Multiple bioeconomy-related programs were authorized through the bipartisan CHIPS & Science legislation but have yet to receive anywhere near their funding targets.
The ongoing failure of the U.S. to invest comes at a time when our competitors continue to up their investments in science.
Given the unreliability of private market funding for agricultural biotechnology R&D, substantial federal funding through research programs such as AgARDA is vital for accelerating R&D.
Science funding agencies are biased against risk, making transformative research difficult to fund. Forecast-based approaches to grantmaking could improve funding outcomes for high-risk, high-reward research.
Like climate change, the societal risks from AI will likely come from the cumulative impact of many different systems. Unilateral commitments are poor tools to address such risks.
Collaboration between federal agencies and academic researchers is an important tool for public policy. This primer provides an initial set of questions and topics for agencies to consider when exploring academic partnership.
While the U.S. government grapples with the definition of the bioeconomy and what sectors it does and does not contain, another definitional issue needs to be addressed: What does sustainability mean in a bioeconomy?
Federal clearinghouses should incorporate open science practices into their standards and procedures used to identify evidence-based social programs eligible for federal funding.
To better address security and sustainability of open source software, the United States should establish a Digital Technology Fund through multi-stakeholder participation.
Building on existing data and privacy efforts, the White House and federal science agencies should collaborate to develop and implement clear standards for research data privacy across the data management and sharing life cycle.
The USPTO should incorporate open source hardware certification databases into the library of resources to search for prior art, and create guidelines and training to build agency capacity for evaluating open source prior art.
Federal agencies should take coordinated action to ensure that data sharing policies incentivize high-quality data management and sharing plans.