[Senate Hearing 116-581]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 116-581

               SECURING U.S. LEADERSHIP IN THE BIOECONOMY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, OCEANS, FISHERIES, AND WEATHER

                                 OF THE

                         COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
                      SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
                         UNITED STATES SENATEs

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             MARCH 3, 2020
                               __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
                             Transportation
                             
                             
                [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                             


                Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov
                
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
00-000 PDF               WASHINGTON : 2023                  
                
                
       SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                  ROGER WICKER, Mississippi, Chairman
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota             MARIA CANTWELL, Washington, 
ROY BLUNT, Missouri                      Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas                      AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska                RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JERRY MORAN, Kansas                  BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
CORY GARDNER, Colorado               TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee          GARY PETERS, Michigan
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MIKE LEE, Utah                       TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               JON TESTER, Montana
TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
RICK SCOTT, Florida                  JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
                       John Keast, Staff Director
                  Crystal Tully, Deputy Staff Director
                      Steven Wall, General Counsel
                 Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
              Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
                      Renae Black, Senior Counsel
                                 ------                                

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, OCEANS, FISHERIES, AND WEATHER

CORY GARDNER, Colorado, Chairman     TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin, Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas                      RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska                 BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin               GARY PETERS, Michigan
RICK SCOTT, Florida
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on March 3, 2020....................................     1
Statement of Senator Gardner.....................................     1
Statement of Senator Baldwin.....................................     2

                               Witnesses

Dr. Jason Kelly, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ginkgo 
  Bioworks.......................................................     4
    Prepared statement...........................................     6
Jason T. Gammack, Chief Commercial Officer, Inscripta, Inc.......     8
    Prepared statement...........................................    10
Megan J. Palmer, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar, Center for 
  International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Freeman Spogli 
  Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University.    11
    Prepared statement...........................................    13
Timothy Donohue, UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom Professor of 
  Bacteriology, Interim Director, Wisconsin Energy Institute, 
  University of Wisconsin-Madison................................    17
    Prepared statement...........................................    19

 
                       SECURING U.S. LEADERSHIP 
                           IN THE BIOECONOMY

                              ----------                              


                         TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2020

                               U.S. Senate,
   Subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and 
                                           Weather,
        Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:15 a.m. in 
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Cory Gardner, 
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Gardner [presiding], and Baldwin.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CORY GARDNER, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO

    Senator Gardner. Thank you very much to all of you. We're 
going to call this Committee hearing to order. Thank you for 
the witnesses and thanks to Ranking Member Baldwin for joining 
me at this morning's hearing.
    I would also like to extend a special thank you to Jason 
Gammack on today's witness panel who joins us from the greatest 
state in the greatest country with the greatest skiing in the 
country. So thank you for traveling here from Colorado.
    Today's hearing is about Securing U.S. Leadership in the 
Bioeconomy and ensuring shared values of freedom and human 
rights are reflected in the global efforts on research and 
related issues for the bioeconomy, and, of course, with the 
national conversation focusing much on Coronavirus, your 
insights, ideas, and thoughts could be of essential importance 
this morning.
    Before we get too far into the hearing, I think it might be 
helpful to explain what exactly the bioeconomy is and how to 
define it.
    Earlier this year, the National Academies of Science, 
Engineering, and Medicine released a Consensus Study Report 
entitled Safeguarding the Bioeconomy. In that report, it is 
defined as follows: the U.S. bioeconomy is economic activity 
that is driven by research and innovation in the life sciences, 
and biotechnology that is enabled by technological advances in 
engineering and in computing and information sciences.
    Innovations in the bioeconomy could lead to more 
sustainable agriculture, improved pharmaceuticals, more 
resilient clothing, better formulated vaccines, and a whole 
host of other benefits.
    Federal funding will be critical to that effort. Agencies, 
like the National Science Foundation, National Institute of 
Standards and Technology, and Office of Science and Technology 
Policy, among others, will be critical to keeping the United 
States at the forefront of growing and sustaining the U.S. 
bioeconomy spirit.
    The National Academies' publication recognizes this and 
makes a number of recommendations, including, among others, 
requiring the Department of Commerce and the United States 
National Science Board to expand and enhance data collection 
efforts on the U.S. bioeconomy.
    Formalizing the White House-led governmentwide coordination 
on issues related to the bioeconomy and boosting U.S. Federal 
investment in research that could benefit the growth of the 
U.S. bioeconomy.
    But for all the enormous opportunities the bioeconomy 
sector poses for the United States and the world, it isn't 
without challenges. What passes for standard ethical 
commitments in the United States may be viewed as unnecessary 
hindrances and obstructions in countries like China.
    The New York Times published a disturbing story in December 
2019 about the Chinese Government's use of DNA to target the 
Muslim Uyghur Commission, the minority in the far-flung 
Xinjiang Province.
    As the Times reported, scientists there are working to 
create an image of someone's face using only a DNA sample. 
There are obviously deep concerns using such a technique.
    As part of this terrible development, it is also clear that 
European-backed institutions were in part helping to fund these 
experiments, although perhaps unknowingly.
    With revelations like this and the threat of reintroduced 
diseases from the past, like smallpox and worse, and new and 
emerging concerns, like Coronavirus, it's clear that the U.S. 
and U.S. companies will have to play a critical role in 
settling and setting the ethical underpinning of the global 
bioeconomy.
    I look forward to discussing these tensions, these 
challenges, and these opportunities with the witnesses 
testifying today, and with that, I will turn to Senator Baldwin 
and then I will introduce the witnesses.

