[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AN OVERVIEW OF
THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
BUDGET PROPOSAL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2019
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 15, 2018
__________
Serial No. 115-53
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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 AMI BERA, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JERRY McNERNEY, California
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia PAUL TONKO, New York
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana BILL FOSTER, Illinois
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida MARK TAKANO, California
JIM BANKS, Indiana COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
C O N T E N T S
March 15, 2018
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 4
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 9
Written Statement............................................ 11
Witnesses:
Dr. France Cordova, Director, National Science Foundation
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Written Statement............................................ 16
Dr. Maria T. Zuber, Chair, National Science Board
Oral Statement............................................... 30
Written Statement............................................ 32
Discussion....................................................... 40
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. France Cordova, Director, National Science Foundation........ 70
Dr. Maria T. Zuber, Chair, National Science Board................ 127
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Prepared statement submitted by Representative Daniel Lipinski,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 130
AN OVERVIEW OF
THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
BUDGET PROPOSAL FOR FISCAL YEAR 2019
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2018
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:06 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Smith. Everybody got quiet very suddenly, but
before that, this was a very happy crowd.
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.
Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing entitled ``An
Overview of the National Science Foundation Budget Proposal for
Fiscal Year 2019.'' And I'll recognize myself for an opening
statement.
Today, we welcome Dr. France Cordova, the Director of the
National Science Foundation, and Dr. Maria Zuber, Chair of the
National Science Board, to testify about the Administration's
budget request and funding priorities for the National Science
Foundation in fiscal year 2019.
Before its creation in 1950, the NSF's mission has been to
promote fundamental scientific discovery. The NSF is the only
federal agency that supports basic research across all
scientific fields, including research in areas like national
security, energy, quantum technology, biotechnology, STEM
education and cybersecurity. Through competitive grants, the
NSF funds more than 360,000 scientists, engineers, and students
across the country. This helps make the United States a world
leader in knowledge and innovation.
The Committee finished the last Congress by completing work
on the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, authorizing
some of the NSF's activities, including work on STEM education
and high-performance computing. The law made permanent
transparency and accountability policies that require the NSF
to describe the research projects it funds in nontechnical
terms. The law also improved the NSF grantmaking process,
affirming that research funded through the merit review
selection process must be in the national interest.
I want to recognize Dr. Cordova for the steps the NSF has
taken to improve accountability over the last three years and
acknowledge Dr. Zuber's work on behalf of the National Science
Board as well.
I have to say that sometimes in the past I have been
critical of the NSF for funding too many projects that seem
marginal or frivolous. When the NSF spent $700,000 on a Climate
Change Musical or $1.5 million to study pasture management in
Mongolia, it reduced investments in projects that could yield
groundbreaking new knowledge and discoveries.
I believe there has certainly been improvement, but
challenges remain. I am concerned that there are too many
projects being funded in the social, behavioral, and economic
sciences that are not worthy of taxpayers' dollars. For
example, in the past year the NSF has spent $310,000 to study
Congressional ``Dear Colleague'' letters, $450,000 to study why
there is no single English word for ``light blue,'' $330,000 to
study cell phone use by Tanzanian women, $138,000 to study
monkey responses to ``inequity and violated expectation,''
$217,000 to document a language spoken in two villages of
northern Pakistan, and $75,000 to ``produce a description of
Maku,'' an extinct Amazon language.
Social-behavioral science can help solve some complex
problems that touch several areas of science. For instance,
protecting computers and computer networks from hackers
requires research in both computer and behavioral science. But
when only one out of five requests for grants is being funded,
there must be priorities. We cannot afford to misspend another
dollar on low-priority or frivolous activities. Simply put, the
NSF should fund useful research over the useless.
China now has the world's fastest supercomputer and has
just passed the United States for the first time to lead the
world in the number and total performance of supercomputers.
China is also making rapid progress in artificial intelligence,
quantum computing, human genome editing, and other crucial
areas of science and technology. Unfortunately, as China leaps
forward, the United States is slowing down investment in key
areas of basic research like physics and computing. This will
not change unless taxpayers' money is better invested.
I also am concerned about whether or not the NSF is
developing its STEM workforce programs to meet the needs of our
economy. The United States continues to lag significantly
behind China and the European Union in science and engineering
bachelor's degrees, with China producing more than twice the
number of STEM undergraduates. In the physical and biological
sciences, China produces four times more undergraduates in
those fields than the United States.
The NSF plays a critical role in helping educate and train
the next generation of STEM workers. We need to invest in young
people who will go into fields where there is a national need
and good-paying jobs.
Now that there is a two-year budget agreement in place, we
have an opportunity to reauthorize the science agencies under
our Committee's jurisdiction, including the NSF, 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.
This Committee has demonstrated that there is broad support
for basic and fundamental research and STEM education. Twenty
of the twenty-two bills the Science, Space, and Technology
Committee has brought to the House Floor this Congress have
been bipartisan pieces of legislation. We are committed to
maintaining America's leadership in science, thereby ensuring
future economic prosperity.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
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Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening statement, and
the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is
recognized for her opening statement.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith, and good
morning. I appreciate you holding this hearing, and I want to
welcome Dr. Cordova and Dr. Zuber. I'm pleased that we have
both of you here this morning to help us understand the fiscal
2019 budget request for the National Science Foundation and the
potential impact of this request on NSF's ability to help
support U.S. leadership in science.
Funding for the National Science Foundation peaked in 2010
at $7.7 billion. In the years since then, the budget has
stagnated at or below $7.5 billion. This is the case despite
the Obama Administration requesting increases each year. In
stark contrast, last year, the Trump Administration proposed to
cut NSF by 11 percent, and this year, until Congress passed the
budget agreement, the proposed cut was closer to 30 percent.
This Administration has demonstrated time and again how little
they value science.
Given these trends, most of us are relieved when the NSF
budget remains flat rather than cut. However, flat is a decline
in real dollars, and it represents a terribly low standard for
which to judge our nation's standing in science and technology.
We will hear in Dr. Zuber's testimony how other countries are
doubling down on their investments in R&D while we're cutting.
Having said that, I applaud Dr. Cordova and your team at
NSF for being as bold and forward-looking as you could be,
given the constraints imposed upon you by the budget of the
White House. I will highlight just a few items of interest or
concern that I hope we can discuss further in the hearing.
Advancing science to solve our national and global
challenges increasingly depends on teams of scientists from
various disciplines coming together in what is now commonly
known as convergent research. However, for generations,
universities and the National Science Foundation itself have
been organized around disciplines. While advances in these core
disciplines do and must continue, this organizational structure
has created stovepipes and inhibited convergent research.
In fiscal year 2019 budget request, NSF takes a big leap to
transcend those traditional boundaries through dedicated
funding for its 10 Big Ideas. In that respect, this is an
exciting budget proposal. However, having been forced into a
zero-sum choice, the agency had to make cuts elsewhere, namely
to the core research programs and to education and training
programs at all levels. These tradeoffs merit further
discussion before we can be comfortable that the benefits
outweigh the potential harm.
This budget also represents the first time that the agency
is singling out one of its research directorates for a
disproportionate cut while every other directorate is nearly
flat. The Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Directorate, or the SBE, would be cut by 11 percent. I do not
doubt this steep cut was dictated from the White House.
However, this ongoing devaluing of the role of SBE in meeting
our national challenges could have damaging consequences. I
look forward to hearing from Dr. Cordova and Dr. Zuber on what
steps NSF will take to mitigate this harm.
I'm pleased to see the Antarctic Infrastructure
Modernization for Science, or AIMS, project in the request,
along with a proposal for a midscale research infrastructure
program. I look forward to hearing more about both of these
proposals.
Finally, as I alluded to earlier, while there are a few
bright spots in education and broadening participation funding,
I am concerned about the overall cuts to education in this
budget. Education and training programs across research
account--would be cut by nearly 25 percent. Proven programs
such as Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, research experiences
for undergraduates, and the graduate research fellowships would
all receive steep cuts. NSF has a dual mission of research and
education. We cannot afford to back away from our commitment to
either one.
I thank you, Dr. Cordova and Dr. Zuber, for being here this
morning to help us examine these issues and concerns in more
detail.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important
hearing, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
Our first witness today is Dr. France Cordova, Director of
the National Science Foundation. Dr. Cordova was sworn in as
Director of the NSF in March 2014. She previously served as
President of Purdue University from 2007 to 2012. From 1993 to
1996, Dr. Cordova 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 Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University
and a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of
Technology.
Joining Director Cordova today to assist in answering
technical questions is Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy, Acting Chief
Operating Officer of the National Science Foundation.
Previously, she led the NSF Education and Human Resources
Directorate and co-chaired the White House National Science and
Technology Council's Federal Coordination and STEM Education
Task Force. Prior to the NSF, she was a Distinguished Professor
of Mathematics Education at Michigan State University. Dr.
Derrini-Mundi holds a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the
University of New Hampshire.
Our second witness today is Dr. Maria Zuber, Chair of the
National Science Board. In 2013, Dr. Zuber was appointed Vice
President for Research at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology where she oversees more than a dozen research
laboratories and centers. Dr. Zuber was awarded the NASA
Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2004, and in 2008, she
was named to the U.S. News' list of ``America's Best Leaders.''
She received a Bachelor of Arts in astronomy from the
University of Pennsylvania, as well as a Master of Science and
Ph.D. both in geophysics from Brown University.
We welcome you all and look forward to your testimony. And
Dr. Cordova, if you'll begin.
TESTIMONY OF DR. FRANCE CORDOVA,
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Dr. Cordova. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member
Johnson, and Members of the Committee. I'm pleased to be here
today to discuss the President's fiscal year 2019 budget
request for the National Science Foundation.
The request is $7.47 billion, level with the fiscal year
2017 appropriation. This level of funding reflects the
Administration's commitment to NSF's role in strengthening the
Nation's economy, national security, and global leadership in
sciences and engineering.
NSF funds basic research that advances and sustains
American preeminence in the innovation economy. NSF accounts
for approximately 27 percent of the total federal budget for
basic research conducted at U.S. colleges and universities. For
computer science, that number is 83 percent. For biology, 69
percent, for engineering, 46 percent. These investments produce
invaluable benefits to our nation and the world.
