lerner, Inspector General, National Science
Foundation (NSF)
Oral Statement............................................... 29
Written Statement............................................ 31
Discussion....................................................... 41
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. France Cordova, Director, National Science Foundation (NSF).. 58
Ms. Allison Lerner, Inspector General, National Science
Foundation (NSF)............................................... 70
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Report and video link submitted by Dr. France Cordova, Director,
National Science Foundation (NSF).............................. 130
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PART I:
OVERVIEW AND OVERSIGHT
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2017
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:03 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Barbara
Comstock [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairwoman Comstock. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is
authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time.
Welcome and good morning. I want to welcome a local class
from Paul VI. Thank you for joining us today. They're here for
their government day, and I imagine some of them might live in
my colleague's district also, but a northern Virginia school
with a lot of folks I know there. So great to have you here
today.
Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing, which is
entitled ``National Science Foundation Part 1: Overview and
Oversight.'' I now recognize myself for five minutes for an
opening statement.
My district in Virginia is home to many research and
technology companies on the forefront of technological
innovation, so I'm very pleased that we're able to have this
opportunity in this Committee. The innovative products and
services they offer are often the end result of taxpayer-
supported research conducted at universities and research
laboratories.
The National Science Foundation is the primary source of
federal funding for nonmedical basic research. NSF funds 12,000
competitive grants a year and supports the work of over 375,000
scientists, engineers, educators, and students across the
country.
Basic and fundamental research is about good jobs and a
secure future. Americans face enormous challenges, and NSF has
a role to play in helping address them. Through research and
activities supported by the NSF, we have the opportunity to
boost our economy, enhance our national security, strengthen
our cybersecurity infrastructure, and create a STEM-job-
pipeline-ready workforce.
The purpose of today's hearing is to provide an overview of
the National Science Foundation's research and STEM education
portfolio and priorities, and to update the Committee on
oversight matters. In January, the American Innovation and
Competitiveness Act was signed into law, a bill that
reauthorized many of the activities at NSF and reformed
programs to maximize the nation's investment in research.
I am proud that the bipartisan law resulted from the work
my Subcommittee and this Committee conducted last Congress, and
I'm pleased that a bill I sponsored, the Research and
Development Efficiency Act, who I worked with my colleague here
Mr. Lipinski on, was included, which will help reduce the
regulatory burden on scientists and universities. This bill
also included a number of provisions to improve the
coordination of STEM education programs across the federal
government and promote inclusion in the STEM fields.
Last week, the President signed into law two additional
STEM-related bills, which originated with this Committee, that
will help the next generation of young women have greater
opportunities to pursue careers in the STEM fields that are
central to our 21st century economy. We had the INSPIRE Act,
which authorizes NASA to encourage young women to study the
STEM fields and to pursue careers that will further advance
America's space missions. And the other bill was the Promoting
Women in Entrepreneurship Act, which was authored by my
colleague Ms. Esty, which promotes women and jobs in STEM
fields through the NSF. And we are pleased to have finally
gotten those through the Senate because we passed them last
Congress but they didn't make it through the Senate, so I am
glad we were able to move forward with those.
Dr. Cordova, I look forward working together on these
efforts, and particularly in STEM and cybersecurity. And, Ms.
Lerner, I also greatly value the work of the Office of
Inspector General. Your work and recommendations have led to
millions of dollars saved, protecting the taxpayers' investment
in research. I look forward to hearing more from both of you
about your priorities for the coming year and about how we can
work together to maintain our nation's leadership in
innovation.
I know we all have innovative STEM initiatives in our
districts that provide models for others. I just wanted to
mention a few that I have had and recently visited in my
district. K2M, which is a medical device company, has an
Innovation Challenge Program that they're working on with their
local schools. They're getting young people in ninth grade to
have a semester-long program working with them and mentoring
them; they pair up with somebody at the company to find out
more about the engineering field of medical device technology.
They particularly work on scoliosis and the sort of hardware
that helps medically deal with that problem.
I have VISA, who is partnered with Women in Technology and
the STEM for Her program, which are putting on programs in my
district, specifically designed for young women to get engaged
in STEM subjects.
So I encourage other members of this Committee to take
these opportunities and all the opportunities that you all are
providing through your good work to make sure we're getting all
these programs out to our young people. And again, I'm pleased
that we have a group of our young people here for this
appropriate hearing for you.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Comstock follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. And with that, I look forward to
hearing the testimonies of our guests, and I now recognize the
Ranking Member, the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski, for
an opening statement.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And welcome to
our distinguished panel. I'm glad we're having this hearing to
get an update on the important work that's being done at the
National Science Foundation. I want to thank Dr. Cordova for
her leadership at the Foundation. A few weeks ago, we had a
number of NSF grant recipients here, and we had a chance to
hear about and see some of the breakthrough research and
innovations. This was only a small sample but a great
demonstration of the excellent work facilitated by funding from
the NSF.
The federal government is uniquely positioned to fund
world-class research, especially high-risk, high-reward
research that leads to transformative discoveries and
innovations that drive our economy forward. In doing so, the
National Science Foundation plays a vital role not only
advancing the U.S. scientific enterprise but also in shoring up
our nation's ability to compete in an increasingly technology-
driven and dynamic global economy.
Funding for NSF has not been what I would like to have seen
in recent years. I think many of my colleagues agree. This
Committee needs to push to make NSF funding a priority in this
Congress as we face possible significant budget cuts. While we
do this, we also need to make sure that NSF does the most
possible with limited resources, and we'll get to some of that
in today's hearing.
I believe it's also important that Congress does not make
the mistake of changing the funding priorities of the
scientists at the NSF. The social sciences in particular make
key contributions to critical national and global challenges.
You've heard this from me many times before, but it's worth
repeating. Social scientists are showing us the human factors
involved in developing effective cybersecurity. This Committee
is working on strengthening cybersecurity in the federal
government, and we need the input of social scientists to do
this.
Additionally, NSF-funded social science research into
cross-cultural nonverbal communication, which was presented to
this Committee in 2011, helped the Army improve the way it
trains its soldiers and lessen conflicts with foreign citizens.
These are just a few examples of the value of social science
research, which is only a small but very important portion of
the NSF budget.
Regardless of the field of research, the work at the NSF
does not stop at the laboratory bench. Programs like the NSF
Innovation Corps or I-Corps and the SBIR STTR program aim to
help scientists bring NSF-funded research to market. I-Corps
provides researchers with the education, mentoring, and
networking necessary to begin the process of commercializing
their research. And SBIR STTR provides funding to help small
businesses transition NSF innovations to commercial products. I
was proud to help lead the effort to authorize the I-Corps
program in the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act
which passed last Congress and was signed into law in January.
I am also a strong supporter of the SBIR.
As we review the important work going on at the NSF, I'd
like to hear about NSF's plans for participation in the
interagency working group on research regulation establishing
the AICA legislation, as the Chairwoman mentioned. It doesn't
make sense for eminent scientists to be spending 42 percent of
their time complying with federal research regulations. I have
been a champion of this issue for years and was glad to see
some of the language from the bill I introduced last Congress
incorporated in the AICA.
I look forward to hearing about the progress NSF has made
in implementing a number of provisions of the AICA that address
management challenges that have been the topic of hearings
before this Committee. I'm confident that NSF will take the
necessary steps to implement the policy changes in the law.