               STATEMENT OF HON. TAMMY BALDWIN, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN

    Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for 
leading this very important hearing.
    I am excited to learn more about the bioeconomy and the 
great promise it has for our industries, our rural economy, our 
health and our environment, and I look forward to working with 
you, Chairman Gardner, and the Subcommittee as we explore ways 
to ensure the U.S. has a leadership role in these exciting new 
areas.
    I would also like to thank the National Academies for 
producing the important report about the bioeconomy that has 
spurred today's conversation and thank our witnesses for 
joining us today to share their perspectives, and I'm 
particularly proud to welcome Dr. Donohue from the great state 
of Wisconsin.
    There is so much potential in the bioeconomy for our 
Nation. I am excited about the prospects of new technologies 
and innovations that can help strengthen America's 
manufacturing and foster long-term economic resiliency in our 
manufacturing communities by developing the next generation of 
Made in America products.
    In Wisconsin, our bioeconomy has deep roots, from farming 
to food processing to producing paper and power to keep the 
economy running. We've always used the resources available to 
build a better life. So in a way, this discussion is really 
about the next phase of economic potential in our bioeconomy.
    We have some amazing new knowledge coming out of our labs 
at UW-Madison and we have top-notch engineers and workers 
keeping our manufacturing sector running strong.
    The prospects for creating even more value out of our 
natural resources and doing so in a sustainable way are in 
front of us. Our farmers and manufacturers face a slew of 
challenges as they work to meet market demand for more 
sustainable products delivered through more sustainable supply 
chains, all while coping with the regular day-to-day challenges 
of their work and competition they face from across the world.
    The current economy and ecological pressures ask a lot of 
our industrial leaders, but they are rising to the challenge. 
In doing so, they are keeping our economy running while also 
working through the very real challenges of figuring out how we 
can keep our local economies stable as our businesses and 
communities cope with the challenges of becoming more resilient 
to more frequent weather extremes and the additional hazards of 
a changing climate.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the work 
they are doing, the challenges and opportunities they face as 
they work to transition knowledge into economic value.
    I also want to hear more from them about what Congress must 
do to support the science that will make success in the future 
bioeconomy a reality, and, in particular, I am interested in 
how we meet the workforce challenges that new industries will 
bring with them, particularly industries so focused in STEM 
fields.
    Thank you again for convening these important conversations 
and I look forward to our discussion.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
    I will introduce the three witnesses and if you have a 
further introduction of Dr. Donohue,----
    Senator Baldwin. I do.
    Senator Gardner. Very good. I will turn it over to you for 
that.
    Dr. Jason Kelly is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive 
Officer of Ginkgo Bioworks, a company headquartered in Boston, 
Massachusetts. Not every company can be headquartered in 
Colorado. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology.
    His multibillion-dollar company has been named as one of 
the top growing companies in the bioeconomy space and has 
attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and 
partnerships with those interested in using biology to solve 
challenges.
    Mr. Jason Gammack is the Chief Commercial Officer of 
Inscripta and joins us from Boulder, Colorado, home of my law 
degree and student loan.
    Inscripta recently launched the world's first benchtop 
platform for digital genome engineering. Mr. Gammack has spent 
more than 25 years in the life sciences world working on issues 
fundamental to the bioeconomy.
    Thank you very much for your participation today.
    Dr. Megan Palmer is a Research Scholar at the Center for 
International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. 
She also received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology and Founded the Synthetic Biology Leadership 
Excellence Program or LEAP, which promotes international 
leadership in bio-technology.
    I will turn to Senator Baldwin for the introduction of Dr. 
Donohue.
    Senator Baldwin. I am pleased to welcome Dr. Tim Donohue, 
Director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, which is 
located on the UW-Madison Campus. The center is funded by the 
U.S. Department of Energy and Office of Science. It's focused 
on bio-based renewable fuels and research chemicals. The center 
does not just stop at discoveries. It is focused on getting new 
innovations into pilots, patents, and eventually into commerce.
    As you might expect, Dr. Donohue has been recognized by his 
colleagues and national organizations for his leadership and 
accomplishments. His work is also reflected in the output of 
the research center he runs.
    So if I might brag on Wisconsin research leadership for a 
moment, since the establishment of the Great Lakes Bioenergy 
Research Center in 2007, our researchers have made great 
strides in increasing the knowledge necessary to transition to 
bio-based processes.
    They have released 1,300 scientific publications and have 
been cited 88,000 times, but it's not just a center focused on 
creating knowledge. It is focused on developing new ideas to 
provide better solutions to current and future problems and to 
that end, the center has helped to spur more than 200 patent 
applications which have already resulted in 91 patents.
    The research happening on bio-products is happening in the 
context of future needs across our economy and because of this 
great work and innovation pipeline, we are building a more 
resilient economic future for our communities, our state, and 
our country and beyond.
    So welcome, Dr. Donohue, on Wisconsin.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
    Dr. Kelly, if you would like to begin, then we'll work our 
way through the panel. Please keep your comments as close to 5 
minutes as you can.
    Thank you.

