Michael Stebbins, Ph.D. is a geneticist and public-policy expert who served as the Assistant Director for Biotechnology in the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is currently the President of Science Advisors, a science and health consulting firm he founded in 2018 to provide science, technology, and public policy guidance to private companies, philanthropies, and non-profit organizations. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. While at the White House, Dr. Stebbins’ work led to large initiatives across the federal government to address antibiotic resistance, protect pollinators, improve veterans’ mental health, increase access to federally funded scientific research publications and data, promote preferential purchasing of antibiotic-free meats, reform the regulatory system for biotechnology products, drive federal purchasing of bio-based products, and improve management of scientific collections. Dr. Stebbins previously served as the Vice President of Science and Technology for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, science advisor to the Obama Presidential Campaign, and on the Obama White House Transition Team. He is the former director of biology policy for the Federation of American Scientists and worked for U.S. Senator Harry Reid and at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Before coming to Washington, he was a senior editor at Nature Genetics. Dr. Stebbins is on the Board of the Value in Cancer Care Consortium and chair of the Board for Vivli. He serves on the scientific advisory boards for Datavant and Amida Technology Solutions.
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 […]
Hey, we found the Iraqi WMD’s. They were being stored at the UN! I am sure it will be all over the news by tonight, but it is astonishing how fast the press was all over what really amounts to an act of stupidity, and most certainly not a large public hazard. Sure, one can’t […]