This hearing is a good opportunity to check in and see how
things are going, although I know it's very early.
Finally, I was pleased to learn that the NSF has made
significant progress in increasing accountability in its
management of large research facilities, lowering the cost of
Intergovernmental Personnel Act appointments for rotating
staff, and preventing research misconduct. I'm eager to learn
more about how the agency is protecting our investment in
research in these areas.
Thank you again to Dr. Cordova and Ms. Lerner for being
here. I look forward to your testimony, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. And I now recognize the Chairman of
the full Committee, Mr. Smith, for his statement.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
For nearly 70 years, the National Science Foundation has
served as the basis of taxpayer-funded basic research. Since
its creation in 1950, NSF's mission has been to promote
fundamental scientific discovery in the national interest,
which helps make the United States a world leader in knowledge
and innovation.
Our challenge this year is to set funding priorities that
ensure America remains a leader in the global marketplace of
ideas and products, while also recognizing budgetary limits. A
full reauthorization of the science agencies under our
jurisdiction, including NSF, will allow us to rebalance
priorities and ensure that our nation's science agencies are on
a trajectory to keep America at the forefront of scientific
knowledge and discovery.
The Committee finished last year by completing work on the
American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, which reauthorized
some of NSF's activities. These include STEM education
initiatives, entrepreneurship programs, the BRAIN Initiative,
and others. In fact, on January 6, it was the last bill signed
into law for the 114th Congress.
The new law also reforms federal science agency programs to
increase the impact of taxpayer-funded research. It improves
accountability and transparency, reduces administrative burden
on researchers, enhances agency oversight, and improves
research coordination.
I want to recognize Dr. Cordova for the steps NSF has taken
to improve accountability over the last two years.
In the past, I have been critical of NSF for funding of too
many projects that seem marginal or frivolous. My concern is
that low-risk, low-priority projects detract from investments
into groundbreaking research that includes biology, physics,
computer science and engineering.
The new law makes permanent and enhances NSF's transparency
and accountability policy so that it describes in nontechnical
terms the research projects it funds. The law also improves the
NSF grant-making process. It affirms that research funded
through the merit-review selection process must be in the
national interest by meeting one of seven broader impact goals.
These goals include increasing economic competitiveness,
enhancing the health and welfare of the American public,
developing a STEM workforce, and supporting the national
defense. I hope these reforms will prevent future cost overruns
and the use of taxpayer funds for the wrong ideas and subjects.
I look forward to hearing from Dr. Cordova and Ms. Lerner
about how the implementation of these reforms is proceeding and
about the progress the NSF has made to be more accountable to
taxpayers. I believe there has been noticeable improvement, but
oversight challenges remain.
The Inspector General's last report to Congress identified
several areas in need of improvement or monitoring. These
include NSF's management of rotator personnel; the Foundation's
move to a new headquarters building in Alexandria, Virginia;
NSF's management of the U.S. Antarctic Program; and its efforts
to improve grant administration and encourage ethical conduct
in research. I look forward to hearing more about these
challenges and how we can work together to address them.
Finally, I want to acknowledge that, last week, President
Trump signed into law two bipartisan Science Committee bills to
promote the role of women in science: the INSPIRE Women Act,
sponsored by Chairwoman Comstock; and the Promoting Women in
Entrepreneurship, sponsored by Ms. Esty. These laws enable more
talented young women to pursue their dreams and change the
world with their ideas. NSF's support for groundbreaking basic
research and STEM education can greatly help in making America
prosperous.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and yield back.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I now recognize the Ranking Member of the full
Committee for a statement, Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, and thank you, Ms.--
Chairwoman Comstock and Ranking Member Lipinski, for holding
this hearing. And I welcome back to our distinguished witnesses
Dr. Cordova and Ms. Lerner.
This hearing is an opportunity to introduce some of our new
Members to the mission and operations of the National Science
Foundation and to review progress on some longstanding
oversight issues.
The National Science Foundation was established by Congress
in 1950 to promote the progress of science. Those very words
are written into the enabling and enacted legislation. For more
than six decades, America's scientists and engineers have been
submitting their best and most creative ideas to the Foundation
for funding. For more than six decades, the Foundation has
required that every one of those proposals undergo merit review
by scientific peers in order to select and fund the best of the
best. This is the case for all fields of science and
engineering supported by the Foundation, from physics and
biology to Earth systems science to the social, behavioral, and
economic sciences. The enacting legislation also established
NSF to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare and
to secure the national defense.
These words also are central to NSF's mission. The intent
was not that every grant would be required to meet those
particular criteria. The guiding rule of basic research is that
you should not be constrained to a particular path or a
particular application. To be constrained in what research is
pursued is to fail to ask the most fundamental and compelling
questions in science and engineering. To fail to ask the most
fundamental and compelling questions is to miss out on the
truly transformative scientific and technological
breakthroughs. The intent since 1950 has been just that, in the
aggregate.
The taxpayers' investments in NSF would help contribute to
a more secure and prosperous nation, and the record shows that
they certainly have. This is as true for the social and
behavioral sciences as it is for the physics and engineering.
This hearing is the first of two hearings this Committee
will hold before moving legislation to authorize appropriations
for the National Science Foundation and to take a fresh look at
the Foundation's 1950 Organic Act.
While Congress has passed minor amendments to the 1950 act,
the central mission of the Foundation and the Foundation's
reliance on competitive peer review to identify and fund the
best proposals have remained untouched. In short, the 1950 act
has proven remarkably durable and worth preserving.
Over the last few years, we have had vigorous debates in
this Committee about the National Science Foundation's mission
and about the process for selecting and funding the best and
most worthy grant proposals. In the bipartisan American
Innovation and Competitiveness Act signed into law by President
Obama in January, we arrived at a compromise that reaffirmed
the National Science Foundation's gold standard merit review
process, while ensuring transparency and accountability in
their grant decisions. This was a good outcome for U.S. science
and for the taxpayer.
As we consider additional NSF legislation this Congress, I
hope that all of us sitting here behind the dais will truly
listen to the experts sitting before us, and perhaps more
importantly, to the experts across the science and engineering
community who constitute the lifeblood of U.S. innovation and
competitiveness.
Once again, I want to welcome and thank the witnesses
before us today, and I look forward to your testimony and to a
fruitful discussion about NSF's progress on a number of
oversight issues.
And I yield back. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I'll now introduce our
witnesses. Our first witness today is Hon. France Cordova,
Director of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Cordova was
sworn in as Director of the NSF in March 2014. She is President
Emerita of Purdue University where she served as President from
2007 to 2012. From 1993 to 1996, she served as the Chief
Scientist at NASA, and she is the recipient of NASA's highest
honor, the Distinguished Service Medal. Dr. Cordova has a B.A.
from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in physics from the
California Institute of Technology.
Our second witness today is Ms. Allison Lerner, Inspector
General for the National Science Foundation. Before joining NSF
in April 2009, she served in many leadership positions at the
Department of Commerce, including Counsel to the Inspector
General. She has received several national awards for
excellence, and in 2015 was appointed to serve as Vice Chair
for the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and
Efficiency. Ms. Lerner received her law and undergraduate
degrees from the University of Texas.