           STATEMENT OF DR. JASON KELLY, CO-FOUNDER 
          AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GINKGO BIOWORKS

    Dr. Kelly. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Committee Member 
Baldwin, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the great 
honor to speak here today. Thank you for the introduction.
    We're one of the faster-growing synthetic biology companies 
in the space. So I'll speak to what's happening on the 
commercial side but I'm excited that the government is focusing 
in this area. For example, the White House held a Bioeconomy 
Summit just a few months back as a follow-on from similar 
summits in quantum computing and AI as a merging area of the 
future. But I think, you know, few in the public have a sense 
of, you know, quantum computing is like better computers, AI is 
sort of computers that think, but the bioeconomy, synthetic 
biology, you know, what is it, right, and so I wanted to start 
by just explaining what I thought it was.
    So, you know, synthetic biology, the simplest way to think 
of it is we will program cells like we program computers and 
the reason that's possible is because in every plant, animal, 
and microbe out in nature is digital code in the form of DNA 
inside those cells. And we can read that code with DNA 
sequencing, if you're familiar with the Human Genome Project, 
and we can write that code with DNA synthesis or DNA printing.
    If you can read and write code, and you have a machine to 
run it, you can program it. You can put in new applications, 
new apps, and so one of the trends is that the cost to read and 
write that code has been dropping dramatically. So the cost to 
sequence the first human genome was $100 million in 2000. 
Actually, after a meeting just last week, Beijing Genomics in 
China announced a new machine that would sequence the human 
genome for a $100. So we've had a one millionfold cost 
reduction in that technology in the last 20 years.
    Writing DNA similarly has dropped by probably a factor of a 
thousand to 10,000 over the same period of time, OK, and so 
this exponential improvement is opening many new apps.
    So let me give you some examples of commercial 
applications. So one of my favorites, if you've heard of the 
Impossible Burger, so if you go down into Burger King, you can 
have an Impossible Whopper. It's a veggie burger. You bite into 
this thing and it bleeds. That's interesting. There's not a lot 
of blood in plants. How are they doing that? Well, what they've 
done is they've taken the gene, the genetic code for 
hemoglobin, what makes your blood red, and they've programmed 
brewer's yeast, like you would use in a normal brewery. Then 
they brew it up in a process very similar to running a brewery 
except instead of beer coming out, you get heme, a key food 
ingredient that they add into these burgers. And I'm a meat 
eater. You know, this thing smells right, tastes right. It's a 
veggie burger that doesn't taste like cardboard to me. That's 
an amazing app of this cell programming technology.
    A second one in agriculture, Ginkgo has a $100 million 
joint venture with Bayer Crop Science to work on nitrogen 
fertilizer production, OK, and the way you get fertilizer today 
is you make it chemically by burning about 4 percent of global 
natural gas and pulling nitrogen out of the air.
    All right. You ship those bags of fertilizer off to 
farmers. They put it on the field. Half of it ends up in the 
river, half of it goes to the crop. You get a local 
environmental problem. You get larger greenhouse gas 
challenges, but we all get to eat, right?
    Certain crops, like soybeans, you don't need to fertilize 
very much. Why? Well, they have microbes on their roots running 
that same process, pulling nitrogen out of the air and 
fertilizing the crop.
    Corn, wheat, and rice, half of global fertilizer usage, 
they don't have these microbes. So what we're doing with Bayer 
is we're taking the genetic code. We're reading the code from 
the soybean microbe, redesigning it on the computer, typing 
ATCG, hitting print, DNA printing it, putting it into the 
microbe that lives on corn. And then now you treat that seed, 
the microbes grow on the roots, and the corn self-fertilizes. 
So you could start to wean those crops off of that synthetic 
fertilizer. Second application.
    And then the final one, you may have heard of a company 
called Moderna Therapeutics up in Cambridge. They have the 
first vaccine out going into human trials for Coronavirus. 42 
days from the sequence of that virus to that vaccine going out 
the door for testing with the FDA. That's incredibly fast for a 
vaccine.
    How did they do it? Well, their vaccines are different from 
traditional vaccines where you are growing up an active virus. 
What they've done is they use mRNA, which is similar to DNA 
code, and to quote their President Steven Hogue in Time 
Magazine, ``mRNA is really like a software molecule in biology. 
So our vaccine is like the software to program the body.''
    That ability to program cells, just to give you a sense of 
the breadth, you're going from consumer products, like a 
whopper, to new vaccines for emerging infectious diseases. The 
way to think about this is if you think about computers over 
the last 50 years, we could put new apps into this technology 
to make it do new things, but at the end of the day, a computer 
just moves information around. It's good for e-mails and 
watching movies, right, but cells are programmable and they 
don't move information. They move atoms. They build stuff. 
They're in the physical world. They're the important stuff.
    The technology to exponentially program that is improving. 
So we're talking about things like medicine, things like food. 
They produce our atmosphere and clean our water, right? This is 
a far more strategically important technology to this country 
than computers was and in the next five to 10 years, the 
companies are going to be built that determine which country 
wins this economic base.
    I'm particularly proud that you all are focusing on this 
today. I think it's exactly the right time.
    So thank you very much for hearing my comments.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Kelly follows:]