Economists have noted that over 50 percent of America's
economic growth over the past 50 years is attributable to
technological innovation. Much of it is the fruit of the
uniquely American research and innovation ecosystem among
academia, industry, and government where ideas, artifacts, and
people flow among these sectors. In information technology,
this is embodied in this tire-tracks diagram. This
extraordinary ecosystem has given rise to multibillion-dollar
industries, and it all begins, as the diagram shows, with
investment in fundamental long-term research often made with
federal dollars and often made many years, even decades before
it evolved into billion-dollar businesses.
MRI technology, gene editing, barcode technology, Google,
3-D printing, these are all areas NSF invested in early that
have transformed our lives. Today, NSF is at the forefront of
research in big data, quantum computing, artificial
intelligence, cybersecurity, and robotics areas that will power
the future economy.
Our fiscal year 2019 request also incorporates new and
innovative ways of doing business that will position NSF at the
leading edge of discovery. First, NSF will invest in our 10 Big
Ideas. The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position
our nation at the frontiers, indeed to define the frontiers of
global science and engineering leadership. An investment of $30
million is requested for each of the six research-focused Big
Ideas. Four other Big Ideas such as midscale facilities and the
INCLUDES initiative focused on new approaches to increase
opportunities for discovery and expand the STEM community.
Our success also requires innovative approaches to
leveraging resources over all fields of science. In fiscal year
2019, NSF will initiate two convergence accelerators, new
centers that will converge around important national challenges
requiring interdisciplinary expertise. The accelerators will
streamline operations and collaborations, focusing on results
and outcomes that can be achieved quickly.
An investment of $60 million will support two convergence
accelerators for two of the Big Ideas: Harnessing the Data
Revolution for 21st-Century Science and Engineering and the
Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier. These Big
Ideas were chosen because of the readiness for convergent and
translational research.
We expect to catalyze an additional $40 million in
investment by external partners, including the private sector,
other federal agencies, and international funders.
Equally important to our sustained global leadership in
science and engineering are investments in STEM education. At
NSF our education activities are integrated with research. In
fiscal year 2019, NSF will continue to invest in CyberCorps,
Computer Science for All, the Advanced Technological Education
program, and other initiatives that support teachers, students,
and researchers from K-2 to lifelong learning environments. We
will not have the discoveries of tomorrow without a skilled
workforce prepared for tomorrow.
Mr. Chairman, I had the honor of attending the 2017 Nobel
Prize awards ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. I was there to
celebrate scientists in the fields of physics, economics,
biology, and chemistry. All eight U.S. Nobelists were at some
point in their careers supported by NSF. Three of them were
honored for the LIGO discovery of gravitational waves, a
discovery only made possible by 40 years of NSF support. In
fact, NSF-funded researchers account for 231 Nobel Prizes,
dating back to 1955. This is but one powerful example of why
Congress' support for NSF and fundamental basic research is so
vital.
Another is in the tire-tracks diagram, which exhibits some
of NSF's contributions to the growth of new robust businesses.
This Committee has played an important role in these successes.
Through the AICA, it continues to make our agency stronger in
its processes to deliver the best to the American people. Thank
you for your continued support of NSF.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cordova follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Cordova. Do you happen to
have a hard copy of the PowerPoint that was just up on the
screen? And if so, I'd like to make copies for members maybe
even before the questions.
Dr. Cordova. Yes.
Chairman Smith. Okay. If we could----
Dr. Cordova. If you have someone I can hand it to----
Chairman Smith. Okay.----
Dr. Cordova. --I would be happy to do that.
Chairman Smith. That would be great.
Dr. Cordova. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. And, Dr. Zuber?
TESTIMONY OF DR. MARIA T. ZUBER,
CHAIR, NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD
Dr. Zuber. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, and
Members of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to speak
with you about the President's fiscal year 2019 budget request
for the National Science Foundation. ``An investment in
knowledge always pays the best interest,'' declared Benjamin
Franklin, our nation's founding innovator. Since World War II,
the United States has led the world in research, transforming
our lives, driving economic growth, and underpinning national
security. Sustained bipartisan commitment to investing in
fundamental research helped establish and maintain U.S.
leadership in science and technology.
But the global science and technology landscape is rapidly
changing. Other nations are upping their game. For the first
time in over a half-century, our S&T leadership is being
challenged. According to the Board's 2018 Science and
Engineering Indicators Report, China's spending on R&D has
grown by an average of 18 percent since the year 2000, while
ours has grown by only four percent. Since 2000, China has
tripled the number of STEM bachelor's degree awardees, and
between 2013 and 2016, just three years, venture capital in
China climbed from 5 to 27 percent of the global share, the
fastest increase of any economy.
Although these trends are not new, in some cutting-edge
areas of research, the trajectory is more pronounced. Within
the last year, China erased the U.S. advantage in
supercomputing, claiming more than 200 of the fastest 500
supercomputers to our 143. Over the next five years, China
plans to invest 100 times more in artificial intelligence than
the United States did in 2016. At the same time, total federal
R&D funding has been declining from $127 billion in 2011 to
$120 billion in 2015. Federal R&D spending as a share of GDP is
now the lowest it has been since 1953. These choices have
concrete consequences. If current trends continue, China will
surpass the United States in total R&D expenditures sometime
this year.
Despite these ominous trends, the Board is encouraged by
Congress' agreement on a budgetary framework and the President
working within those caps to prioritize NSF's mission of
discovery in research and the national interest. With the
requested level of funding in fiscal year 2019, NSF will
support basic research across all fields of science and
engineering that create knowledge, while allowing investment in
priority areas.
The Board recognizes the fiscal challenge with--that
Congress wrestles. In such difficult times, there can be a
tendency to play it safe, but as America's innovation agency,
NSF is not going to play it safe. First, the agency is
embracing our nation's entrepreneurial spirit in trying
something new. As the Director has just described, NSF proposes
to break out of academic silos by investing in new elements to
promote cutting-edge interdisciplinary research at the
frontiers of science and technology: the Big Ideas and
convergence accelerators. Much transformative research happens
at the intersection of scientific fields. The Board believes
this proactive approach is essential if NSF is to succeed in
its mission to advance the frontiers of science.
Next, our nation's ability to discover, invent, and
innovate relies on our ability to leverage America's greatest
competitive advantage: our people. To ensure that Americans are
equipped to thrive in a globally competitive knowledge economy,
NSF will work with Congress, the Administration, business
leaders, educators, and others to create to create a STEM-
capable workforce. Our workforce of the future must leverage
the hard work, creativity, and ingenuity of women and men of
all ages, education levels, and backgrounds. NSF will continue
to build this workforce through initiatives such as INCLUDES,
ATE, and CyberCorps.
Finally, NSF is committed to innovating and improving our
internal processes. The Board takes its responsibility to
taxpayers seriously. We are now taking a fresh look at the
merit review report, working with NSF to advance formal risk-
thinking and strategic planning and priority-setting, and
strengthening our oversight of major research facilities.
And I would be remiss if I did not thank you, Chairman
Smith, for your leadership and holding us to the highest
standards of accountability and transparency.
Investing in discovery research now will give us the keys
to meeting unpredictable national security, economic, and
health challenges of tomorrow. As President Trump warned,
losing our innovation and technological edge would have far-
reaching negative implications for American prosperity and
power. We need a renewed and committed strategy to hold onto
this key national asset.
But in challenge there is also opportunity. If we
capitalize on the strong foundations of our innovation
ecosystem and the talents of our people, we can pursue grand
visions, enable revolutionary ideas, and reap the unexpected
advances that emerge from dreaming boldly and fearlessly to
pursue fundamental science.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zuber follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Zuber.
I'll recognize myself for questions and address the first
one to Dr. Cordova.
Dr. Cordova, last year, I think you had 40,000 grant
proposals that were not funded. You clearly have an abundance
of projects to choose from. And as I mentioned in my opening
statement, you only approve about one out of every five
proposals. How do you assure us, how do you assure the American
people, that only the best projects are being funded? I
mentioned in my opening statement a half-dozen that I thought
were questionable. It seems to me that none of them should have
been funded. I don't see the justification myself. But how do
you screen proposals? How do you ensure that they are in the
national interest?
Dr. Cordova. As Dr. Zuber mentioned, our merit review
process is really the answer to your question, Chairman Smith.
Every one of the proposals that we receive--and we receive
approximately 50,000 a year--go through our world-lauded merit
review process--which many countries of the world have copied
because it is a process of very high integrity.
I want to address just for a second your specific question
on particular proposals. I think our very first meeting a week
after I took this job--so that would be four years ago--was
about such proposals. And I took this very personally to
examine how these proposals were approved and personally looked
at the individual proposals. Then, we had a team of people look
at the whole merit review process that was associated with each
one. I was convinced in the end--a process that I had to do
myself--I was convinced in the end that each one met our very
high standards of intellectual merit and broader impact.
Chairman Smith. I understand the merit review process.
Would you get--let me just pick one out. Would you get back to
me as to why the merit review process found $450,000 to study
why there is no single English word for ``light blue?'' Will
you get back to me on why that was in the national interest,
for example?
Dr. Cordova. Yes, of course. For each one of the projects
that's been questioned, we have written a report. They're all
online.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Dr. Cordova. I do not know about that particular one, but
of course we will get back to you.
Chairman Smith. Okay. I appreciate that.
Dr. Zuber, we have talked about this before, but China is
reportedly investing $10 billion in quantum research, far more
than the United States. How can the United States stay
competitive, and isn't that a threat and a danger for China to
keep outspending us in so many of these research areas?
Dr. Zuber. Well, quantum is of course incredibly important
for national security but also on the financial system as well
since cybersecurity affects financial transactions and actually
personal transactions, the energy grid, et cetera. So there are
a variety of places in the U.S. government that invest in
cybersecurity and also the private sector as well, and we need
some communication there.
But I think a key thing that we have to have is we need
coordination among--of--among different agencies. Some are the
on the classified side, some are on the unclassified side----
Chairman Smith. Right.
Dr. Zuber. --but the basic research, you know, is done on
the unclassified side, and there needs to be some crosstalk in
terms of what is actually needed early on. And then that could
be communicated and then, you know, the classified side can
take it over.
Another thing that I would say is that we need to be
thinking about our education system as well and evolving it, so
we--you know, how many programs have quantum engineering? Okay.