I now recognize Dr. Cordova for five minutes to present her
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. FRANCE CORDOVA,
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF)
Dr. Cordova. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock, Ranking Member
Lipinski, Chairman Smith, and Ranking Member Johnson, and
Members of the Subcommittee. I'm pleased to speak to you today
about the National Science Foundation.
From our beginning almost 70 years ago, NSF has operated in
concert with the National Science Board under an extraordinary
mandate: to promote the progress of science; to advance the
national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the
national defense.
NSF has an annual budget that is currently $7.5 billion. We
operate as a lean agency with low overhead. Fully 93 percent of
our budget goes to support research and education. Eighty-five
percent of that goes to universities and colleges across the
country, including community colleges, all of it decided by
merit review.
While our annual budget represents just four percent of the
total federal budget for research and development, it accounts
for 1/4 of the total federal support for basic research
conducted at U.S. colleges and universities. In some fields
like computer science we're the predominant support for
academic research. NSF is the only federal agency that funds
fundamental science--high-risk, long-term, curiosity-driven
research--over nearly all fields of science and engineering.
The history of NSF is a history of profound discoveries.
Last year, the first detection on Earth of gravitational waves
were made following NSF's sustained investment for 40 years and
revealing the existence of large binary black holes. We have
funded the research of 223 people who went on to win the Nobel
Prize.
Our mission--to fund high-risk fundamental research--has
yielded significant innovations with tremendous impact; for
example, artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, technologies
integral to the Internet and the iPhone, lifesaving tools and
therapies essential to our nation's hospitals, discoveries that
have had a profound impact on our nation's economy, security,
and health.
NSF's mission requires being responsive to the national
needs and changing landscape of science and engineering, and
this means having the flexibility to continue investing in
fundamental research that creates new knowledge in critical
areas such as cybersecurity. This also means sustained
investment in developing a STEM-capable workforce, which can
adeptly navigate the workplaces of the future. We don't know
where the next groundbreaking discovery will come from, nor who
will make it.
NSF and the National Science Board have worked closely with
Congress, the Office of the Inspector General, the science
community, industry, and outside experts to be responsive to
priority-setting for our programs, to make internal
improvements such as increased transparency and accountability,
and to be focused increasingly on the management of our large,
major user facilities.
The agency works closely with a wide array of partners to
leverage its funding, as shown in this slide.
[Slide.]
Dr. Cordova. NSF recently fashioned a long-term research
agenda to push the boundaries of knowledge in the form of 10
big ideas. It's a powerful vision that will ensure future
generations continue to reap the benefits of fundamental
science research. Investing in this strategic agenda, coupled
with our sustained funding of current core programs, will
ensure that our country leads in discovery, innovation, and
impact.
And speaking of impact, I'd like to close with a short
video that shows but a few of the impacts of NSF's
contributions to society.
[Video shown.]
Dr. Cordova. I think you can see that NSF's mission of
investing in scientific discovery and discoverers bolsters our
economy and security and keeps us a great nation. Thank you.
And I'd be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cordova follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. Now, we'll hear from Ms. Lerner, five
minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MS. ALLISON LERNER,
INSPECTOR GENERAL,
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF)
Ms. Lerner. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock, Ranking Member
Lipinski, Chairman Smith, and Ranking Member Johnson, and
Members of the Subcommittee. As requested, my testimony will
provide an oversight update, discuss continuing management
challenges, and outline the Foundation's progress toward
addressing OIG recommendations.
I will focus on three of NSF's top management challenges:
ensuring accountability over large cooperative agreements, the
management of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act program, and
the need to ensure the ethical conduct of research.
With respect to the first challenge, NSF uses cooperative
agreements to construct its largest and riskiest projects.
Since 2010, my office has issued 28 reports containing more
than 80 recommendations related to NSF's use and management of
cooperative agreements. As a result of this work, NSF has
developed new policies, procedures, and guidance which
represent important steps towards accomplishing the goal of
increased accountability over such projects.
While NSF's actions led to the removal of a significant
deficiency on NSF's monitoring of large cooperative agreements
from the agency's 2016 financial statement audit, the
Foundation's work in this area is ongoing. My testimony will
highlight recommendations related to incurred cost submissions,
earned value management systems, lifecycle cost surveillance,
and management fees, all of which remain open and are critical
to NSF's ability to enhance accountability over its large
facility projects.
Incurred cost submissions provide information that is
critical for adequate stewardship of federal funds. We have
recommended that NSF require these submissions annually for
projects valued at $50 million or more. NSF has developed a
tool to collect expenditure data, which is currently being
tested. When awardees start using this tool, we will evaluate
the data provided and NSF's actions in response to that
information.
We have also recommended that NSF require awardees to
certify their earned value management systems, which provide
critical information about a project's schedule and cost and
validate the data awardees submit to such systems. We are
currently reviewing new guidance NSF has developed to address
these recommendations.
Because our work has identified risk across the lifecycle
of NSF's large facility projects, we recommended that NSF
increase end-to-end cost surveillance for such projects,
including obtaining current cost estimates and ensuring that
awardees' accounting systems can properly handle federal funds.
NSF has developed new policies and procedures to address these
recommendations and has agreed to have a third-party evaluate
their implementation.
With respect to management fees, our audits found that NSF
did not obtain support from awardees to determine the need for
such a fee and did not review the changes--charges awardees
paid using management fee. We have recommended that NSF require
awardees seeking such fee to detail all the sources of revenue.
NSF is revising its management fee policy but has not committed
to implementing this recommendation.
Moving forward, we will examine how NSF is applying its new
policies and procedures for both construction and operations
awards and pay close attention to NSF's actions in response to
new oversight requirements in the American Innovation and
Competitiveness Act. A key contributor to the progress that has
been made in this challenge has been the Stewardship
Collaborative, which was established by OIG and NSF in 2010 as
a collaborative effort to help accomplish the shared mission of
proper stewardship of the taxpayers' investment in science.
The second challenge I will address relates to NSF's use of
temporary personnel under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act.
NSF regularly brings IPAs to NSF under rotational assignments
of up to four years. Since IPAs serve in a temporary capacity,
there is significant turnover in staff at NSF, especially in
executive positions. The Foundation's use of IPAs also comes at
a high cost. In 2015, NSF paid nearly $8.9 million for 27
executive-level IPAs.
Finally, because IPAs remain employees of their home
institutions while at NSF, most come to the Foundation with
known conflicts of interest, which must be identified, managed,
and mitigated. We have made recommendations to reduce costs
associated with IPAs and to strengthen controls over their
conflicts. NSF has begun to take steps to reduce IPA costs and,
among other things, no longer reimburses IPAs for lost
consulting income. Moving forward, we plan to examine NSF's
actions in response to our IPA-related recommendations, as well
as its actions in response to the Competitiveness Act, which
required the Foundation to report on its efforts to reduce IPA
costs.
The third challenge relates to the need to ensure the
ethical conduct of research. Research misconduct, defined as
plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification in proposed or funded
research, damages the scientific enterprise, is a potential use
of--misuse of public funds, and undermines the trust of
citizens in government-funded research. It is therefore crucial
to the integrity of research funded with taxpayer dollars that
NSF-funded scientists adhere to the highest ethical standards.