 Prepared Statement of Dr. Jason Kelly, Co-Founder and Chief Executive 
                     Officer, Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc.
    Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you so much for this great honor to come and speak 
to you today about this exciting moment in the trajectory of synthetic 
biology technology and the growing bioeconomy.
    My name is Jason Kelly and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Ginkgo 
Bioworks, a Boston-based cell programming company with over 300 
employees that is currently valued at over $4 billion. Ginkgo operates 
in the emerging field of synthetic biology. In synthetic biology, we 
program cells like you program computers. We can do this because cells 
run on digital code in the form of DNA. DNA is made up of As, Ts, Cs, 
and Gs--not 0s and 1s, but you can read the DNA code with DNA 
sequencing and write the code with DNA printing. Ginkgo is the largest 
user of DNA printing in the world which we use to program cell ``apps'' 
for customers ranging from Bayer/Monsanto in agriculture to Roche in 
pharmaceuticals. Importantly, Ginkgo and other companies are seeing 
exponential improvements in this technology. For example, the cost to 
read and write DNA has been improving faster than Moore's Law. Moore's 
Law is the rate at which microprocessors in computers (built by 
companies like Intel) improve and a metric of one of the fastest 
improving technologies in the world.
    Synthetic Biology will enable companies to program cells across all 
economic sectors. The cellular applications (``cell apps'') of 
synthetic biology offer limitless opportunities for biological 
manufacturing and innovation, and are making tangible differences in 
our daily lives, whether through protecting our environment, improving 
our health, or advancing our security.
    One of my favorite examples of an application in this space is a 
partnership Ginkgo has with Bayer Crop Science, the world's largest 
agricultural biotechnology company, to innovate on fertilizer 
production. Currently, farmers must apply large amounts of synthetic 
fertilizer to grow cereal crops such as wheat, corn, and rice. These 
fertilizers are energy-intensive to produce, and cause runoff into 
water supplies, generating local environmental problems. Ginkgo and 
Bayer created a joint venture called Joyn Bio to engineer microbes that 
will live on the roots of these crops and provide them with nitrogen 
without the need for synthetic fertilizers, with enormous potential for 
economic and environmental benefit. This is just one of countless 
examples of how synthetic biology can make our world more sustainable, 
safe, and productive.
    In the biomedical space, we have a partnership with Synlogic, a 
therapeutic company that is engineering probiotic bacteria to treat 
patients with metabolic disorders, such as maple syrup urine disease. 
Synlogic equips these microbes with genes to fill in the metabolic step 
missing in these patients, so that they can break down the metabolite 
that is building up and causing the patients' symptoms. We apply our 
platform to accelerate the development of these living medicines.
    Ginkgo also recognizes the threats and opportunities synthetic 
biology poses to U.S. national security. To that end, Ginkgo 
participates in several DARPA and IARPA programs to help advance tool 
development to mitigate risks and defend against malicious acts. As 
part of the DARPA Synergistic Design and Discovery, or SD2, program, 
Ginkgo is helping to generate better models to predict the effects of 
genetic engineering. Within IARPA's Finding Engineering-Linked 
Indicators, or FELIX, program, Ginkgo is developing algorithms to 
determine whether DNA sequences have been engineered. Finally, as part 
of IARPA's Functional Genomic and Computational Assessments of Threats, 
or Fun GCAT, program, Ginkgo is helping to develop screening mechanisms 
to more rapidly identify threatening DNA sequences.
    The cross-cutting and transformative nature of these applications, 
along with the exponential improvements in the underlying technologies 
to read and write DNA, have motivated significant investment into this 
field by private industry and foreign governments alike. More than $12 
billion of venture capital funding has been invested in synthetic 
biology companies in the last ten years, most of which are U.S. based. 
Simultaneously, allies such as the U.K. and Germany have developed 
detailed bioeconomy strategies and near-peer competitors like China 
have made huge investments in synthetic biology development. The next 
decade will define which countries get to lead the bioeconomy, and much 
like in the automobile, airline, or semiconductor industries, the 
winning countries will be those that capitalize on first mover 
advantage and economies of scale.
    Private sector funding, which is often targeted at specific 
companies or projects, is not enough for the U.S. to capitalize on 
these advantages. It is essential that the Federal government makes 
robust investments in the research and development programs that 
underpin advancement in synthetic biology. This field was born out of 
public grants from agencies including the National Science Foundation 
(NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DoD), and 
National Institutes of Health (NIH). As an early beneficiary of many of 
these programs, Ginkgo can attest to the enabling power they can 
provide. Thanks to this early investment, American companies like 
Ginkgo currently lead in this space. However, to ensure America remains 
the global leader in synthetic biology, the U.S. government must 
strategically reinvest in its bioeconomy. The U.S. has done this before 
with nuclear technology, semiconductors, space technology, the ARPANET, 
and the Human Genome Project. Synthetic biology will be as or more 
important to the strategic interests of the country than these previous 
technologies.
    We are pleased to see recognition of the importance of this 
critical need in this hearing and in bipartisan initiatives such as the 
Industries of the Future Act of 2020 introduced to the full committee 
this January and the Engineering Biology Research and Development Act 
of 2019 that passed out of the House this past November. We look 
forward to partnering with you and your colleagues to ensure this type 
of innovation-focused legislation advances and Federal agencies have 
the resources and policies they need to keep America at the forefront 
of this emerging field.
    Thank you for your time and for your continued leadership on these 
important issues. I look forward to your questions.

    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Kelly.
    Mr. Gammack.

                STATEMENT OF JASON T. GAMMACK, 
           CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, INSCRIPTA, INC.

