Michael Stebbins, Ph.D., is a geneticist and public policy expert who serves as the President and CEO of Science Advisors, a science and health consulting firm he founded in 2018. He served as the Assistant Director for Biotechnology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he developed eight Executive Orders and other directives addressing issues ranging from the antibiotic resistance crisis to restoring pollinator health. His work led to broad changes in practice across the Federal government regarding the purchasing of bio-based products, improving veterans’ mental health, increasing access to federally funded scientific research publications and data, improving scientific reproducibility, evaluating and addressing the preferential purchasing of antibiotic free meats, reforming the regulatory system for biotechnology products, and improving the management of scientific collections. He previously worked for the Federation of American Scientists, for US Senator Harry Reid, and as a Senior Editor at Nature Genetics. He received his Ph.D. in genetics while working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He co-authored the proposal to create ARPA-H.
The U.S. should create a new non-governmental Innovation Accelerator modeled after the successful In-Q-Tel program to invest in small and mid-cap companies creating technologies that address critical needs of the United States.
The 61 million adults in the United States living with a disability deserve to engage with the world on their own terms.
Publication of detailed scientific methodologies can save researchers time and money, and can accelerate the pace of research.
Comprehensive and reliable mortality data will enable more effective response to rapidly evolving public health challenges.
The next administration should control drug costs through an evidence-based approach to optimizing drug dosing and improving outcomes.
Address pharmaceutical market failures by launching a new program that takes an open-source approach to pharmaceutical R&D.
Require federally funded scientists to share their data. Build an international research data commons. Accelerate scientific progress.
The federal government can directly address the massive market failures at the center of our healthcare enterprise by establishing a new Health Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The principle is simple. The products, information and techniques of some life sciences research could be misused for nefarious purposes, such as bioterrorism, and the scientific community should do everything it can to prevent such misuse without impeding research progress. What is unclear is what steps scientists should take when they have concerns about such […]
To begin the day the NBSB listened to presentations from each of the members of the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE). The Enterprise is coordinated within HHS by the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and includes the NIH, CDC, FDA and BARDA. PHEMCE’s role in HHS is to coordinate the research, development, […]
The National Research Council (NRC) just released a report that finds that “a National Institutes of Health draft assessment of the risks associated with a proposed biocontainment laboratory at Boston University is “not sound and credible.”” The NRC report came in response to a request by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for technical input into the […]
The the Institute for Animal Health has confirmed a positive test for foot-and-mouth in Surrey, just outside London. The latest report that I could find indicated that they had ordered the slaughter of 300 animals in the area of the outbreak and that all cattle movement and exports had been halted. The site of the […]