NSF takes research misconduct seriously and has been responsive
to our recommendations.
My office will continue to utilize the full range of our
audit and investigative resources to exercise robust oversight
of NSF stewardship of federal funds and to safeguard the
integrity of the Foundation's operation. Public trust and
confidence demand the highest level of accountability, and we
look forward to working with NSF management, the National
Science Board, and Congress to achieve this goal.
Thank you, and I am happy to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lerner follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you.
And I now recognize myself for five minutes for questions.
Dr. Cordova, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I'm
very interested in the investments that NSF is making in
cybersecurity research and education, and obviously, we are
seeing that is a growing area where we need to make sure that
our country is on the cutting edge so that we can protect all
of our assets, whether they're financial, military, and
otherwise.
I see there are some more students here, right? Do have
some students here, another group, because we had one earlier?
I wanted to recognize you and thank you. What school are you
all from? Lake Braddock? Oh, great. So they might be yours, Mr.
Beyer's, or some of Mr. Connelly's.
Okay. Great. Well, very nice to have you here.
Cybersecurity is an area you can all study, right? Lots of good
jobs there. Sorry, I'm off track here.
But anything you might be able to tell us on how NSF can
best work with industry to make sure that cyber education
programs match the workforce needs and to make sure that we are
really responding to this, you know, great need and sort of the
crisis we have in having a cyber workforce.
Dr. Cordova. Thank you for your question, Chairwoman
Comstock. Let me take this opportunity to say welcome to the
students, and I hope that eventually you will apply for an NSF
grant.
Cybersecurity and all things cyber is really the theme of
our age. When I was the student's age, we didn't have nearly so
much cyber to utilize and do good things for us, nor to also
pose the kinds of threats that it does today.
We were very pleased to see Congress' interest in some of
the programs that we have like Computer Science for All and our
CyberCore programs. Those are two of them. I just want to say a
couple of words about each. Computer Science for All has the
goal of preparing students for 21st century jobs. NSF has a
plan with other agencies too. We do this through our education
directorate and also our computer directorate to encourage
teacher training in computer science in K-12, and to encourage
all students to take computer science because we think that
this--combined of course with English and reading and
mathematics studies--will make them prepared to do anything.
As a consequence of these programs, NSF is investing in
activities to advance effective teaching and learning of
computer science. We are supporting the design of instructive
materials and scalable and sustainable professional development
models and resources.
We also have a program called CyberCorps, which we do with
a couple of other agencies. We do it with the Department of
Homeland Security and the Office of Personnel Management, and
we work closely to monitor trends in the availability of
positions in government and evolving needs in the preparation
of cybersecurity experts. Every year we hold a jobs fair in
January, and this was well attended by some Congressmen and a
Senator as well. There we hear from agencies across the
government about their needs, and we try to match students who
are prepared to take these jobs with those availabilities.
Those are just some of the indications.
Of course, you mentioned industry, Chairwoman Comstock, and
we have a lot of programs with industry that are very excited
about pioneering new methods of including cybersecurity grants
to go along with their needs for their industries.
Chairwoman Comstock. Great. Now, on another area in terms
of veterans and transitioning them to STEM careers, I wanted to
see how NSF is tracking veterans and the hiring of veterans,
and if you are able to give us--can you add a box to the form
so we know how many veterans are actually getting grants or how
much they're involved in the STEM careers where you're working
with veterans? Do you have an estimate on veterans'
involvement?
Dr. Cordova. I can prepare a better answer for you that
would follow this hearing because I don't know all the details.
I am aware of an event because I've participated in it
where we fund veterans as graduate students and we bring them
to the agency to talk about what they do how they're
transforming their lives. This is a very special Veterans Day
event to see the effect that it's had on graduate students, and
to hear that one time when they were in the desert and looking
up at the stars they decided that when I'm finished with my
assignment I'm going to be an astronomer, that sort of thing.
They are doing all sorts of STEM-related graduate studies. I
know that we have other programs for veterans, and I'll be
happy to supply that information later.
Chairwoman Comstock. Great. Thank you.
And I now recognize Mr. Lipinski for five minutes.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. Dr. Cordova, I just want to--I'm
going to ask a very sort of high-level question, but I think
it's important to understand--for everyone to understand how
the NSF develops--or how the research budget across the
different directorates in the NSF--the offices in NSF is
developed so we all have a good understanding of how the
priorities are established within and across the directorates.
Could you give the thumbnail sketch of that?
Dr. Cordova. There are many, many inputs in setting
research priorities for each of the directorates and for the
agency as a whole. Those inputs can come from Congress itself,
from the White House, and clearly from the science and
engineering communities. The National Academy plays a big role
as well. In some cases they have studies which they call
decadal or ten-year studies that take a year or more to do, and
they set out the priorities for particular fields. We are very
responsive to all the input that we get.
After that, we have to make decisions with the leadership
and the staff about what directions look like they're current,
and that we're getting a lot of input on, to pursue and weigh
what the budget is that we have in order to look for a balance
across the agency to support all fields of STEM engineering.
Because, as I said in my opening remarks, we don't know where
the next discovery will come from, nor who will make it, and so
we want to be sure that we support all of science and
engineering.
Mr. Lipinski. And in regard to--my understanding is there's
much more that is being done now across directorates, across
fields. Is that----
Dr. Cordova. Yes.
Mr. Lipinski. --accurate?
Dr. Cordova. Yes, absolutely. We do a lot of cross-
directorate projects. A good example would be our food, water,
energy systems studies because food, water, and energy are
vital to our economy and the whole globe. Another cross-
directorate initiative would be our Risk and Resilience
Initiative. We have a lot of risks from earthquakes and floods
and hurricanes, all kinds of phenomenon, and we want to be sure
that citizens are prepared enough to perhaps mitigate or
prevent some of these from happening with such devastating
consequences.
I showed a slide of NSF's 10 big ideas, and all of those I
would say represent cross-directorate pursuits of the really
big research areas where we can make an impact on our future.
Mr. Lipinski. And finally, the impact that we see from
research in the social and behavioral sciences--I know that's
something, as you know, that I have often talked about here
because the importance--even though it's a very small part of
the NSF budget. Are there any of the--are there any grand
challenges in social and behavioral sciences that you can talk
about here?
Dr. Cordova. Well, I think we saw in the video a whole lot
of them to do with national security. In any endeavor where
there are people involved, either as individuals or as groups,
the social sciences become very important. So cybersecurity has
already been mentioned a number of times this morning, and I
know you've had hearings on cybersecurity and you've learned
that--we've all learned that much of our cybersecurity depends
on individuals and their responses to make us secure.
I can't think of a sphere of human endeavor that doesn't
really need social sciences to inform it. One of our big ideas
is called the Human Technology Frontier. We know that, as we're
speaking, that life is changing, the way that we work and we
play, how we educate ourselves. It is changing because of
technology. How do we confront that technology? How do we shape
it in order to do good for us and to really make it useful and
helpful depends a lot on social sciences and behavioral
studies.
So I think it's actually perhaps one of the most important
things that we invest in because it touches all aspects of our
lives.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I now recognize Mr.
Abraham, the Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee, for five
minutes.
Mr. Abraham. Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the witnesses
for being here.