    Mr. Gammack. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, 
Distinguished Senators, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very 
much for the invitation to testify today before you.
    I represent Inscripta, a company based in Boulder, 
Colorado, that's developing new tools for genome engineering. 
As the Chief Commercial Officer, I'm incredibly excited about 
the opportunities for startups like ours to help accelerate the 
development of the bioeconomy through the creation of advanced 
genomic tools for genetic research.
    But we are here today to ask for your help. Without careful 
government attention to issues like workforce training, 
regulation, protection of intellectual property, and global 
standards, we may lose our ability to compete and lead in the 
global bioeconomy.
    I'm here to address engineering biology, sometimes referred 
to as synthetic biology. Both fall under a very large category 
of biotechnology, terms you're probably more familiar with.
    Traditionally, when we think of biotechnology, we think of 
the innovation hubs on the East and West Coasts, from Boston to 
San Francisco, for example, where the industry was born. But 
the opportunity here we're discussing presents unlimited 
opportunities for the economic boom for the entire United 
States and no area can be left behind.
    Synthetic biology involves using natural bio-based 
materials to design and manufacture a wide range of products in 
a more sustainable way. This includes better ways to feed, 
fuel, clothe, transport, and shelter our citizens, among other 
things.
    In fact, there are very few industries that will not be 
touched by the bioeconomy. In the bioeconomy era, rather than 
making products of raw materials dug from the earth, pumped 
from the earth, or created through harsh chemical processes, we 
will produce them through biological ingredients and biological 
processes with microbes engineered like living factories.
    The beauty of this approach is that nature has, for 
billions of years, found ways to make complex highly-
sustainable products through the power of evolution. We can 
harness this power and direct it to create products that we 
want and need for our growing population. This has the 
potential to reinvigorate historical bastions of manufacturing, 
such as the Midwest and any region that wants to participate in 
this revolution, because the tools needed for this type of 
manufacturing will be widely available, easy to use, and 
affordable.
    Much of this work today is based on fermentation, using 
source material that can be sustainably grown wherever land is 
abundant. For example, companies are already using yeast 
fermentation to sustainably produce important compounds, such 
as lactic acid and clothing fibers.
    Yeast can be grown in tanks known as fermenters anywhere. 
This is why the bioeconomy is such an attractive opportunity 
for the middle regions of our country.
    At Inscripta, we've designed and built an instrument that 
scientists use to engineer microbes in their laboratory with 
the goal of creating desired or beneficial outcomes.
    For example, we've demonstrated the ability to generate a 
14,000-fold increase in the production of lysine. Lysine's a 
$3.6 billion globally-traded amino acid used in applications 
ranging from nutrition to pharmaceuticals. Imagine the economic 
impact, discoveries, and efficiencies of scale across other 
industries using similar technology.
    We are working with world-renown scientists to conduct 
foundational research in antibiotic resistance at a scale that 
was previously infeasible with the idea of developing new 
generations of antibiotics to fight the most harmful pathogens 
and emerging threats.
    We're only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg for the 
possibilities using these technologies for good. We believe our 
platform will become a primary tool enabling the bioeconomy. It 
will allow scientists to conduct advanced research and design 
sustainable new products in a manner that is efficient, safe, 
cost effective, and at a price that's well within reach of 
startups, multinationals, and academic researchers at 
institutions across our country.
    We talk at Inscripta about democratizing access to genome 
engineering. It's our guiding principle. This means making 
sure, we can make it happen anywhere in a responsible and 
safeguarded fashion with no scientist or part of the country 
left out.
    But as access to genomic engineering technology 
accelerates, it's critical to recognize that the same 
opportunity available across our country will also present 
itself--and in fact already has--in other countries, such as 
China.
    My industry colleagues and I are here because we want to 
see the U.S. lead this bioeconomy revolution just as we did in 
the Internet revolution and set the standards for scientific 
integrity and biosecurity that will be critical for genome 
engineering as it scales globally.
    We also believe and are encouraged by the fact that this is 
a nonpartisan issue that can unify us as a nation. The 
bioeconomy will be a primary driver of the next wave of growth 
in manufacturing in the United States as well as being a 
catalyst for new job creation. It will create our next 
industrial revolution, which will be a bio-industrial 
revolution. That revolution in economic and job growth will 
happen across our country, but not just along our coasts 
because the tools will be ubiquitous to scientists and 
researchers.
    The legislation before you addresses actions our government 
can take to assist the private sector and academic institutions 
to develop our bioeconomy. This includes ensuring our learning 
institutions are equipped to produce the workforce in the 
future. It means removing unnecessary regulations that can 
impede it, and it means ensuring the intellectual property is 
protected.
    A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, 
Engineering, and Medicine states, ``In 2016, the bioeconomy 
accounted for 5.1 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.'' 
In dollar terms, that represents $959.2 billion.
    As biological engineering becomes more sophisticated and 
capable, it will have an increasingly broad impact on our 
economy. However, China's outspending us and they're producing 
more graduates than us.
    Just as we led in the industrial and tech revolutions, it 
is vital to our national security we don't fall behind building 
our country and our bioeconomy.
    Thank you very much, and I look forward to answering your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Gammack follows:]