MIT doesn't even have quantum engineering as a discipline. And
we need to be----
Chairman Smith. Can't you----
Dr. Zuber. --thinking about----
Chairman Smith. Can't you change that?
Dr. Zuber. --although--we certainly are teaching those
sorts of things, but we don't have a specific program on it----
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Dr. Zuber. --and I think research universities ought to be
thinking about developing those programs----
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Dr. Zuber. --to train the next generation of researchers
that are needed to take on these problems.
Chairman Smith. Let me go to my next question. I assume
you'll have some influence in trying to persuade MIT to have a
program in quantum engineering, right?
Dr. Zuber. I think I might be able to.
Chairman Smith. Okay, good. My last question is this, the
FBI recently shared concerns that countries like China are
exploiting U.S. academic institutions and are taking advantage
of the federal research funding. They're also trying to
indoctrinate students. Do you share the FBI's concerns?
Dr. Zuber. There certainly is some legitimacy to those
concerns. Certainly, the United States needs to interact with
China. They're a global power. There are things that it makes
sense for us to collaborate on. It makes sense for us to
attract talented Chinese students. We ought to work hard at
keeping the best people in the United States after they get
their degrees. But we ought to--we need to do a much better job
in terms of training those students and actually our professors
about issues of intellectual property so that we can respect
the inventions and achievements of our people in the
universities.
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Zuber.
I will go to the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, for
questions.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you Dr. Cordova, Dr. Zuber, and Dr.--is it Ferrini-Mundy? Thank
you all for joining us today. And thank you, Chairman Smith and
Ranking Member Johnson.
I just wanted to mention I know, Chairman Smith, in your
opening you mentioned a couple of NSF-funded projects that you
thought were questionable. I hope this year you can attend with
us the Golden Goose Awards. The Golden Goose Awards are
bipartisan recognition of scientists whose federally funded
basic research has led to innovations with a significant impact
on society, and it's often research with odd-sounding titles or
names. So I hope you can join us for that because it's a really
inspiring event.
This is a really important conversation we're having. We do
want the United States to continue to be a leader, but
unfortunately, this budget is, I believe, about the ninth year
of flat funding. If we want to continue to be the leader, we
should be increasing investments, not decreasing investments in
the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Cordova, Oregon State University is leading efforts to
design and construct the next generation of NSF regional class
research vessels. The ships are designed to operate primarily
in coastal waters and bays and estuaries on the West, East, and
Gulf Coasts. They reflect an important long-term investment to
advance marine transportation, sound fisheries management,
national security priorities. This research is essential for
any coastal region.
And I appreciate the NSF efforts in the short term to
balance investments in research and infrastructure, but I am
disappointed that the NSF budget request supports the
construction of only two rather than three research class
vessels. Without Congress investing in the three ships, many of
the Nation's oceanographic scientists will be forced to rely on
older ships that are less efficient to operate and maintain and
that lack the technological and scientific capabilities for
conducting research safely with the most advanced methods of
the 21st century.
Additionally, because of economies of scale, the second
ship is less expensive than the first, and the third would be
less expensive than the second. So could you please explain to
the panel how funding for a third vessel would contribute to
the work of the NSF in the advancement of ocean sciences?
Dr. Cordova. Thank you, Congresswoman. The two RCRVs which
are in our budget will significantly improve the support of
science over their current capabilities, and this number of new
vessels is in line with the minimum number recommended in the
National Academies Sea Change report. Two vessels will support
research in all major coastlines through the existing coastal
research vessels program, and that is what is in our budget
request.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. I just want to say for the record
that because a third would be less expensive than a second and
it would be beneficial to have the third, I hope that somehow
we can get to three vessels.
Also, NSF is proposing a steep cut of 11 percent to the
social, behavioral, and economic sciences, SBE. I'm
disappointed but actually not surprised that the Administration
is targeting this program, but one of America's greatest
strengths is innovation. It's not enough to educate world-class
engineers, technologists, and scientists; we also need creative
and critical thinkers. Our propensity for being entrepreneurial
and cutting-edge is fostered through the arts and social
science education. In fact, the Weather Forecasting Innovation
Act I worked on and was signed into law last year included
language about incorporating social sciences in community
readiness and resilience efforts, especially in how we
communicate that.
So, Dr. Cordova and Dr. Zuber, you've both made strong
statements about the value of SBE sciences in the past. Can you
tell us more about SBE sciences and how they intersect with
issues of national importance, and can you ensure members of
this Committee that the NSF is committed to its mission of
supporting all fields of science and engineering including
social sciences?
Dr. Cordova. Yes, I will start and I am sure Dr. Zuber can
add to this. Last year, we asked the National Academies to do a
study on the value of the social and behavioral, economic
sciences. They did a study very quickly, in just a few months'
time, that had a wonderful group of examples about how
important these sciences have been to national needs.
The second point I want to make is that we have in this new
structure that we described today that's in the fiscal year
2019 budget of the Big Ideas that all of the Big Ideas are
convergent ideas. They bring together all the disciplines, and
social and behavioral sciences will be a big part of that
contribution, so there will be many opportunities under those
Big Ideas to further the value of the social sciences.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you.
Dr. Zuber. And I would----
Ms. Bonamici. Microphone.
Dr. Zuber. Excuse me. So there are--you know, there are
many obvious examples of areas where the social and behavioral
sciences are important for economic competitiveness and
national security. So for--you know, when you talk about in
weather forecasting, you know, having--what's the right time to
put out a siren, you know, to have people take shelter. If you
do it too often, people will tend to ignore it. There are cases
in opioid abuse there where we need information on the social
and behavioral sciences to understand trends and threats. You
know, facial recognition software actually was used by a
laboratory that I see, Lincoln Laboratory, that was actually
used to then apprehend the marathon bombers.
So one can go on and on about the value of these, and I
think we actually need to go by more than just the titles
because when we go in and we actually see what the actual
research in--is in these grants, I agree with the Director that
it is--it's been through rigorous peer review and it's
substantive.
And the final thing that I would say on this is that we're
actually at the forefront of a revolution in the social and
behavioral sciences. So in SBE right now, they're using the
computer power that mathematical and physical sciences used a
decade ago. So this entire field is really moving into a much
more quantitative regime, and so, you know, that will just
allow, you know, a lot of really objective important work to
take place in support of the other areas of science within NSF.
Ms. Bonamici. Oh, thank you. I see my time is expired.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is
recognized.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I have been very concerned that we are not putting enough
emphasis on trying to secure the world in case we would spot an
asteroid heading toward the Earth. And over the years I've been
very conscious of this because that could happen tomorrow. And
I've talked about it over the years, and it seems to me that we
are not taking the steps that we could so that if an asteroid
is seen, that we know what we're going to do, how to deflect
it, et cetera.
One of the tools that is vital in that goal, in achieving
that goal of being able to identify the course of some object
in space that could do incredible damage to the world, one of
the elements is the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It
actually provides us the ability to go years out in charting
the course to see if it is dangerous to the world. We've got a
bunch of young people here, and we want you to have the world
that we had, and we need to be prepared for a possibility that
an asteroid could actually come in and destroy that world.
Are we--what are we doing to make sure that what Arecibo
has been doing in providing that service and that ability to
chart those, how are we making sure that that is still getting
done?
Dr. Cordova. As you know, a lot of that work is done by
NASA as a participant at Arecibo Observatory. We have just
recently announced a new partnership with the University of
Central Florida, which will be gradually taking over the
management of Arecibo. And this was a good solution, we feel,
to our divestment planning for that observatory, which will
take place over several years' time. We think it's in very good
hands with the University of Central Florida as a steward.
The hurricanes, as you know, did wreak some damage on the
observatory, it wreaked a lot more damage on the entire island,
which everybody is trying to recover from. We are now back up
with the observatory up and running. There are certain things
that we still can't do, but we have supplemental funding
request included in the Bipartisan Budget Act for necessary
repair expenses to repair----
Mr. Rohrabacher. So are you committed to----
Dr. Cordova. --our facility.
Mr. Rohrabacher. --making sure that the Arecibo telescope
and its capabilities of spotting these types of objects that
could threaten the planet, that it will still--however you
restructure the system----
Dr. Cordova. Right.
Mr. Rohrabacher. --it still will provide that capability to
those people who are concerned about this issue?
Dr. Cordova. As long as we have our partnership with NASA,
yes. They are the ones that are really doing that program with
us at Arecibo.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So it's a qualified yes?
Dr. Cordova. Yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right.
Dr. Cordova. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, all right. I was wondering--and we're
talking about the budget--sometimes when the Chairman
justifiably says, ``wait a minute, what kind of study is this?
Why did you do that?'' And you know, when I was younger my
father was a military officer and he took me outside at a
certain time of year and said, ``See all those planes flying
around? I was ordered to send those planes flying around
because we had to use up the fuel allotment, and we had to use
our budget, totally use it up or they were afraid that they
would lose the budget the next year.'' Now, are--how many of
these types of nonsensical studies that we're talking about are
simply at the end of the fiscal year and being used to make
sure that they use up the budgets so that at the same amount
next year?
Dr. Cordova. I appreciate your concern, but I think the
answer would be none of them. Again, going back to our merit
review process, we have on any given day several hundred people
from the external community at NSF reviewing the proposals and
grading them very strictly. We leave about $4 billion worth of
proposals rated excellent on the cutting room floor because we
don't have enough to fund them. So you can be sure that the
ones we do fund have gone through a very rigorous process.
I also want to take this opportunity to add that, as of
March 1 of this year, new language has been inserted in all NSF
award abstracts, and this says, and I quote, ``This award
reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of
support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual
merit and broader impacts review criteria,'' and it's a pause
for every division leader who has the ultimate approval of
programs that are approved within the division by the program
officers or recommend for funding. They have the final signoff.
They ask does this fulfill national needs? Does it really pass
the merit review criteria?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, as the Chairman noted, there are
some projects that passed, and obviously, somebody's judgment
was impaired or, as I say, people were looking to use their
budget. But we'll be watching. We're----
Dr. Cordova. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But we wish you well.
