How Scientists Can Enhance Scientific Research Through Legislative Change in the CHIPS and Science Act
I’m a researcher with a PhD in Biochemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology from Emory University. However, I didn’t go on to work in the private sector or academia. Instead, I transitioned into a policy career focused on scientific research and STEM pipeline issues.
I joined University of California Federal Government Relations (UC FGR), where I was involved in drafting language for one part of the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS) that bolstered federal support for postdoctoral researchers. In this essay, I share my journey from the lab to working with Capitol Hill, even contributing to CHIPS.
On August 9, 2022, President Biden signed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. It made historic investments into research, innovation, and talent development, in order to make the U.S. more competitive in science and technology. During the Rose Garden ceremony, President Biden recounted telling Xi Jinping that one word summarized the American experiment: “possibility.”
I agreed. My belief was simple: The U.S. needs to do everything it can to support the brilliant researchers working at the frontiers of science if we want to ensure that we do not fall behind our competitors. I’ve seen this not just in my own work as a researcher, but through the work I’ve done over the last several years on the impacts of federal funding on supporting scientists and their research.
I grew up around academic research. My parents are both faculty members, and my grandparents were also science researchers. I knew from personal experience how difficult it was for scientists to carve out a fruitful path in research. At the same time, there has never been a greater need for research and science talent. This, I realized, was a problem the federal government should have an interest in helping solve.
Six months into my postdoctoral training, I started contemplating what I could with my PhD in addition to being an academic researcher. I sought resources that would help me transition into a non-academic career. Online information was scant, and many of my peers seemed destined for a lifetime of research. Together with another postdoc, I created a new university seminar series that explored non-academic careers for scientists. Much to our surprise, the series caught fire and exposed a problem that we had hypothesized, but not yet validated. Many of America’s most brilliant future scientists were not excited by the traditional research career paths offered to them. They were looking for something different. I decided to leave my postdoctoral appointment in favor of tackling the problem of supporting postdocs in universities from the outside.
I joined the Future of Research, where we studied the impacts of a federal labor law (FLSA) on postdoctoral salaries in universities around the country. We also researched how much postdoctoral researchers were getting paid based on FOIA requests. Based on prior research, our team discovered that median postdoc salaries in 2016 was $47,476 per year, and only a subset of institutions were willing to raise postdoc salaries. It was clear that postdocs needed to get paid more lest their low salaries drive critical talent away from science, which is still a hot topic today. These studies made me realize that federal laws could have a significant impact on supporting the research pipeline.
I began searching for more opportunities to learn about federal policymaking. I wanted to build a career at the intersection of academia and federal policy. I started with the commonly held knowledge that federal funding could make a huge difference to scientists.
Over the next two years I started to work at that intersection of policy and science. My work as an advocate for research funding and training to Congress illuminated how critical federal funding is for supporting the STEM pipeline and future generations of scientists. For example, while at UC FGR, I met a graduate student who was among the first in her family to attend college and for whom postgraduate research would have been impossible without funding from the National Science Foundation. I met another postdoc who was a first-time mother and she advocated for child care to be included in federal grants so that researcher parents like her could also focus on lab work. This experience also schooled me on the ins-and-outs of the legislative process, as well as the mechanisms by which scientists can affect policy change.
As a senior fellow in science policy with the Federal of American Scientists (FAS), I worked as a policy entrepreneur to address America’s challenges and create change, including in scientific research and the STEM pipeline. Policy entrepreneurs develop new ideas to solve hard public problems, as well as identify and utilize existing levers of influence to make that change happen. Scientists rarely find themselves rattling for policy change as entrepreneurs, but it’s my belief this can — and should — change. I believe scientists should both engage in policy making to fulfill their civic duty and consider how their research can have far reaching societal implications, including for supporting positive scientific practices.
This takes me full circle to CHIPS. One year before the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS) bill signing, as a science policy professional with UC FGR, I attended a conference call with staff members of the House Science Committee to discuss how the National Science Foundation for the Future Act could create funding and career development pathways for postdocs in the hard sciences. It was ultimately folded into CHIPS. While my role in CHIPS was small, the rule change I spearheaded showcasing the importance of postdoctoral researchers in the STEM pipeline at the federal level and enabling them to be recipients of a professional development supplement, has the power to improve the lot of postdocs, whose success in research the federal government should invest in if we’re serious about U.S. competitiveness in science and technology.
Too often, scientists and researchers with strong academic backgrounds are left out of the policymaking process. At the same time, we’ve seen historic funding authorized in recent years to researching and developing the next generation of American technologies via the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has fallen short in appropriations. We cannot develop such technologies without experienced academic researchers and scientists and federal funding to support them.
As someone who was involved with CHIPS, I couldn’t agree more. I am just one example of what’s possible when scientists throw their hats into the policymaking ring and raise their hands to participate in the federal policy process. I am excited to continue this journey and contribute to our nation’s scientific and technological advancement as the first-ever Congressional Policy Fellow sponsored by the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy as part of the AAAS STPF Program in fall 2024.
This post represents the writer’s personal views and not the views of any of the organizations named in the article.