   Prepared Statement of Jason T. Gammack, Chief Commercial Officer, 
                            Inscripta, Inc.
    Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, distinguished senators, 
ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for the invitation to testify 
today concerning House Bill 4373.
    I represent Inscripta, a company headquartered in Boulder, 
Colorado, that is developing new tools for genome engineering. As Chief 
Commercial Officer, I am incredibly excited about the opportunities for 
startup companies like ours to help accelerate the development of the 
Bioeconomy through the creation of advanced tools for genomic research. 
But we need your help. Without careful government attention to issues 
like workforce training, regulation, intellectual property, and 
standards, we may lose our ability to be competitive and lead in the 
global Bioeconomy.
    I'm here to address engineering biology, sometimes referred to as 
synthetic biology. Both fall under the broader category of 
biotechnology, a term you are likely to be more familiar with. 
Traditionally, when people think of biotechnology, they think of the 
innovation hubs on the East or West Coasts--Boston or the San Francisco 
Bay Area, for example, where this industry was born. But the 
opportunity we are here to discuss is one that has the unlimited 
potential to bring a new economic boom to every corner of the U.S, 
including those left behind in the current economy.
    It involves using natural, bio-based materials to design and 
manufacture a wide range of products in a more sustainable way. This 
includes better ways to feed, clothe, fuel, transport, and shelter our 
citizens, among other things. In fact, there are few industrial sectors 
that will not be touched by the Bioeconomy.
    In the Bioeconomy era, rather than make products from raw materials 
dug from the earth or created from harsh chemical processes, we will 
produce them from biological ingredients produced by microbes that will 
be engineered to be living factories. The beauty of this approach is 
that nature has billions of years of experience in making highly 
complex, sustainable materials through the power of evolution. We can 
harness this power and direct it to create the products we want and 
need for our growing population.
    This has the potential to reinvigorate historical bastions of 
manufacturing such as the Midwest--and any region that wants to join in 
on the revolution--because the tools needed for this type of 
manufacturing will be widely available, easy to use, and affordable. 
Much of this work today is based on fermentation, using source material 
that can be sustainably grown wherever land is abundant. For example, 
companies are already using yeast fermentation to sustainably produce 
important components such as lactic acid and clothing fibers. Yeast can 
be grown in tanks, known as fermentors, anywhere; this is one reason 
why the Bioeconomy is such an attractive opportunity for the middle 
regions of our country.
    At Inscripta, we have designed and built an instrument that 
scientists use to engineer microbes in their laboratories with the goal 
of creating desired or beneficial outcomes. For example, we've 
demonstrated the ability to generate a 14,000-fold increase in the 
production of lysine, a $3.6 billion globally traded essential amino 
acid used in applications ranging from nutrition to pharmaceuticals. 
Imagine the economic impact of discovering efficiencies at this scale 
across other industrial processes.
    We are working with world-renowned scientists to conduct 
foundational research into antibiotic resistance at a scale that was 
previously infeasible, with the idea of developing a new generation of 
antibiotics to fight the most harmful pathogens and emerging threats. 
We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg on the possibilities to use 
this technology for good.
    We believe our platform will be one of the primary tools enabling 
the Bioeconomy. It will allow scientists to conduct advanced research 
and design sustainable new products in a manner that is efficient, 
safe, and cost-effective, and at a price well within the reach of 
startup companies, multinational corporations, and academic researchers 
at universities across our country.
    We talk at Inscripta about democratizing access to genome 
engineering--it is one of our guiding principles. This means making 
sure it can happen anywhere, in a responsible and safeguarded way, with 
no scientist or part of the country left out.
    But as access to genomic engineering technology accelerates, it's 
crucial to recognize that the same opportunity available across our 
country will also present itself--and in fact already has--outside our 
borders, in countries such as China. My industry colleagues and I are 
here today because we want to see the U.S. lead in this Bioeconomy 
revolution, just as we did in the Internet revolution, and to set the 
standards for scientific integrity and biosecurity that will be crucial 
as genome engineering scales globally. We also believe and are 
encouraged by the fact that this is a nonpartisan issue and one that 
can unify us as a nation.
    The Bioeconomy will be the prime driver for the next wave of growth 
in manufacturing in the U.S. as well as being a catalyst for new job 
creation. It will create our next industrial revolution, which will be 
a bio-industrial revolution. And that revolution--in economic growth 
and job growth--will happen across our country, not just along our 
coasts because the tools will be ubiquitous.
    The legislation before you addresses actions our government can 
take to assist the private sector and academic institutions as we 
develop our Bioeconomy. This includes ensuring that our learning 
institutions are equipped to produce the workforce of the future. It 
means removing unnecessary regulations that could impede it. It means 
ensuring protection for intellectual property. And it means leading in 
establishing global standards.
    A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, 
Engineering, and Medicine states that in 2016, the bioeconomy accounted 
for about 5.1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In dollar 
terms, this represents $959.2 billion. As biological engineering 
becomes more sophisticated and capable, it will have an increasingly 
broad impact on the economy. However, China is outspending us, and they 
are producing many more graduates than we are. Just as we led the last 
industrial and tech revolutions, it is vital to the national security 
that we don't fall behind other countries on building a Bioeconomy, 
either.
    Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer your questions.

    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Gammack.
    Dr. Palmer.

      STATEMENT OF MEGAN J. PALMER, Ph.D., SENIOR RESEARCH

         SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND

       COOPERATION (CISAC), FREEMAN SPOGLI INSTITUTE FOR

        INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (FSI), STANFORD UNIVERSITY