Dr. Cordova. Congressman Rohrabacher, I'd be pleased to
visit you in your office and go through all--we've written a
response to every proposal that's been criticized. Those
responses I share these responses with people that publish the
criticisms, and they're all online. And I think once we talk
about it----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure, I'll take a look at it.
Chairman Smith. Dr. Cordova, I just looked at the
justification for $450,000 for light blue. If you find anything
in the national interest in your justification, let me know. I
did not see it.
The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized
for her questions.
Ms. Esty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much
for joining us today for these incredibly important issues that
have those short-term and long-term impacts for all Americans.
Millions of Americans are unquestionably better off because
of the basic research that the National Science Foundation has
funded over decades. It's helped spawn, as you noted, Dr.
Cordova, some of the giant companies, the cutting-edge
companies in this country like Google and Symantec and
QUALCOMM. But I have to tell you and in my district recently
one of the state universities, Central Connecticut State
University, just received a $5 million grant to reach out to
underrepresented and minority students to encourage their
participation in the sciences. So I know from the ground level
how important that is both to the students but also to the
companies in the area who need to see that talented pipeline of
students.
But that's one of the reasons why I'm so concerned that the
President's budget is not going up but rather going down. And
the purchasing power has been steadily eroded for quite a
number of years now. Since 2000, China has grown its R&D budget
by approximately 18 percent annually. In the United States,
that has increased by four percent. We are seeing the impacts
of that across the board. I'm hearing from companies that--and
I'm hearing for research institutions, they cannot retain their
top scholars because other countries are offering them more
predictable funding for longer periods of time and greater
flexibility.
So I'm deeply concerned about that. We try to get the best
and brightest. Some of them are homegrown; some of them are
from around the world. But then for--and sometimes immigration
reasons they're not allowed to stay, and that's a different--I
realize not your department, but if you care to talk about the
impact that's having on our higher ed and research, I'd welcome
that.
But particularly, this impact on not having consistent
high-level funding is making our research institutions like
UConn and Yale in my State of Connecticut are having increasing
difficulty in retaining the top-tier talent. And that has
spillover effects, and that means then the companies don't want
to say stay because they aren't seeing the best research. Can
you tell us a little bit about what you're hearing and what
you're seeing on that front?
Dr. Cordova. To turn for a response to our Chief Operating
Officer who was, as you know, at one time head of our Education
and Human Resources Directorate.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Thank you. Thank you for the question. A
big piece of our investment, as you have noted of course, is
developing pathways for talent for STEM, which is a piece of
creating an ecosystem that enables a healthy STEM enterprise to
occur in States and universities and in the Nation. We are very
pleased with the breadth of our STEM education investments.
They include our new big idea INCLUDES program, which is very
much focused on making certain that we are tapping the full
diversity of our nation, the full talent of our nation to
ensure that we have a set of people who will be able to take
leadership roles in universities, in the private sector going
forward. So, we see this as a very important piece of our
overall investment.
I would add that our restructuring within this particular
budget to focus on the innovations that will be possible
through our Big Ideas we hope will be very exciting to the
research community and will intrigue scholars across the Nation
because of the new convergence possibilities within this area.
Ms. Esty. But we're also looking at the fact that--and, Dr.
Cordova, you mentioned this--the number of project proposals
that receive excellent ratings and yet can't be funded because
there simply isn't enough money to go around. And I have to say
I'm concerned about that because when we do have top-tier
talent and we do have top-tier research projects that we're
unable to fund, then we get brain drain out of this country and
it's hard to bring them back. Dr. Zuber?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, so if I could comment on that. So I don't--
you know, I don't personally know what the right level of
funding for NSF should be because there are of course many
competing worthy the priorities. But I do know that of the
NSF's $7.4 billion budget if we look at the number of proposals
that received very good or excellent reviews, which means they
were in the top the top-rated proposals that went unfunded
because of the lack of funds, that's another $3.92 billion. So
that would correspond to an NSF budget one and a half times
what the current budget is without compromising in the least
bit on quality.
Ms. Esty. Thank you very much, and I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Esty.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized.
Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
witnesses for coming today, fascinating testimony.
I share the interest in planetary defense with Congressman
Rohrabacher, and I'm glad to know that Arecibo will continue to
monitor for our planetary defense. Have you publish any studies
on our planetary defense?
Dr. Cordova. I'm not aware of any, but I will check and
find out. I'm sure that other agencies have, but I'm not aware
of studies----
Mr. Posey. If you have, I'd appreciate it if you'd send it
to my office. And I might state clearly that I do appreciate
the direction that you're taking the agency now compared to the
last Administration, and as the Chairman pointed out, the
$700,000 on Climate Change Musical or $1.5 million to study
pasture management in Mongolia, I remember medieval basket
weaving, studying why one certain segment of women are fat.
I mean, compared to the China budget that somebody was
talking about before, I think we'll find that we spend more
real resources on research than they do, and I think if they
got caught wasting the money on some of the things we have
done, they'd probably put some people to death over there for
it. All we can do is struggle to protect the taxpayers from
stuff like that in the future.
You mentioned the opioid crisis. My driving question was
going to be whether or not we have put any study toward the
behavioral sciences. Have we ever looked at the opioid crisis
or the root causes of violence in our schools?
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Certainly within a variety of our
directorates, including our social, behavioral, economic
sciences, studies of behavior have been crucial in helping us
to understand why various trends happen in society, how to make
change, how to change people's behavior. That is part of the
fundamental work in the social, behavioral sciences. So we
certainly have some investment in those kinds of things, and we
can follow up with some very particular kinds of examples for
you if that would be useful.
Mr. Posey. I would like information on particular resources
you've developed on the opioid crisis and also the violence in
our schools.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Certainly. And again, these would be
resources that are funded principal investigators have produced
with NSF funding, and so we can certainly survey what we have
and get that to you.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Any insight you could give us now as to
what they revealed?
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I think we need to get back to you with
details to be sure that we get it to be accurate.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Posey.
And the gentlewoman from Nevada, Ms. Rosen, is recognized.
Ms. Rosen. Thank you, Chairman Smith. Thank you to the
distinguished panel here today. I really appreciate your work
and your--all the advancements that you've made and your
commitment to science.
You know, I want to really talk about computer science
because it's really critical right now. I'm a former computer
scientist myself. But as our economy changes and we become
increasingly driven by technology and data analytics, whether
it's hard science or behavioral science in order for us to move
our country forward in meaningful ways, this committee really
has tried to ensure that we're educating the next generation of
computing experts.
I'd like to thank Chairman Smith and Ranking Member
Johnson. We did get my bills passed, ``Code Like a Girl'' and
the ``Building Blocks of STEM'' to help in our education for
young girls in early childhood.
But one of my top budget requests is for the computer and
information science and engineering program which supports both
computer information science and engineering research. It's
going to cut--the President's budget is cutting this STEM+C by
$19 million. So, Dr. Cordova, I really want to see if you could
address the changes NSF is making in its approach to supporting
computer science, especially in the lower grades, to ensure
that we have the people pipeline coming through. How do we best
support--you talk about the evolution of our education that
needs to happen. It can't just happen at the university level.
We have to prepare these kids coming up. We're getting these
big budget cuts. How can we do that?
Dr. Cordova. Thank you, Congresswoman Rosen, and thank you
for your passion on this subject. So these are two things I
want to say. One is that computer and information science and
engineering is not really being cut because they're an enormous
part of the Big Ideas. In fact, of the two convergence
accelerators, one is Harnessing the Data Revolution is all in
that area, and the other one is the Future of Work at the
Human-Technology Frontier, and that's about artificial
intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and so on. So,
they are an integral part of shaping those accelerators and of
the big corresponding fundamental Big Ideas.
In K-12, we have several programs in computer science. I'll
just run through the names of them and we can send you follow-
up details, but Computer Science for All supports researcher-
practitioner partnerships that foster the need to bring
computational thinking to schools at that level. We have
STEM+C, computing partnerships in K-12, Innovative Technology
Experiences for Students and Teachers, Discovery Research PreK-
12. Those are all K-12 programs that promote the interests of
students and their capabilities to participate in the STEM and
computer science workforce.
Ms. Rosen. Thank you. I really appreciate that because I
think if we don't build our natural people pipeline starting in
kindergarten, especially with young girls and minorities,
people who don't think that they can do this or these things
aren't open to them, then we are really losing a valuable asset
to our future growth, so thank you for your work.
I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Rosen.
And the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that, and
I appreciate each one of you being here today. I'm glad to have
you and appreciate the very interesting testimony. And I was
very interested in the Puerto Rican observatory, and I'm
grateful to hear what's going to happen there.
One thing that seems to have been highly emphasized here
today and it's appropriate to emphasize is the budget because
we're talking about budget today. But what I continue to hear
is the detriment that's going to happen to the budget for my
friends across the aisle. But it's okay to point out problems;
I don't mind pointing out problems. Let's tackle them. Let's
take them head-on.
But when we talk about percentage of growth in, say, tech
spending in China versus tech spending in the United States,
nobody talks about what the baseline is because if you're going
to make an assessment that's on comparability of funding, you
really need to know what the baseline is when you start talking
about percentages. And China over the last 30 years has
increased dramatically in their overall funding and tech
spending, but their baseline was very low to begin with and now
the projections are sometime in the early '20s, that they will
actually meet somewhere near where the United States is. But as
far as real dollars go, the United States continues to be a
leader there, and I think that's critical to understand.
And the other thing I would say is there's a lot that goes
into creating a national budget. And China already is overall
matching E.U. spending according to the reports that I just
read because I was curious when I started hearing all this, I
thought, I'm going to pull up some reports and see what I can
get. But there are other things--other variables not in
consideration here, for instance, are we tacitly subsidizing
anybody else who's doing research because we're spending for
defense and military in protecting those countries so they can
put money elsewhere. What level of taxation do my friends want
to support the spending level they seek? And then are there
other programs within the federal government that they might
wish to reduce to backfill what they view as a reduction for
the NSF?
So these are some thoughts that I raise before I get to my
question, but I appreciate that you're here and actually for a
forum to kind of vent on what solutions are being brought to
the table because I'm just hearing problems brought to the
table.
The federal government has been funding STEM education for
decades, Dr. Cordova. Every year, larger emphasis is placed on
the subject, and every year we hear how we're falling further
behind. I'm interested in knowing what have we learned from
previous investments in STEM about what is working, what is not
working, how can we be confident that new investments are being
put in the right place for the right activities? In other
words, how can we become the most efficient, the most
effective?