I'm a physician by trade, and when I read a journal or a
scientific article, unfortunately, the first thing I go to is
the author and the research, whether he or she has in the past
given a reliable data, and it goes back to our research
integrity that, Ms. Lerner, you referenced that over the last
four years there's been 175 cases of misconduct in NSF
researchers, and that is a major concern because we base policy
on this research.
My question is what recommendations have you made to the
Secretary as to trying to clean up this research integrity or
lack thereof?
Ms. Lerner. Thank you, sir. Each time our office conducts
an investigation into research misconduct and determines that
there actually was research misconduct, we make recommendations
to the foundation to try to protect its interest. Depending on
the magnitude of the problem, the recommendations can range
from requiring the individuals when they submit future
applications to certify and ensure to NSF that they are not
plagiarizing or falsifying or fabricating data. That can
include requiring taking training and----
Mr. Abraham. So I assume the last four years----
Ms. Lerner. --responsible conduct of research----
Mr. Abraham. --you have made 75 recommendations?
Ms. Lerner. Yes.
Mr. Abraham. Now----
Ms. Lerner. And sometimes----
Mr. Abraham. --how many of those have been actually done?
Ms. Lerner. The agency has a very strong track record of
affirming our----
Mr. Abraham. Good.
Ms. Lerner. --recommendations, including debarring some of
the worst offenders from receiving federal funding.
Mr. Abraham. Doctor, do you want to comment or----
Dr. Cordova. We take this incredibly seriously. In fact,
Ms. Lerner and I meet every month, at least once a month, and
the very first thing we do is look at these research misconduct
examples and say how well we're doing in responding to the
recommendations.
Let me also just give a point of view from being a past
President of two universities that at the university this is
also taken----
Mr. Abraham. Oh, I think it would be.
Dr. Cordova. --incredibly seriously. So we work in concert
with the universities, as Ms. Lerner knows well, in order to
make the punishment fit the crime if you know what I mean.
Mr. Abraham. I do----
Dr. Cordova. We have to be careful there.
Mr. Abraham. And I appreciate that perspective because it's
not only in the NSF. It's unfortunately across all scientific
borders. But again, because we are responsible for funding, it
becomes a point of accountability.
So that'll transition us somewhat to the STEM discussion
that is so important. We have students here. And we know the
federal government for decades has been involved in STEM
research, but unfortunately, we on the STEM side for our
students seem to be falling further and further behind. We know
private industry needs them, we know government needs a STEM
student to step up and take the baton and do great things, as
you mentioned in your video.
So my question to you, Doc, is, how can we assure the
public that hopefully is listening to some of this that their
investment in the NSF first in research is actually going to
work?
Dr. Cordova. We are almost unique among agencies in really
tying the research very closely with our educational mission.
So that mission is really to encourage STEM education and
development of a STEM workforce. We have--we spend over $1
billion a year on the educational mission, and we have programs
in graduate school, undergraduate, K-12, teacher training
programs, curriculum development programs in order to encourage
it.
What we really need to do--and that was emphasized in the
two bills that were recently passed----in Women in Science and
Women in Entrepreneurship--is that we need to encourage women
and underrepresented minorities in general to be role models
and to encourage everyone to go into STEM careers.
Just this morning, I read in our NSF News Notes about a
young woman at Stanford University, which is where I was an
undergraduate, who went into a classroom to take a computer
science course, to sit in there and see if she would stay, and
there were only two other women in the class so she didn't stay
in that classroom. And I had exactly the same experience when I
was a student, went to a physics class. I was the only woman in
the class. So it took me a long time to get back into physics.
These things really make a difference when you can see
people who are like yourself, whether they're in the classroom,
whether they're standing in front of you being a teacher or
whether they're in informal learning programs that we have at
museums and elsewhere, on television shows.
Mr. Abraham. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Comstock. Ms. Johnson is recognized for five
minutes.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
Dr. Cordova, over the years there have been a number of
questions about the peer-review process and the National
Science Foundation has been very responsive in holding meetings
and bringing groups in to listen to what processes it's used.
And because of that, I've had hardly any questions recently
about this gold standard, but I would like you to review that a
little bit for the Committee, the process by which you use to
determine the grants that you fund.
Dr. Cordova. Sure. Thank you. I think you all have a
booklet in front of you. If you turn to page six of your
booklet so that in case you forget everything I say here, it's
there. So merit review is just so critical to everything the
NSF does because all of our grants are given through a merit
review process.
And so what does that look like? In short, it means that
every proposal is reviewed by a minimum of three external
people. And usually it's ten or a dozen people. And they're
reviewed first separately, and then those reviewers most often
come together in a panel meeting at NSF headquarters and talk
with each other about the merits of the proposals. The merit
reviewers go through a training course. Now, we have a new
pilot program that has all kinds of things in it to up their
game, to give better feedback to proposers of what--for
example, may not be funded, and how to improve their proposals.
We take this process incredibly seriously. In fact, it was
a surprise to me when I came to NSF that on any given day,
between 200 and 600 visitors, external scientists and
engineers, are coming in through the door, and if you just
happen to come at the wrong time, know that you have to wait a
long time for the elevator as I did this morning to go to these
panel rooms and to talk about the individual proposals. They
give them very serious consideration.
They then make a recommendation to the program officer, who
takes these recommendations from all the proposals and all the
different groups and has then to come up with a balanced
program. That means one that's nonduplicative, that is really
looking, at the national interest, according to the goals of
that program officer's program and the larger goals of the
whole division, and ask does the recommendation make sense in
the context? Then it is the program officers' responsibility to
forward a recommendation, or not, to the division director, who
then signs off on the proposal.
This is a gold standard I have to underline. It has been so
well reviewed. We have committees of visitors, 50 of them in
all different subject matters in any given four-year period who
come in and review the merit-review process itself and make
suggestions for recommendations. It is widely copied by other
countries.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Now, there's a hiring
freeze on. How has this affected you so far or has it at all?
Dr. Cordova. Well, yes, it has affected us, especially
because we're relocating soon. This summer, we're going to
Alexandria where the headquarters will be moved. And so with or
without a hiring freeze there is just a natural attrition that
goes on when you move. Clearly--so that Mr. Beyer is not
worried--we'll have others that come in and want to join NSF
and will find Alexandria the very best place to live and work.
It does put a stress at this particular time because we
have a hiring freeze, and so if we lose people, we can't
backfill them unless they have emergency kinds of positions. So
we do have concern about that.
But we have a good agency. If you looked at the Federal
Employee Viewpoint Survey, you see that we made number 10 among
all medium-size agencies this year on satisfaction of the
workforce. By and large, we're good at holding onto people.
It's a balance. Are we worried? Yes. Are we overly concerned?
No. We're hopeful that we'll get past the hiring freeze and
that we will be able to fill these positions, which are
critical for science and engineering.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. My time is expired.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And actually, since we're
on that topic, just if I can ask a little bit more on that
area. What kind of outreach--because I do have constituents
obviously who are there, too. And what kind of outreach are--is
being done with folks as you have the transition and as people
are maybe making that--if they're coming for my part of the
area, that's a little further commute, so what are you seeing
in terms of expectations?