    Dr. Palmer. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, 
Subcommittee Members and staff, thank you for the opportunity 
to speak with you today about steering the trajectory of the 
bioeconomy to reflect U.S. values and public interest.
    My Ph.D. is in biological engineering from MIT but my group 
at Stanford now focuses on how we contend with the responsible 
development of biotechnology, including issues of safety and 
security.
    The stakes are high and time is short to make the strategic 
decisions needed to create the future bioeconomy that supports 
rather than undermines U.S. security and values.
    What is the bioeconomy future that we want? It's a future 
where we develop the foundational science of the living world. 
It's a future where diverse innovators develop products with 
biotechnology that help us to feed, fuel, and heal this Nation 
and the world in ways that are safer, more sustainable, and 
more secure.
    It's a future with a citizenry that participates in, 
benefits from, and is empowered to make wise decisions about 
technologies that interact with their bodies, their data, and 
our shared environments, and it's a future where biological 
threats from emerging diseases to biological weapons might be 
rendered obsolete because we can rapidly detect, defuse and 
deter them.
    There are many ways that we can be vulnerable. So what are 
the futures we must avoid? We must avoid a future where we are 
beholden to supply chains that are fraught with security 
vulnerabilities and which break when borders harden just as we 
are seeing during the outbreak today.
    We must avoid a future that undermines American values 
where development of biotechnologies are used to suppress 
freedoms in the U.S. and abroad.
    We must avoid a future in which we close down a rich 
science and innovation ecosystem that relies upon an open 
exchange of ideas that we all benefit from. And we must avoid a 
future where careless development of biotechnology causes 
threats to our health and to our environment. Foremost, we must 
avoid a future where misinterpretation of our activities leads 
to other nations reconsidering bio-technology's use as a 
weapon. This is a future that none of us want.
    So what is needed for the U.S. to steer toward a desirable 
future? We need at least three things. First, the U.S. needs 
tools and infrastructure. The U.S. must position itself as a 
world leader in measuring and making good biology. We need 
scalable and secure infrastructure to connect government, 
academia, and industry to key information and materials for 
innovation.
    Second, we need strategy and coordination. The U.S. needs 
people and programs focused on figuring out how to develop 
biotechnologies without compromising our security and our 
values. The U.S. only gets to do this if we build the tools and 
infrastructure and bake these choices and values in from the 
start.
    This requires policy innovation just as much as technology 
innovation and it will require close coordination between 
experts in economy, security, and science.
    Third, we need community and citizenship. The U.S. must 
enable everyone to engage with biotechnology to foster the best 
ideas and to make sure they are genuinely in the public 
interest. Everyone in the country should be trained to be 
literate in biotechnology and the U.S. should be building 
training programs needed to grow the diverse interdisciplinary 
workforce of the future.
    So where are we now? The U.S. is in a leadership position 
but that is by no means assured in the future. Last fall, we 
had a White House Summit on America's Bioeconomy that 
emphasized the strategic importance of biotechnology.
    We saw recent passing in the House of the Engineering 
Biology Research and Development Act. We see a National 
Academies report on Safeguarding the Bioeconomy with very 
useful recommendations. There has been formation of interagency 
working groups, and we're seeing new agency-specific strategic 
efforts, like the DoD's Bio-manufacturing Industrial Innovation 
Institutes.
    These are important and necessary steps, but I do not 
believe they will be sufficient to secure U.S. leadership in 
the future. These efforts will need to be supplemented with 
increased ambition, resources, and leadership to form a 
successful strategy for biotechnology leadership in a rapidly-
changing world.
    I'd like to suggest five strategic actions that are 
important to be able to secure U.S. leadership in the future.
    One strategic action is to support a national lab-scale 
effort focused on the foundational science of measuring and 
making living systems. This effort can position the U.S. to 
define and promulgate standards for the transactions that are 
underlying the U.S. and global bioeconomies.
    A second strategic action would be to co-situate a center 
for strategic policy scholarship in direct conversation with 
foundational technology development. This effort can address 
these questions in how to design and deploy our infrastructure 
and policies for a growing bioeconomy that balances innovation 
and security.
    A third strategic action would be to form a consorted 
bioeconomy coordination and leadership function in government 
where agencies that are focused on science, security, and 
economy can work closely together. This could be akin to the 
National Nanotech Initiative where there are staff whose first 
priority is to develop and deploy U.S. biotechnology strategy.
    A fourth strategic action would be to develop new lines of 
basic and applied biotechnology research funding across 
agencies that also integrate consideration of social, economic, 
and security issues. Interdisciplinary centers are one 
cornerstone of what ought to be a diverse funding system.
    I helped to lead the policy part of an NSF Engineering 
Research Center that provides one model for how this might 
happen.
    And a fifth strategic action is to support world-class 
training programs from K through 12 through to graduate 
studies, including specialized programs. The bioeconomy of the 
future will require many skill sets and a citizenry that is 
equipped to participate and make wise choices.
    The leading program in synthetic biology, the International 
Genetically-Engineered Machine Competition, was started 15 
years ago, thanks in part to NSF funding. It has trained over 
40,000 students in over 60 countries. The U.S. risks losing its 
strategic advantage as the competition moves to Europe and the 
quickest growing constituency is high school teens from China. 
We should be supporting the bioeconomy in clubs across every 
congressional district in this country and we should continue 
to invite the world to work with us and to learn about our 
values.
    Thank you for holding this hearing today. This is a 
technology that matters, and you have the power to set the 
trajectory toward a future bioeconomy that makes us all more 
secure. I hope you seek the opportunity. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Palmer follows:]