Dr. Cordova. Great. Thank you. You have a whole range of
things covered there. I will start with solutions because
that's where you're going, and then I'll ask Dr. Ferrini-Mundy
to answer your last question about STEM and efficiencies and
especially evaluation and assessment, which is our middle name.
NSF is well known for doing that for all its programs.
On solutions, that's why we have structured a different
budget for fiscal year 2019. We have a number of National
Academy reports, reports out of committees of the National
Science and Technology Council, advice of our advisory
councils, and advice of the National Science Board that we need
to be especially strategic in this day and age to meet
challenges. And to deliver solutions for the country as quickly
and as efficiently as possible. That is why we came up with
this idea, which is now a structural idea in our budget of
convergence accelerators to try to target those areas that are
most ready because they have the most public interest and the
most industry participation and really go after some near-term
solutions in that space that we can bring to people very
quickly.
NSF welcomes all proposals. It's what we call our core
funding. And we fund blue-sky ideas. We take some risk. Some of
them, like the LIGO that we funded for 40 years, after 40
years, they produce Nobel Prize-winning results. But we also
need to reserve a part of our budget to be very strategic and
very focused on solutions, so we're doing that. And I hope that
you will like the results that we get from this.
Let me turn to Dr. Ferrini-Mundy about evaluation and
assessment.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Thank you. So that's a really important
topic for us. We want to be sure that our investments in STEM
education, are strategic and are likely to have impact. And for
that reason, for many decades now, NSF has funded not only
attempts at intervening and improving STEM ed but attempts to
study and evaluate and assess the effects of those kinds of
efforts.
And I'll cite just a few key results where we really have a
solid basis in research to talk about change and improvement in
STEM education. One is at the undergraduate level, and we have
got academy reports that help with this. We've learned very
firmly through research that to retain undergraduates in STEM,
a very key principle is to engage them actively in their
learning to be sure that instruction is really designed to
bring those students in, to give them research experience as a
part of what they are doing in their undergraduate courses, and
to make sure that they have the chance to really see what STEM
looks like in practice.
That sounds fairly straightforward. It turns out to make
that kind of a change in our nation's universities is not
straightforward, but it's something that we know we should be
headed toward.
At K-12 we know a lot about teachers and about what will
help teachers be most effective in getting kids to learn well,
and some of that has to do with the nature of how they
understand the STEM subjects and how particularly elementary
teachers in such fundamental areas as mathematics are prepared
to be effective in meeting children where they are and moving
them toward deep understanding of mathematics. So we have an
array of findings, and we're applying those in how we actually
design our programs.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. I've far exceeded my time.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. The gentleman from California, Mr.
McNerney, who may well be in contention for having one of the
best attendance records of any Member of this Committee.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank you for that shout-out, Mr.
Chairman.
I certainly appreciate the work the NSF has done over the
years, together with the NIH and the NASA, really put America
as an undisputed leader of science for the past half-century,
but we see that that may be changing and we need to worry about
that.
I appreciate your statement, Dr. Cordova, that we will not
have the discoveries of tomorrow without the workforce of
tomorrow, but then I see a 15 percent reduction in the graduate
research fellowships and also research experience for
undergraduates. Now, being a graduate student is pretty tough
to make ends meet. To get grants is a very big deal. How can we
kind of square that? Because we see when you're a graduate
student in the sciences, your contemporaries are out there
making 10 times as much money as you are. And you get your
Ph.D. and you become a postdoc, and again, they're increasing
and you're slowly flat. So how can we sort of square that
against a desire to have more people move into the STEM fields?
Dr. Cordova. We fund graduate students in a great variety
of ways. The biggest program that we have is for graduate
research assistantships, and that comes through our grants
programs when a professor is awarded a grant and they can
support graduate students on that. That's indeed how I was
funded once upon a time.
We have other programs like the Graduate Research
Fellowships Program, which is a very--a distinctive program
that we are very, very proud of. Until just a few years ago, we
funded 1,000 students per year, and then we raised it for a few
years to 2,000 and now it's at 1500, which is still higher than
it was before.
We have introduced a new program called Research and
Traineeship programs in specific areas like computer science
and nanotechnology to train cohorts of graduate students. The
traineeship of students and the ability to get into the
research world at an early stage and be funded to do that
research just couldn't be more important. And you yourself were
one of those students at one time, and all three of us were as
well.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I didn't mean to put you on the hot
seat there, but I did want to raise that deduction in the
research fellowships and undergraduate research.
Dr. Zuber. Yes, could I just add to that? So China has made
a commitment--and this is extraordinary--to devote 15 percent
of their GDP to talent development, okay? And so part of that
is going into--they don't define exactly what talent
development is in all ways, but certainly, the Thousand Talents
program that they've implemented is to bring back Chinese
scholars who have studied outside of China, to bring them back
to China and set them up in a research career.
So one of--I had a postdoctoral fellow who worked with me,
and he was hired back to a university in China, given a startup
package that was the equivalent of a full professor. And he
was--he got an assistant professorship position. So they are--
you know, they are investing very aggressively to bring their
talent back home----
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. And----
Dr. Zuber. --and we need to be aware of that.
Mr. McNerney. And I don't want you to use all my time on
the question. The opioid crisis, it's multipronged. It's a
human behavioral issue. Is there research that the NSF could do
that would help us understand and maybe deal with that crisis?
And also you can add gun violence into that answer if you wish.
Dr. Cordova. Our head of social and behavioral, economic
research program Dr. Fay Cook is a member of the
Administration's Opioid Task Force, and they are working on
interagency solutions to address this. We would be happy to
look into particular research that we're funding along those
lines, Dr. McNerney, and get back to you.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. A guess I have another half-
minute. NSF has shown over time a commitment to cooperation
with international scientists, but you've recently announced
the closures of offices in Beijing, Brussels, and Tokyo by this
summer. Can you kind of explain how that was decided?
Dr. Cordova. This was a strategic move to be more with the
times as far as approaching the question of where could we make
the biggest scientific advances internationally and
international collaborations. Having one person at each of the
three offices is arguably not the way to do that. It puts a
huge demand on their intellectual capacity and also to cover an
enormous sector of the globe, because we had only three
offices.
In fact, what we see more and more today, for example, in
financial institutions, is that teams of experts go to
countries to evaluate the possible portfolios to judge what is
the quality of assets, what kinds of people are running the
assets, and where collaborations that are win-win
collaborations for all the countries involved and really
contribute to intellectual merit can be had.
So this is our plan. We have two groups already in
formation--one will go to Europe and one to Asia--to study very
specific areas which we think are vital for economic growth in
our country. We want to see what other countries could bring to
the table. We think it's a better plan and is more in keeping
with the times. It's the way industry does it.
Mr. McNerney. Well-answered. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. McNerney.
And the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Dunn, is recognized for
his questions.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I thank
the panelists for being here. Dr. Cordova, it's great to see
you again. I think last time we were together we were standing
on an ice sheet in Greenland. It's still pretty cold by my
Floridian standards there, I'll be honest with you.
I will tell you that I've enjoyed the time I've had
chatting about science with Dr. Cordova. I'm sorry I haven't
had a chance to chat with the other panelists on a more
personal basis. And certainly the Chairman knows that I will
spend the whole time here talking about science with you if I
could, but we're here to talk about the budget, so here we go.
In all the major corporations and government agencies that
I've been associated with, they have an audit process and plan
for auditing the processes and the finances both inside an
organization. I would like to know a little bit about your
audit plan and processes.
Dr. Cordova. This is a perfect topic for my Chief Operating
Officer.
Mr. Dunn. Okay.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. And also possibly for our Board Chair to
pick up because this is something that is done jointly with the
National Science Foundation and the National Science Board, but
our major audit is our annual financial statement audit. That
occurs each year and is quite consuming for the agency overall
in that we begin the minute that it's completed with the
preparation of materials and our interactions with the external
auditors for--
Mr. Dunn. Okay. So that's good to hear. So you have
external auditors as well----
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Yes.
Mr. Dunn. --as the GAO involved in this?
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Absolutely.
Mr. Dunn. I guess this is GAO, am I right?
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Well, no, no, these are private----
Dr. Cordova. The inspector general has a private firm come
in and do it----
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Right.
Dr. Cordova. --under the auspices of the inspector general.
Mr. Dunn. Excellent. Excellent. And do you alternate those
some--you know, a few years with one firm and then another
firm----
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. Yes, we have a firm now.
Dr. Zuber. Yes, it was alternated last year.
Mr. Dunn. Okay. Great. So this annual report, I'm not privy
to that. Is that something that's in our package? It's not in
the one that I received. No?
Dr. Cordova. I believe it's online. We can certainly send
you----
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. We can get you----
Dr. Cordova. And the agency of course writes its own
response and the Board----
Dr. Zuber. The--yes, the Inspector General's Office comes
up through the Oversight Committee of the National Science
Board, and I--I'm happy to say that NSF has received an
unqualified audit report so--
Mr. Dunn. Excellent.
Dr. Cordova. For 20 years, we've had a clean report, and
this year we had no significant deficiency. So, Chairman Smith,
I'm very proud of that----
Mr. Dunn. That's----
Dr. Cordova. --our facilities has gone away so--
Mr. Dunn. Yes, I think that's important. You know, the
taxpayers --we are constantly, in our offices, bombarded with
complaints, outrageous complaints about, you know, this study
was studying something useless and meaningless and wasting
taxpayer dollars. So how do you answer those complaints when
you get them?
Dr. Cordova. Okay. Well, it's a little different than the
financial report of some of our--
Mr. Dunn. Oh, yes. I'm--I didn't----
Dr. Cordova. --financial systems but--
Mr. Dunn. I mean--I think an audit should look at not just
finances, also processes----
Dr. Cordova. Right.
Mr. Dunn. --and also product.
Dr. Cordova. Right. And certainly, the Board is one of the
best places for looking at the quality of what we're doing
and----
Dr. Zuber. Yes, so the--you know, the National Science
Board oversees the Foundation, and the Director is a member of
that board. So--and, you know, we look through--NSF compiles
information on peer review, and that is given to the Board, and
the Board looks at that with great scrutiny and always pressing
the National Science Foundation to improve its processes
because, you know, I think the process for peer review is quite
robust, but it can always be improved. The Chairman has made it
a point to keep after the agency on that, and we're very
serious in our oversight role. And NSF agrees that, you know,
constant improvement is worthwhile.