Dr. Cordova. That's right. I really have to commend the
group, our Office of Information and Resource Management, led
by Joanne Tornow and Brian McDonald and her group in
particular, who leads the relocation effort. The whole team has
just really put a lot of effort into having weekly messages
through our NSF weekly wire to staff to hosting workshops and
open houses in-house. Recently, on Monday, they brought in a
lot of the enterprises from Alexandria like the condos and
restaurants et cetera with all sorts of information so that the
staff could see that.
We have the head of our union here at this hearing, and he
has worked very hard with the union to ensure that the
negotiations go very smoothly over various important things,
and we are just in the last phases of that now. And so I think
the whole thing has gone on with a lot of effort and constant
attention to the staff and their needs and getting to pick out
their offices, their space, and how that looks and so on. I
think it's gone very, very well, and I'm just very, very proud
of NSF. It's a very big deal to move 2,200 people or so, even
if it is just 9 miles away. There's a lot of planning that's
gone into it. It'll take six weeks in fact for us to fully do
that move.
Chairwoman Comstock. Okay. Thank you for letting me address
that, a little bit of a parochial issue. Now, I will also
recognize Mr. Webster for five minutes.
Mr. Webster. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I was interested in what Mr. Abraham said about us spending
lots of money over several decades trying to attract people
into STEM. I guess this would be for Dr. Cordova. And yet we're
always told we're way behind, keep falling further and further
behind. Are there any studies being done to understand what
works and what doesn't work? I mean, we were told here a couple
weeks ago that every time there was a space launch, there would
be lots of people headed towards a career just because of that.
And one person told me, who's a Member of Congress, he was
attracted by Star Wars movies. So I just wondered if there's
any kind of proven way that we can draw new people into STEM
fields?
Dr. Cordova. We have made big investments in trying to
understand this better, and the best way to draw them in is to
first provide access and to make sure that they can see, and
talk with scientists, engineers, and have good curriculum, good
teachers in their classrooms.
We are so concerned, Mr. Webster, with this question that
when I came into the agency, we started a new program called
INCLUDES, NSF INCLUDES. That's an acronym, but it's an acronym
that means what it says. And we are now funding 40 pilot
programs across the nation to try to move the needle in STEM
and have communities of learners. This goes beyond
universities. It extends to community colleges, citizens
groups, mayors, the whole town getting together to address the
particular needs of their communities and how they can bring
all those who have not been exposed to STEM more in touch with
it.
So we do rely on museums and others as part of this
partnership. Every one of these 40 pilot projects is completely
different. They're all over the country. We're studying it and
we're going to be evaluating it very closely because what we're
hoping is that we find programs that scale, that can be
replicated, that are really making a difference. Every program
has a goal and metrics and they're evaluated against that.
We want to ensure at the end of the day that these INCLUDES
programs have done what they said they're going to do. They
broaden the participation of people who have not yet know about
STEM careers and bring them into that fold and then have
something to offer in just the way you're talking about,
lessons learned so that others can replicate those kinds of
programs.
Mr. Webster. So do we profile? I mean, do you profile what
a potential STEM student might look like or be like or act
like?
Dr. Cordova. I think that's impossible.
Mr. Webster. I got an idea. I just thought of one. When I
was at Georgia Tech as a freshman, all of us had to take
composition, and they spotted us a C because we only think out
of the left side of our brain so maybe there's a start, I don't
know. But anyway, go ahead.
Dr. Cordova. Well, I was an English major when I was in
college because people like my parents and friends and teachers
all thought that I would go to college to get married and, you
know, that's a form of profiling, right? And so little did they
know it would be harder to do that than to become a rocket
scientist.
But I then discovered actually through television, public
television, a show on stars, just like you're saying, you bring
people to Florida to watch the space program. I saw the
astronauts land on the moon. That was transformative. I saw
scientists from MIT talk about dropping marshmallows onto a
neutron star, hypothetical marshmallows onto a neutron star and
how much energy that would liberate. And I said, wow, that
really speaks to me. I've got to do that.
I was the most unlikely person to become a scientist
according to anybody around me growing up, but it happened. And
it happens because people have those moments of inspiration
that really touch them and speak to them, and then they say
there's nothing stopping them and they find the pathway.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And thank you for your
passion on that. I met a young student who had scored perfectly
on all of his science and he was about 15, 16. He had taken all
of these advanced tests already, so being a grandmother I did
ask him, was there anything in particular you did or that your
mom did? She said watching Little Einstein is what captured his
imagination in science and STEM. So my granddaughter now is a
big fan at two years old of the Little Einstein show. I think
that goes to also capturing children's imagination at a very
young age and having programs in school on STEM education, that
they don't lose them in that elementary age transitioning into
junior high, too. So sorry I'm editorializing along here.
But now let me recognize Ms. Bonamici for five minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Ranking
Member Lipinski, and thank you to our witnesses.
And I'm so glad we're having this conversation. I'm just
going to follow up on this briefly. And I'm glad the students
are here as well.
I also serve on the Education Committee--Education and
Workforce Committee, and I'm the founder and the co-Chair of
the bipartisan STEAM Caucus. And STEAM integrates arts and
design into STEM learning. It is not detract from it. It
enhances it. And we've seen the benefits of STEAM in schools
that are using that approach. It's hands-on learning, things
like makerspaces, integrating arts and design into STEM
learning. It has a lot of benefits.
You mentioned left brain. It engages more students. It also
educates both halves of the brain and results in more creative
students who are better communicators. And I think your English
degree probably has something to do with the fact that you are
a great communicator today. There is research that shows that
the Nobel Laureates in sciences are much more likely to be
engaged in arts and crafts in their spare activity than other
scientists, and they're--the brain research is there to support
this as well.
We have model STEAM schools across the country, and I
encourage all of my colleagues on this Committee to join the
bipartisan STEAM caucus and learn more about the benefits of
STEAM.
Dr. Cordova, you outlined the critical ways that the NSF
supports research at universities. Oregon State University in
my home State is one example. They've really leveraged NSF
funding, particularly geoscientists directorate, funding to
study the oceans' primary production and food web, as well as
to study the coastal impacts of the 2015, '16 El Nino and the
consequences for coastal flooding and ongoing beach erosion. So
these studies and discoveries are critical not only for coastal
communities but also for our global ocean health and food
supply.
And I know NSF is a critical funder of basic research in
ocean sciences, along with NOAA, but NSF is critical. That
research is supported from within the geosciences directorate,
which we know has often been the target of attempted cuts. So
can you please discuss the importance of those investments to
our economic and national security? And I think I'll have time
for another question as well.
Dr. Cordova. First of all, can I just make a STEAM
comment----
Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely.
Dr. Cordova. --because of students here?
Ms. Bonamici. You're welcome to.
Dr. Cordova. Those iPhones or whatever kind of smartphones
that you have, students, are the result of a STEAM-like
approach----
Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely.
Dr. Cordova. They have incredible technologies, all of
them, interestingly first funded by the federal government to
people in universities, including like the lithium iodide
battery and the touchscreens and the microprocessors and all.
And GPS of course. Somebody like Steve Jobs and company put all
that together with an eye towards very creative design, and
then we have something that's amazingly useful and creative to
use. So----
Ms. Bonamici. That's a great example.
Dr. Cordova. Yes. So on ocean science, yes, of course.