Dr. Cordova. And Congress has to take a lot of credit
because through reports like the AICA that they've gotten us to
also look more intensely at our processes and to adopt new
ones. So as a result of the AICA and the NAPA report and a
report from our own Business and Operations Advisory Committee,
I instituted the position, starting this past January, of Chief
Officer for Research Facilities. This is one example because in
the research facility areas we've had a number of critiques
over the past few years. So this has dramatically--in just a
few months' time dramatically improved our oversight, and it
allows me as Director to really see the agency and what's
happening and all the different facility areas immediately.
Mr. Dunn. I'm running out of time, but I just would like to
say I would like to see the report that the Board sees if we
could on the finances processes and the products, but that's
very good. Thank you very much. It's always good to see you,
Doctor.
Dr. Cordova. We will provide that to you.
Mr. Dunn. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Dunn.
The gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko, is recognized.
Mr. Tonko. Hey, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our
witnesses for being here today and for the very important work
that you do.
I want to be clear. We should not be flat-funding
education, and we should not be flat-funding research. Flat
funding for almost a decade will mean cuts certainly to
critical programs.
And I listened as Representative McNerney was quizzing you
about the education cuts. I would have to say it goes further
than that because the research cuts are a critical component.
And I just want to do that through the eyes of a brilliant
student that I represent in the capital region of New York. And
it illustrates exactly why education and research funding
should be a national priority.
Erin Byrne Rousseau is from Burnt Hills, New York, in the
capital region, 20th Congressional District of New York. She
grew up in the capital region and went to college at the
University of Albany where she studied nanoscale science. She
is currently working toward a Ph.D. in medical engineering at
Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology. Erin is a member of
the Science Policy Initiative, a student group created to
support the next generation of scientists and engineers and
contributing to robust science-based policymaking.
Erin is grateful for the federal support that allowed her
to excel at her studies. As an undergrad, she was inspired by
her university where many programs and research were made
possible by federal funding such as NSF, NIH, DOE, and more.
She is an NSF graduate research fellowship awardee, and the
research she has worked on was possible in part from NIH
funding.
In the lab she used technology that would not exist if it
were not for DOE funding. Erin is working on research to study
the neurological basis of mental health disorders, and her
research has implications for our understanding in the
treatment of mental health and addiction.
Erin is truly an impressive--is truly impressive, and she's
just at the beginning of what I believe is a great career. Erin
thanked me for supporting funding for science and research,
and, Erin, let me say thank you for all that you are doing for
all of us and all you will do.
And to my colleagues, we need more Erins who are going to
be inspired to choose a STEM pathway and who will repay our
nation's commitment by moving science forward and changing our
world.
Dr. Cordova, do you agree that NSF has the power to inspire
our next generation of scientists and engineers? And if so,
what effect would budget cuts or flat funding have on our
future workforce?
Dr. Cordova. Yes, of course I think that NSF has the
opportunity and the privilege to inspire the next generation of
scientists and engineers, and they can come from anywhere. They
can be Erins, they can be young children, they can be people
looking for transitions in the jobs that they already have.
And we've mentioned a couple of times here that there are a
lot of proposals that are judged at the very highest level the
rating of excellent that we simply are not able to fund within
our budget.
Mr. Tonko. I would hope that we would understand that as we
put a budget together because these cuts are severe. Flat
funding sounds kind, but it is brutal.
I'm disappointed to see also that the large proposed cut
that are levied at social, behavioral, and economics research,
cuts to social and behavioral science will ripple out across
many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research
fields, hurting those fields as well. Behavioral sciences have
had widespread positive impact on our nation and the world. In
fact, every winner of the Nobel Prize in economics since 1997
has been a recipient of a social, behavioral, and economic
sciences grant at the National Science Foundation, the very
divisions some suggest we should slash.
We must continue our investment in behavioral sciences, and
we should continue the long bipartisan tradition of funding and
conducting research across the federal government. That
research by very definition will have many failures, but
failure is the down payment on success. Can you speak to the
value of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Directorate to issues of national importance?
Dr. Cordova. Yes, we have many, many examples of the huge
impact of the social and behavioral sciences, and again, the
National Academies report that came out last spring cited a
long list of those. Among them are the auctioning of the
electromagnetic--auction of the airwaves spectrum by the FCC,
the Oregon kidney donor exchange programs that grew out of game
theory, the predictive policing that is proving so helpful in
some of our big cities and towns. They've done a lot of
research on risk and resilience to natural disasters like
hurricanes and tornadoes and other disasters that befall the
planet.
And in the areas of learning, they can be especially
important in how children of different backgrounds and
experiences, how they learn, and how they assimilate their
knowledge and create new knowledge. And I turn to my colleague
Dr. Zuber for some other examples.
Dr. Zuber. So studies--you know, there have been studies of
why do children from excellent families go off and experience
terrorism, okay? And so it turns out that it's, you know--
there's research into that that has been useful in identifying
that. And even, you know, young people who turn to terrorism
from poor economic--the poorer part of the economic spectrum,
it was found that, you know, there's some moral and idealistic
causes that are motivating them, you know, as opposed to
economic causes. So it's not just a case of getting them into a
better economic circumstances, that one needs to look at moral
imperatives that are different from terrorism, that are more
productive, so that's another example.
Mr. Tonko. Well, I think the information that comes from
neuroscientists and cognitive scientists can be very, very
useful in responding to many of the needs we have out there.
And with that, I yield back, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Comstock. [Presiding] I now recognize Mr. Hultgren for
five minutes.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all so much
for being here, grateful for your work and grateful for the
opportunity for us to talk about the great work that NSF is
doing and the really requirement that we must continue to fund
and grow funding.
I've had the chance to visit universities across the State
of Illinois, have had the chance to work and see what NSF is
doing there and other great places. I'll actually be at
Northern Illinois University this Saturday with my STEM
Scholars. It's 30 young people from around the seven counties
that I represent that I meet with every single month, and a
wonderful group, incredibly bright, very excited to--out of the
30--almost 30--I think about 18 or 19 of them are young women.
Ten or 11 are young men, so we're encouraged by that, too, that
we need everybody to be interested in science and STEM fields.
But we're going to be traveling to NIU where we are going
to visit the Sub-Ice Rover, which was used to explore
Antarctica, as well as the STEM maker lab. And our group is
going to be only the second group to use new laser cutters,
which we're really excited about.
I've had a good opportunity also through FIRST Robotics to
meet with some great young people in my area, just a couple
years ago met with a young woman from my district who was able
to earn a full-ride scholarship to the University of Alabama in
aerospace engineering. But one of her main concerns as I've
continued to visit with her and talk with her and learn from
her is for her to see peers who are very excited about STEM
become discouraged and change degrees in the first few years of
college, bright young people who were so used to getting
straight A's and now all of a sudden they're getting B's and
C's and decide this isn't for me. You know, since I'm not
getting an A, I must need to switch to some other course.
So I just wanted to check, Dr. Cordova, if maybe you could
address what work is NSF doing to make sure that students going
through these kinds of tough fields are able to maintain their
passion and avoid washing out of these programs when maybe they
aren't getting the A's that they were used to through high
school?
Dr. Cordova. I'm going to turn in just a moment to Dr.
Ferrini-Mundy.
Mr. Hultgren. Great.
Dr. Cordova. She's very familiar with the research that
we're actually doing in this area.
But so let me just rewind to when I was a University
President and really worried about that, and I was worried
about what we called gateway courses that you would, look to
your left, look to your right, and one of the people sitting
there won't be there at the end of the semester kind of thing.
So I think universities have a lot of responsibilities, and
I think Dr. Zuber being from MIT will agree with me that
ensuring that instructors are actually motivating students to
get through rather than weeding them out. I think there have
been a lot of programs that universities are changing in this
direction.
We had, in engineering at Purdue University, some
engineering education department within the college of
engineering, which is huge, that is specifically trying to look
at new methodologies for getting students through these kinds
of courses. Not just in engineering but university-wide. And I
think when I see the retention rates and, as a University
President, I would look at the retention rates between the
first and the second year, and we increased that from the kind
of low levels you're describing to something like 97, 98
percent of students would continue on.
Mr. Hultgren. Good. That's great.
Dr. Cordova. So things are improving.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I can't add a lot other than to say
congratulations to you on your STEM Scholars.
Mr. Hultgren. Thanks.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. That's a wonderful investment of time.
Mr. Hultgren. It's really been fun.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I should think so. You know, as Dr.
Cordova mentions, it's those gateway courses that are quite
critical for retention, and we are funding some interesting
experiments in changing up the content of those courses----
Mr. Hultgren. Great.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. --starting with the statistics or
quantitative reasoning kind of approach rather than always
calculus, which is the tradition, and that's showing some
terrific results.
Mr. Hultgren. Good.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. And a variety of other approaches to
helping faculty improve their instruction so that they are
inspiring students and strengthening K-12 education.
Mr. Hultgren. Yes. That's so important, too.
Let me jump on just in my last minute, Dr. Cordova, as you
know, accelerator physics is a field where industry and even
our DOE labs find a short of shortage of trained workers. We're
only graduating about 15 Ph.D.'s a year. There are only a few
universities that have accelerator physics programs to train
these workers. Many of the students go out of their way to be
able to get the schoolwork necessary to advance in these
fields.
We're fortunate with NIU being relatively close to Fermilab
having some opportunities there. Stanford has SLAC close by,
which is great. But when a university is not near one of the
national labs, many students actually have to take part in
intense two-week accelerator school programs every summer where
students come to one location to get their graduate-level
training.
It's my understanding that NSF will be discontinuing their
accelerator science program. It's a program that was started in
2014 to address the workforce shortage and ensure that the
United States was maintaining their position at the forefront
of this field. This has not been a large program by any means,
but I think it is an important one for the field.
I'm also concerned that broader physics grants will not
take into account the need for basic scientific research in
accelerator science. I wonder if--I'm already over time--but
maybe we can follow up some more, if you have a thought or two
on this of what we can do to continue to see this as important
and making sure that we have the people to fill these important
roles?
Dr. Cordova. I can just say that I agree with you.
Accelerator physics is what inspired me to become a physicist.
We are of course a big participant in the CERN accelerator
physics program----
Mr. Hultgren. Yes.
Dr. Cordova. --as you've seen it. Fermilab, because we've
seen each other there on tour----
Mr. Hultgren. Right.
Dr. Cordova. --that we are funding a lot of research there,
Stanford University of course in their efforts. And I'll follow
up with--on the details of the accelerator science program.
Mr. Hultgren. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you all.
Thank you, Chairwoman. I'll yield back.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Mr. Foster
for five minutes.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And thank you for your service.
You mentioned that the NSF top line budget was overall
flat, but that, I understand, was not the original proposal.
That was the number they got adjusted after Democrats insisted
on having proper funding for that section of the budget. And so
what was the number before the final addendum came out?
Dr. Cordova. Minus 30 percent.
Mr. Foster. So a 30 percent cut, and then the Democrats
negotiated it up to flat. Is that a fair summary of what
happened?
Dr. Cordova. The President's supplement came out, a $2.2
billion supplement, so that's--
Mr. Foster. Yes, okay. You don't have to----
Dr. Cordova. The caps were raised--
Mr. Foster. --go into the details of the negotiation, but I
think that's an important point.
Now, one of the features of your proposal is you're going
to be closing the NSF offices abroad, that you've announced I
guess last month that offices in Tokyo, Brussels, and Beijing
were being closed. You also said in your--in I guess all of
your testimony is that the rest of the world is catching up and
in some cases passing us. And so what is it--you know given
that we'll have a lot more to learn scientifically and in
collaboration with other countries, what's the motivation for
closing the foreign----
Dr. Cordova. So exactly right, Dr. Foster. We have a lot
more to learn, and we think that having one person in each of
three offices abroad is not the most efficient way to learn
about the science that we can really do in a high-quality,
directed, focused way with other countries. That demands a lot
of them in terms of intellectual breadth, in terms of covering
a vast geography. We are adopting a practice that is well used
in industry these days, which is sending expert teams of
scientists and engineers from different parts of the country,
and they'll be accompanied by a couple of NSF people to certain
areas where we think that there are assets that could be
complementary to our assets. And the assets include physical
ones, as well as human capital.
We are looking in depth at what the nature of a
collaboration could be. So take like quantum research or
artificial intelligence or we're disposing a team soon to look
at synthetic biology. With careful background study of what are
the areas and invitations from other countries to look at
these, we think that we can have more win-win collaborations
where we really understand what they bring to the table and
what we do. It's a new strategic approach.
Mr. Foster. So this is not--doesn't represent a drop in
your interest in international collaboration----
Dr. Cordova. It represents--
Mr. Foster. --or just a more--what you hope to be a more
efficient deployment of resources for that? Okay. Thank you.
That's important. How much do you end up spending on research
into handgun violence?
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I don't believe it's a direct topic for
us. We could look across various programs to see--
Mr. Foster. Is it----
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. --if there's fundamental research.
Mr. Foster. --prohibited or do you have any calls for
proposals at any point?
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. I would have to look into our background
to--
Mr. Foster. Okay. If you could----
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. --find out more about that.
Mr. Foster. Yes, I'd be interested to know if you are also
handcuffed in this area, as other areas of federal research.
Dr. Ferrini-Mundy. My hunch would be we have some
fundamental social science research that would certainly inform
questions in that area, but I would have to check to be
certain.
Mr. Foster. Yes, but even prohibitions on chameleon basic
statistics, for example, are things that we run into in other
areas.
You also mentioned the workforce thing and the need to make
sure that we keep the best and brightest of other--from other
countries that we educate here. And, Dr. Cordova, you're a
physicist. Have you ever in your career had two first-author
Physical Review Letters published in the same year?
Dr. Cordova. No, I published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Mr. Foster. Okay. All right. Well, same question, yes.
Dr. Cordova. Okay. Same question, have I ever had two
papers--
Mr. Foster. Two in a year----
Dr. Cordova. --published in--
Mr. Foster. --just----
Dr. Cordova. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Foster. As the first author yourself?
Dr. Cordova. As a first author probably. I could--
Mr. Foster. Okay. Well, no, it just----
Dr. Cordova. Yes, I published--
Mr. Foster. --because----
Dr. Cordova. --a lot in my day.
Mr. Foster. --I encountered a situation--okay.
Dr. Cordova. Yes.
Mr. Foster. Well, I encountered a situation recently where
you, as I, have probably penned letters for an Einstein visa
for, you know, very talented people. Yes, I see some nods from
the other--that--and what you see--you know, you're in this
heartbreaking situation where someone that you just know should
be a keeper and you can't--the one that I was unsuccessful at
getting recently had two--been first author in two Physical
Review Letters, a postdoc--as a postdoc, was first author in
two PRLs which are, you know, the premier peer-reviewed
journal. And yet that was insufficient to get an Einstein visa.
And so my question is when you see--you know, in the
presence of, you know, that sort of failure I think that we've
all had from time to time in getting people permission to stay
and then you read that, you know, a model was given the
Einstein visa for probably non-STEM-associated skills. You
know, do you--does it strike you that we're just way off the
mark in what we're trying to accomplish with getting high-
skilled immigrants into the United States?
Dr. Zuber. Excuse me. Thank you for the question, Dr.
Foster. So I don't know the qualifications of any of the other
people who, you know, were awarded the Einstein visa, so I
can't really do a comparison because there are needs in many
different areas, but I will certainly say that the individual
that you mentioned, it is--that's an absolutely top journal in
the field, and, you know, obviously that individual is very
accomplished.
What I would say is that certainly within this country
there is additional capacity to keep the top highest-achieving
individuals from all over the world and in fact, you know, that
has been our modus operandi in this country to attract the best
and the brightest from around the world. And I hope that we
continue to do that.
Mr. Foster. And find a way to keep them. And thank you. I
yield back.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you.
And I now recognize Dr. Babin for five minutes.
Mr. Babin. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And thank
you, witnesses, for being here and for your valuable testimony.
And, Dr. Cordova, good to see you again. And I'd like to
ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind. The United
States is one of the most if not the most innovative and
technologically advanced nation in the world, yet we lag behind
other industrial nations in ensuring that American students
receive the requisite skills for success in a 21st-Century
workforce. How would you each--I'm asking you, too, Dr. Zuber--
both of you. How would you each define success in the field of
STEM studies and computer science education, and do you think
we can achieve this and when? Let's start with Dr. Cordova.
Dr. Cordova. Clearly, we must because it is a skill that
everyone really needs to have for all sorts of occupations, not
only STEM alone. We have a great variety of programs that we
fund over all ages from K-12, undergraduate, graduate, postdoc,
and early career and beyond to try to give people the
opportunity to really increase their STEM and computer science
capabilities. In fact, our real goal is to provide access to
everyone, and that's why we call one of our programs Computer
Science for All.
We also have interestingly for the past 24 years Advanced
Technological Education program that is mainly housed in our
community colleges nationwide. Thus far, we've sponsored 1,500
awards and have over $300 million in industry support because
there are partnerships with industry in retraining workers for
skilled jobs. And a lot of that curriculum has to do with
computer science as well.
Mr. Babin. Okay. And, Dr. Zuber?
Dr. Zuber. And so let me just add one can look at computer
science a couple of different ways. There is an--advancing that
specific field, okay, and then there is infusing the results of
that, those skills, into a whole variety of other different
fields. And so both of those actually need to occur, and they
need to occur not only at the level of students who get four-
year degrees but also in what we call the skilled technical
workforce, so workers who--we call this STEM awareness, okay,
who don't necessarily have a STEM degree, but virtually any job
that you can think of today--many--a whole variety of jobs that
you can think of require some amount of STEM skill and
computation skill or computer skill, so even, you know, working
at a grocery store--
Mr. Babin. Right.
Dr. Zuber. --you know, the electronic readers. And so this
is addressed in the ATE program, which deals with community
colleges, and it's also a focus of the National Science Board
to look at these skilled technical workforces to look at what
it's going to take to provide points of entry to students at
various levels to get into these programs to get training and
then to realize that there needs to be, you know, retraining
and retraining--
Mr. Babin. Right.
Dr. Zuber. --to improve skills.
Mr. Babin. Okay. I need to ask one more question, get it in
before my time is expired. I saw on the news this past weekend
that some American scientists were stranded in Antarctica when
a U.S. vessel could not reach them. And fortunately, NSF,
working with Argentina partners who had an icebreaker and a
helicopter, were able to successfully rescue them. First,
congratulation on the rescue; but second, it brings up whether
or not the United States has sufficient icebreaking capacity.
What is the status of NSF's efforts to ensure the continued
availability of an icebreaker for our polar programs? Dr.
Cordova?
Dr. Cordova. Thank you. We have a number of vessels with
different icebreaking capability. None with very deep
icebreaking capability, so we rely on the U.S. Coast Guard for
that. We lease time from them in order to help us to support
our mission. I know that there is some funding to the Coast
Guard, perhaps it's in the proposal stage, but I think there is
some advanced funding for them to look into having more
capability in this area.
Our preferred mode is not to own a deep-ice-cutting
vessel--and they're not research vessels, but they are for that
purpose--but to keep renting them. And otherwise, we have, as I
said, a number of actual research vessels that have very modest
cutting capability. Thank you for mentioning that example. We
are very happy that five researchers are fine.
Mr. Babin. All right. My time is expired, Madam Chairman.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you.
And I now recognize Mr. Beyer for five minutes.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all of you for being willing to come into a
public forum on the Ides of March. You're very brave.
You know, the--with appropriate respect for the Chairman's
criticisms of specific research awards, the elephant in the
room is still the flat budget. You know, nine years in a row
the structural--the steadily falling percentage of excellent
projects approved, United States losing its global leadership
to China and perhaps to others, you know, I think this is the
most necessary oversight responsibility the Science Committee
has is to keep American science strong, which means keeping the
National Science Foundation strong.