Seventy-some percent of the planet is covered by oceans, and
it's vital to life. It may have been the source of life on this
planet, the beginnings of it itself. It's important for
transportation and it's important for the health of our food
supply. We, you know, eat fish. We have lots of plants that
grow in the ocean.
The science that can be yielded by understanding with our
ships, our vessels, our explorers in the oceans, understanding
the life in the ocean and the health of the ocean is just so
important to our own health and to jobs and to national
security and as well as our own security of our coastal
communities and so forth.
So it's just very, very important that we have good
monitoring of our oceans.
Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely.
Dr. Cordova. Yes.
Ms. Bonamici. I want to get another question in. I'm sorry.
I don't mean to interrupt. But NSF has proposed to build a new
regional class of research vessel as a cutting-edge platform
for scientists to address ocean science questions that are a
priority of the National Academies decadal report for ocean
sciences. And it's my understanding that the project is on hold
because we're operating under a partial fiscal year 2017
continuing resolution. So if Congress approves these vessels,
how will they contribute to the advancement of ocean sciences?
Dr. Cordova. Yes. Everything is still going along as you
know, with Oregon State University's leadership, and they will
make a recommendation in another month or two about shipyard
selection and so forth. Our fleet is aging, and it just simply
must be replaced. These vessels have the newest kinds of
technologies, and we can actually have fewer ships. The end
goal by 2022 is to have something like 15 vessels instead of 18
in the academic research fleet, and that's much more than just
NSF. But these RCRVs, research-class research vessels, are
integral to that because they do have more technology; they can
do more science on them, be more efficient. They can replace
the old ships, and we can retire more ships and utilize those
with all the latest science.
Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. Well, we support efficiency. So
thank you very much, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize
Chairman Smith for five minutes.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And, Dr. Cordova, let me address a couple questions to you.
The first one is I want to thank you for doing your best to
implement the national interest standard that we've discussed
over the last couple of years. But my question is how are you
going to enforce that national interest goal on a grant-by-
grant case? What are you doing individually?
Dr. Cordova. So we have the criteria, as you know,
intellectual merit and the broader impact criteria, and this
feeds into broader impacts, of course. And we are asking all of
our proposers to, in their abstracts, which we now require a
nontechnical abstract as well as the----
Chairman Smith. Right.
Dr. Cordova. --technical abstracts that are sometimes a
little harder for the public to understand. The nontechnical
abstract should say what is the importance of this project and
which of those many things----
Chairman Smith. Right.
Dr. Cordova. --that you mentioned earlier does it address?
Chairman Smith. And each individual grant applicant gets
that guideline, right?
Dr. Cordova. Gets that guideline, yes.
Chairman Smith. Okay. And then their grant is evaluated by
another individual, and that individual is looking to make sure
that standard is met, right?
Dr. Cordova. The general answer is yes. The person who has
the particular responsibility is the program officer. Those
program officers are our staff and they have the training.
Chairman Smith. Do you have any metrics yet as to how many
grants have succeeded in meeting that standard and how many
have not?
Dr. Cordova. No.
Chairman Smith. Just in general. I'm just wondering if----
Dr. Cordova. Yes. Well, we have been looking with these
corrective lenses that you've given us if you call it that
since January of the past year, not this year but last year,
and so, we are doing what we said we were going to do. And we--
in order to be recommended to--remember that only 1/5 of the
proposals we get--we get 50,000 proposals a year. We can only
fund one out of every five of them at most: those that go up
for recommendation to the division leader----
Chairman Smith. Right.
Dr. Cordova. That's the kind of thing that would be looked
at. I have a person, as I have promised, in my office--his name
is Jim Hamos--who works closely with the process and what the
guidelines are, and are they being followed, and watches that
in a general sense. But we certainly believe, because they go
up to the division leaders, who are also trained and are
educated about how important this is----
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Dr. Cordova. --that they wouldn't go up without that being
apart of it. And a proposal can go back to the proposer for
corrections, and we do that all the time just so you know,
Chairman Smith, that the title is not clear. It doesn't make
sense. The abstract doesn't make sense. You haven't addressed
this, you haven't addressed that. And ultimately, we've given
the program officer the wherewithal to--if it still is not
coming back in a good form----
Chairman Smith. Right.
Dr. Cordova. --for the public to review, that the program
officer, that's his or her responsibility.
Chairman Smith. All right. Thank you for that. In regard to
the occasional--though I understand they may be increasing--
research misconduct and fraud, what are you doing to try to
correct that prospectively?
Dr. Cordova. Well, there are official standards about
research misconduct and plagiarism and falsification of data,
and we are working--you know that most of our grantees are
universities and colleges, say 85 percent of them, so we work
closely with them. We make sure that they know what the law is
and what the guidelines are----
Chairman Smith. Right. If I could----
Dr. Cordova. --and then they're judged against them.
Chairman Smith. If I can interrupt you just real quickly--
--
Dr. Cordova. Yes.
Chairman Smith. --because I don't know the answer to this
question. Are there any sanctions to be imposed on individuals
who might----
Dr. Cordova. Oh, yes.
Chairman Smith. --engage in fraud?
Dr. Cordova. Oh, absolutely.
Chairman Smith. What are the sanctions other than denial of
a grant or something?
Dr. Cordova. Well, there's a full spectrum of sanctions,
and Ms. Lerner can give you more detail on that. They go all
the way from not letting the person submit grants for a few
years to debarment. Sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, the
punishment has to fit the crime, so if you forget quote marks
but you do have the reference there, that is different than
intentionally copying something and not giving credit.
Chairman Smith. Madam Chairwoman, could I have an
additional 30 seconds only real quickly for a last question,
and this is in regard to dyslexia funding. Not everybody on the
Committee may know it, but NSF is spending $2.5 million a year.
And I just wonder what you envision the next steps to be in
research that will benefit those with dyslexia?
Dr. Cordova. Yes, I'm glad you asked that. It's part of the
READ act. As you know, that's mostly in our 2017 budget, which
is on a continuing resolution. Ahead of that that we have been
funding the good proposals that we get on dyslexia. I just made
a trip to Florida State University to see the MagLab there this
week and had a really good talk with their dyslexia folks
there.
The challenges for NSF are to find out what its particular
role in dyslexia research should be, and that should be very
upstream. It should be the fundamental research because we have
the National Institute of Child Health Care and Development
that funds a lot of research on learning disabilities, and
there's also an institute in the Department of Education. The
NSF wants to do something where nobody else is touching it in
this space.
So to answer your question, Chairman Smith, I think that we
need to bring to D.C. in the fall a workshop in which I hope
that you will give a keynote and bring together the scholars
and workers in this field and talk about what should be NSF's
special contribution in this area.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Cordova.
Chairwoman Comstock. Excellent. Thank you. I now recognize
Mr. Beyer for five minutes.
Mr. Beyer. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, very much.
I often find myself offering respectful disagreement with
my Chairman, so I'd like to heap praise on him for his
leadership on the dyslexia issue, so thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The--Ms. Lerner, you expressed concern about the increase
in the number of IPAs in the executive-level positions and the
fact that it's--that they're significantly more expensive
because they're paid at the rate of the university, and that
it's gone from 20 in 2009 up to 29 in 2016. And it's like seven
out of nine of the senior-level positions and--what's the right
balance? How do we figure out how many should be long-term
permanent government employees at the GS-type rates and how
many should be IPAs pulled from the university?
Ms. Lerner. Thank you. Striking the balance is more of the
agency's call than mine. I would point out in making the
determination as to how to strike that balance you certainly
need to consider the strengths and the bench expertise that
scientists who have ongoing research practices bring to the
Foundation and to the merit-review process, but you have to
balance that against the costs and the fact that those costs
are paid for out of research funding. So I would defer to the
agency in determining what the right number is, but I think you
certainly have to consider both the good and the challenge that
comes with the IPAs when you do that.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you. Shifting to the Chairman's question
about fraud, plagiarism, things like that, I know that 175
cases over four years with 12,000 grants a year is a little
more than 3 cases per 1,000 grants, which I would argue is
actually better than our ethical record in the U.S. House. But
it's up from where we used to be. So, Dr. Cordova, why do you
think that's increasing?
Dr. Cordova. That's because of the talented Ms. Lerner in
her group one could say. Why do we find more cancer? Got better
analytical tools. So that certainly could have a bearing on it.
Mr. Beyer. Okay. So it's not necessarily that there is more
but it's just we're discovering more.
And, Ms. Lerner, in her long testimony, talked about the
big four things she was concerned about and, you know, one by
one, number one was incurred cost submissions, awaiting on OMB
approval, earned value management systems. You guys have begun
validating inputs, end-to-end cost surveillance, third-party
evaluation by September 30. Everything looks very responsive on
the part of leadership's part. The one question you said that
was--the National Science Foundation indicated it will be
revising its management fee policies but has not committed to
requiring awardees to report on other sources of revenue. And,
Dr. Cordova, why have--why is that a hurdle, the notion of
asking your grantees to report on other sources of revenue with
respect to management fees?
Dr. Cordova. I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer
that so I'll get you a more complete answer after this.
We did make changes in the management fee policy--I'll
start with that--as a result of the NAPA recommendations and
the recommendations of the OIG. I will say that our group in
budget and finance respectively tortured themselves over the
question of management fee and how to do it right and looked at
a lot of other government agencies and how they do it and
adopted the government-wide model of how to handle management
fees with the one added change that we do have a list of things
that our management entities should not do with the fees.
Asking the kinds of questions that you just said and close
monitoring of it, we don't really have the workforce to do this
because once you say you're going to do something and monitor
it, then you actually have to be responsive to that,
responsible, and continually, you know, do it, and that would
take a kind of workforce, the type--and a number that we simply
don't have. So what we're doing instead are spot checks on
where think that the risk is higher because of the cost of the
project or because of its sensitivity, any number of reasons,
and doing spot checks on utilization of the management fee.
Mr. Beyer. Okay. Great. So--because I think the most
painful hearing we've had yet has been the management fees for
the alcohol in the Christmas parties. Yes.
Dr. Cordova. Well, that's on the no-no list.
Mr. Beyer. Okay. Thank you very much. I yield back, Madam
Chair.
Chairwoman Comstock. I now recognize Ms. Esty for five
minutes.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock and Ranking Member
Lipinski. Thank you again to Ms. Lerner and to my good friend
Dr. Cordova.
I think you can guess where I'm going to be going, Dr.
Cordova, given our shared passion around inclusion in STEM. I
have a STEM Advisory Committee, and we've been working hard to
find ways to encourage underrepresented populations,
particularly girls and children of color, to get them excited.
I know you've talked about the initiatives in NSF, and I do
want to note the President has signed two bipartisan bills, and
both of them or on women in STEM coming out of this Committee,
which I think is a testament that the Chairman and I sponsored
those. And I think that's a testament to the importance of
these provisions.
Chairwoman Comstock. And I owe you a pen. I've got it.
Ms. Esty. Oh, I'll take the pen. Thank you.
So I wanted to ask you a little bit--and this came up in my
STEM Advisory Committee recently with a woman, Kelly Johnson,
who administers STEM grants and who was talking about sort of
the disturbing research that's out there about how early girls
self-identify as not being, quote, ``smart enough'' for math
and science and how also I think you've presented some of this
information of how when MIT changed its course description for
one of its computer science classes to have the subject matter
be around social issues and health issues, they found that the
participation of women in that course skyrocketed to over 50
percent.
Can you talk a little bit about what you--whether you think
NSF has a role and how we could help design curricula in
elementary and middle school that would incorporate that
growing body of knowledge about what tends to get girls more
involved in science and maybe broaden not just experiential
work, as my colleague Ms. Bonamici has talked about, but also
even subject matters of how are you taking these powerful tools
of math and science and applying them to maybe somewhat
different issues, maybe broader issues, clean water in Africa,
health issues in our inner cities. Could you talk a little bit
about that, please?
Dr. Cordova. We do fund development of course curricula in
K-12, and we would welcome proposals that went along those
lines, as a result of your Women in Entrepreneurship--because
it's all related. It goes back to when you're little--that I
think I would be tempted to recommend to my colleagues at NSF
that we issue a dear-colleague letter to encourage the
submission of that kind of curriculum. I think it could truly
make a difference to be exposed those young ages to that kind
of curriculum.
I talked earlier about our INCLUDES program, and that we
funded 40 pilots in the first round, and we have another round
coming up here. That kind of thing would make a wonderful
INCLUDES project, too, and I'm sure there are people listening
who would be inspired to do that.
Ms. Esty. Could you talk a little bit about the scaling up?
I know that the key part of what you're looking at. And how
does NSF propose or what do you think is going to be necessary
once you identify programs that can be scaled up? How are we
going to disseminate that information? Because that's a
question I've been asked a lot. I think there are a lot of
innovative programs around the country and I find even in my
own State of Connecticut, in my own district, people in the
same field don't even know about projects occurring, you know,
two towns away. Do you think--what role do you think NSF or we
can play in helping to disseminate information once we identify
programs that are really working?
Dr. Cordova. Yes. Well, it's on all of us to do that of
course, but we--we've determined that in the INCLUDES program
that we will not only carefully evaluate how these projects are
going but we will also take the best practices. And we are
bringing together periodically the leaders of these programs to
give talks, as they did in January, to each other about how
things are going. We do need to remember that documenting the
results of a study and putting it in the open--in an open
literature, an open website is just incredibly important.
And I know you've mentioned this at our previous hearing,
too. I think that this gives us a new start, having this
INCLUDES program. It's a great place to see how successful we
can be with documenting these programs, putting the lessons
learned on a website so that everybody can learn from the
experiments of others and can extract what's most valuable from
those programs. I think you are really on the leadership edge
of this, Congresswoman Esty, and we can do something so that by
the next hearing I'll have a better answer.
Ms. Esty. Thank you very much, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I thank the witnesses
for their testimony and the Members for their questions. The
record will remain open for two weeks for additional written
comments and written questions from Members.
And again, I thank our witnesses, both of you, for all of
your great work in this very important field and how important
it is and appreciate again the students being here. We did
share the book you gave us today. We shared it with students so
they can bring it back. And I don't know if the students were
here when Dr. Cordova showed the video, but that is also on the
website. So if you'd like to see that and share that with your
other classmates, as well as the book, we hope we will see more
of all of you in the STEM and STEAM fields.
So with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
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Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
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