So, Dr. Zuber, a cultural question for you as Chair of the
National Science Board. What can you do, what can we do, what
should we be doing to build public support for additional
federal funding for the National Science Foundation? Especially
given that our lives are so transformed by the science that you
have developed, why don't we value it? How do we increase that
sense of value in our lives?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, so I think--you know, so, first of all,
thank you for those comments, and thank you for your support on
this crucially important topic for the Nation. I think the
Director and her team have taken great efforts to try to make
the science that NSF does understandable broadly to people in
the country, but there's still a lot to be learned. And I
think--I frankly think that NSF is an underappreciated agency
for what it does. So people have heard of the NIH because they
know it does medical research, and people may have heard of the
NSF, but they don't realize the--just the broad scope of
science that it covers, everything from, you know, the polar
science to high-energy physics, you know, to astrophysics, you
know, to the earth sciences, biological sciences, and beyond.
So one of the things that I say every time you see a NASA
image of space that has a NASA logo in the center--and we
encourage the NSF to start getting the word out of, you know,
branding NSF. So when you--you know, when you go out and you
have conversations with people and you let them know the kind
of work that NSF does, you know, they generally seem broadly
supportive, but the question is, you know, with all of the
noise that we have around us today, how do you reach those
people and get the message? And we're always looking for
opportunities to do that.
Mr. Beyer. It sounds like getting the most robust
communications department would help.
Dr. Zuber. Yes.
Mr. Beyer. Maybe sponsor a NASCAR vehicle with NSF on the
side.
Dr. Zuber. Well, some of the videos that the Office of
Legislative and Public Affairs have put together have been
absolutely spectacular and have won national awards, and that's
been very helpful.
Mr. Beyer. There's an old political idiom that nothing
happens in politics unless you tell somebody about it. This may
be the same thing here.
So on that line, this may be a dangerous suggestion, so
forgive me for a dangerous suggestion, but it may make sense at
some level to have a nonpartisan, nonideological person look at
the grants one final time before they go out just to make sure
that we don't put a Chairman, whether a Democrat or Republican
Chairman, in the position of saying, ``That sure doesn't sound
legitimate,'' you know, a nonscientific eye as something that's
going to go out to the general public.
Dr. Cordova. Largely because of this Committee I think we
have really upped our transparency and accountability
processes, and we're very sensitive to titles and abstracts
because we--unlike many other agencies, we publish everything
online, so it is really open and people can see immediately
what it looks like. We have now a non-technical abstract, which
is geared towards public consumption. We think that we have
really improved our readability of what we're doing and also
brought cognizance to the entire agency that people are looking
and they're really evaluating the value of the benefit to the
nation just on a few sentences that are there describing the
research and its potential benefits. We have taken a lot of
steps in that direction.
As far as your suggestion of whom to have on the committees
that finally approve that, I think that's an interesting
suggestion and I will take it back and we'll consider it. Thank
you.
Mr. Beyer. All right. Thank you very much.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize myself for
five minutes.
I think we earlier had some students from Paul VI High
School. I don't know if we have any left, but I thank them for
joining us.
And I wanted to start out by thanking Dr. Cordova for your
strong statement about zero tolerance for sexual harassment
that you recently made in light of some of the things that this
Committee, as well as others, have looked at. So as you may
know, we had a hearing on sexual harassment in science, and
sort of the role that some of the grants and people who really
can determine your future in terms of whether you're going to
get into the fields that you want, and how that's impacted
because of harassment.
And I was--I think we also--we didn't get into it as deep
as we might, but I think it's something we do need to look at
more, the long-term wage impact because we know that when women
are harassed in a specific field, they are very likely to leave
that field and not get back into it, particularly when you have
some avenues here that if they're closed off, you may not have
someplace else to go.
I was wondering if you could just--in light of your very
strong statement--I just wanted to give you the opportunity to
address that, and maybe for the others, since we are blessed to
have three women panelists here today, I thought it might be a
good opportunity to hear directly from you.
Dr. Cordova. Thank you very, very much Chairwoman Comstock,
for your passion, your interest, for having the hearing, and of
course we all listened to the hearing remotely, and it was very
good to get it all out on the table. Some very, very important
points were made.
The important thing to recognize about our statement--and
now, of course, our statement has turned into a notice in the
Federal Register that is open for public comment for 60 days,
and we will be absorbing all those comments as we go. We're not
waiting to the end of the period, so we've already started
that. We also have robust processes to send compliance team
reviews to universities to say, ``Hey, are you doing what
you're supposed to do?'' And we review their cases. The team
talks with a lot of individuals at all levels of the university
from the students to the administration and all, and that's----
Mrs. Comstock. I was wondering, do we have percentages--and
my apologies if I should know--what percentage of these grants
and projects are female-led?
Dr. Cordova. We can certainly find that out. I mean, I know
we--well, for one thing, in--earlier, we talked a little bit
about the merit--annual merit review report that the agency
produces for the National Science Board, and there we have the
proposals as a function of gender and also minorities'
representation that are given to us in how many we approve, and
so we can then make the assumption that if you're the lead
investigator, that you are also leading the research.
So yes, we have the statistics, and actually women do very
well. I think about one percentage point higher success rate
than male gender.
Mrs. Comstock. All right. And, Dr. Zuber?
Dr. Zuber. Yes, so if I could just add, so the National
Science Board fully supported the Director in wanting to get
out ahead of this issue, and we're particularly--there was a
lot of discussion about this, but we were incredibly supportive
of the fact that it's very, very important to have due process,
but if a university has a process and an investigation takes
place where it's--enough evidence is deemed that it goes to a
full-out investigation, that it needs to be reported to NSF.
And this is because it might make sense to get a substitute
principal investigator in there, and this is to really, you
know, care about the personal situation of the person who has
been experiencing the harassment.
We consider this to be a real step forward, and NSF as an
agency has really taken the lead on this. And what I hope is
other agencies I think are also looking at policies, and I hope
we don't get a different policy for every agency. I hope that--
you know, I personally think that the NSF policy--it's very
thought-out because, you know, the Director had a great deal of
experience unfortunately in dealing with issues like this in--
you know, on panels and such that have made recommendations
throughout her career. And--but it would be very cumbersome if
all the agencies just came up with different ways of dealing
with it.
Dr. Cordova. And can I say one more thing? This is only the
beginning for us, that we are having biweekly meetings that Dr.
Ferrini-Mundy chairs within the agency to talk about what else
we can do in this area, for example, codes of conduct at all
our field sites, whether it's Antarctica or environmental field
site, we have hundreds of them. And are all the codes of
conduct all start with similar language? And then do they
fulfill the basic needs, namely that if something happens at a
field site, that you know exactly what is to be posted in an
open, public place where to go, how to get help, and how to
follow through.
We are just consistently going to keep working on this
until we're satisfied that we have done everything we can, and
we're hoping that in the public comment period there will be
even more suggestions about what else we might----
Mrs. Comstock. So this information will be out there so the
students, the young women themselves, will just have more of an
awareness about it, where to go, how to proceed if something
happens?
So I know as we're talking about the pipeline, you know, I
think this week I was at a STEM charter school, and they had a
STEM club that had been started by the young girls there. Then
they we're teaching the boys how to have one, too, so they had
the first one.
And fourth-graders, Coco and Miriam, who escorted me around
their lab and told me about all their programs, it just was a
real--I think we do have a different atmosphere going on in so
many of our schools--these kids were showing me the first-
graders who were coding already, and you really don't see a
difference at that age because the kids haven't learned to have
any differences yet hopefully, and they had a lot of great role
models like we have here.
So just, you know, any way we can get that message through
and then sustain it so that we are keeping that pipeline
because it really did seem, as we went through the process of
the hearing--and if you watched it, you saw it--but the wage
gap could very much be a much bigger part connected to sexual
harassment than we have recognized in the past. Okay. Well, I
think I am up with my time but----
Ms. Lofgren. Yes, I'll--it's playing cleanup here. It's
been a delight to listen to all of you. And this is one of the
most important agencies in the United States really, I mean,
not always appreciated but driving innovation and allowing for
really smart people to research and to lead us forward to
better times.
I think we're sort of at a very serious inflection point in
our country, and you addressed some of the issues, are other
nations competing more vigorously, the flat budget for multiple
years, that with a flat budget, costs increase, you can buy
less. I'm concerned--we have had--this is a figure I got from
the Judiciary Committee staff--since 2015 a 40 percent drop in
foreign students into the United States, which is not a piece
of good news when it comes to science research. And so when you
put that altogether, you've got--you know, we used to have
where we were the center of science research, people from all
over the world coming here, robust funding for science, and now
a very different picture.
So I have some very serious concerns. I know that you all
are doing your very best to make the resources that have been
made available go as far as they can. This is not a criticism
of your fine efforts.
One of the things I'm interested in, Dr. Cordova, is how
many of the highest-rating--highest-rated proposals don't get
funded? What's the sheer number, do you know?
Dr. Cordova. It's almost $4 billion worth of proposals per
year we say are on the cutting room floor. They are rated
excellent, which is the top rating or very good to excellent. I
would say excellent is about $2 billion, about half of that,
the other $2 billion between very good and excellent, but
definitely worthy of funding, and we are not able to fund them.
Ms. Lofgren. At some point I remember George Miller, who
spent so many years on our Education and Labor Committee, went
over and read the proposals that couldn't be funded, and it put
him into a depression for a while of all of the things we could
have learned had we been able to actually award funding to the
most meritorious proposals. I'd like at some point to see if we
couldn't organize members of the Science Committee who have an
interest to do that, take a look at what got left on the
cutting room floor.
And just a final comment, I think Congressman Beyer was
mentioning having somebody look at a last cut as not
scientists. Here's I think sometimes a problem. At least the
scientists I know tend to be--you know, really smart people
have great senses of humor, and you can have a very serious
subject matter and a light touch on the title that may belie
the seriousness of the inquiry. So it may be that the
lighthearted titles may want a review because they could be
misleading, and that's just the thought that I have because
smart people do tend to have a great sense of humor.
So with that, I'm going to close this hearing with these
comments. I think we're very, very lucky as a nation to have
all of you, the service that you are providing to our country.
I'm grateful to you for it, and with that, Madam Chair, I yield
back.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. And I would second that again.
And I thank the witnesses for their testimony and the
Members for their questions. And the record will remain open
for two weeks for additional written comments and written
questions from Members. And the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
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Appendix II
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