Prepared Statement of Megan J. Palmer, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar, 
  Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Freeman 
 Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University
    Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, Senate Subcommittee 
members and staff, thank you for the opportunity to share with you 
today my thoughts on steering the trajectory of the bioeconomy to 
reflect U.S. values and public interests.
    My Ph.D. is in biological engineering from M.I.T., but I have spent 
the last decade focused on governance issues coupled to the science and 
engineering of living systems. I am now a Senior Research Scholar at 
the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), part of 
the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), at 
Stanford University. My group studies how we contend with the 
responsible development of biotechnology, including issues of safety 
and security. I also lead a number of domestic and international 
programs in responsible biotechnology leadership and strategy.
    You will have heard from the other witnesses about the enormous 
potential of the bioeconomy. We must nourish this potential to ensure a 
future that supports rather than undermines U.S. security and values. 
The stakes are high and time is short to make the strategic decisions 
needed to steer towards a bioeconomy that makes the U.S. more secure 
and avoid the futures that make the U.S. more vulnerable.
    What is the bioeconomy future we want to secure? It is a future 
where we develop the foundational science of the living world. It is a 
future where diverse products made with biotechnology help us to feed, 
fuel, and heal this nation, and the world, in ways that are safer, more 
sustainable and more secure. It is a future with communities of diverse 
innovators developing possibilities and products with biotechnology and 
with a citizenry that participates in, benefits from, and is empowered 
to make wise choices about technologies that interact with their 
bodies, their data and our shared environments. It is a future where 
biological threats--from emerging diseases to biological weapons--might 
be rendered obsolete because we can prevent, rapidly detect, diffuse, 
and deter them.
    There are many ways to be vulnerable; what are the futures we must 
avoid? We must avoid a future where other nations attract away talent. 
Biological innovations will only become more important to the economy 
and security of nations. Without talented people driving innovations we 
become vulnerable to many threats, including remaining unprepared for 
the next emerging infectious disease. We are also vulnerable when we 
become too dependent on other nations for the things we need to sustain 
our societies when things get bad and borders may close, just as we are 
seeing during the current COVID-19 outbreak.
    We must also avoid a future that undermines American values when 
development of biotechnologies can be used to suppress freedoms in the 
U.S. and abroad. The same data and technologies used to enable 
precision medicine can be used to track and target populations and 
minority groups.\1\ Other nations are already penetrating the security 
of our bioeconomy industries including firms that hold valuable health 
and genomic data. Other nations will use our data to develop 
innovations while we are made more vulnerable.\2\ At the same time we 
must avoid a future in which we close down a rich science and 
innovation ecosystem that relies upon an open exchange of ideas that we 
all benefit from, where we can no longer access talented people all 
over the world and bring them and their ideas here to be developed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ For example: Wee, Sui-lee. (2019, Feb. 21). China Uses DNA to 
Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise. The New York 
Times. www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-
thermo-fisher.html
    \2\ National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. 
(2020). Safeguarding the Bioeconomy. (Report No. 25525). Retrieved from 
https://doi.org/10.17226/25525.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We must also avoid a future where careless development of 
biotechnology causes threats to our health and to our environment. 
Biotechnology is profoundly valuable, but it can carry profound risks 
of accidents, reckless behavior, and deliberate 
misuse.\3\,\4\ We must avoid a future where we fail to 
manage this dual use nature of biotechnology. Foremost, we must avoid a 
future where misinterpretation of our activities leads other nations to 
reconsider biotechnology's use as a weapon. This is a future none of us 
want.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Palmer, M. J. (2020). Learning to Deal with Dual Use. Science. 
DOI: 10.1126 Retrieved from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/
early/2020/02/26/science.abb1466.
    \4\ Palmer, M. J., Fukuyama, F., & Relman, D. A. (2015). A more 
systematic approach to biological risk. Science, 350 (6267), 1471-1473.
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    What does the U.S. need to secure a desirable future and to ensure 
bioeconomy leadership? It needs at least three things.
    First, the U.S needs Tools & Infrastructure: The U.S. must position 
itself as a world leader in measuring and making with biology. It is 
essential to develop scalable and secure infrastructure to connect 
government, academia and industry to the information and materials 
needed to seed and support innovation and translation.
    Second, the U.S. needs Strategy & Coordination. The U.S. needs 
people and programs squarely focused on figuring out how to develop 
biotechnologies in ways that can deliver benefits without compromising 
our security and our values. The U.S. will only get to do this if it 
builds the tools and infrastructure and bakes in these choices and 
values from the start. This is largely not current practice and it 
calls for policy innovation along with shifts in how technological 
innovation is incentivized and supported. For this work to be 
successful, it will be essential to closely coordinate across 
communities focused on science, security and the economy.
    Third, the U.S needs Community & Citizenship. The U.S. must enable 
everyone to engage with this technology and its many uses to foster the 
best ideas and to make sure they are genuinely in the public interest. 
Everyone in the country should be trained to be literate in 
biotechnology and the U.S. should be building the diverse training 
programs needed to grow the interdisciplinary bioeconomy workforce of 
the future.
    Where is the U.S. now in securing leadership in the bioeconomy ? 
The U.S. is in a position of global leadership, having made 
foundational early investments in biotechnology research and 
development. However, continued leadership is by no means assured. Many 
other countries are prioritizing investments in biotechnology to 
support their own growing bioeconomies.
    There have been promising recent steps to securing U.S. leadership 
in the future. Last October the U.S. Office of Science and Technology 
Policy (OSTP) convened the White House Summit on America's Bioeconomy 
that gathered leaders from across government, industry, academia and 
civil society to discuss the strategic importance of biotechnology.\5\ 
In December, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4373, The 
Engineering Biology Research and Development Act of 2019, which 
outlines some interagency coordination functions with important 
attention to economic, social, security and ethical aspects of the 
bioeconomy.\6\ An additional bill under consideration by members of 
this chamber, S. 3191, The Industries of the Future Act of 2020, 
outlines similar coordination functions and calls for specific 
increases in Federal investment in several technology areas, including 
biotechnology research, which could also help pave the road to the 
biotechnology future we want.\7\ The 2018 U.S. National Biodefense 
Strategy also made important steps in acknowledging the need to adapt 
policies toward mitigating the complex risks associated with biological 
incidents.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Summary of the 2019 White House Summit on America's Bioeconomy. 
7 Oct. 2019, www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Summary-of-
White-House-Summit-on-Americas-Bioeconomy-October-2019.pdf.
    \6\ Engineering Biology Research and Development Act of 2019, H.R. 
4373, 116th Cong. (2019)
    \7\ Industries of the Future Act of 2020, S. 3191, 116th Cong. 
(2020)
    \8\ National Biodefense Strategy (2018). Retrieved from https://
www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/National-Biodefense-
Strategy.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    There have also been a number of recent studies from the U.S. 
National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) that 
outline challenges and opportunities in biotechnology and the 
bioeconomy. Notably, in January the NASEM released the Safeguarding the 
Bioeconomy report that emphasized a need to couple the promotion and 
protection of an emerging bioeconomy industry, and included a series of 
useful recommendations.\9\ There has also been formation of interagency 
working groups on topics including synthetic biology, and we are seeing 
some new agency-specific strategic efforts, like the recent 
announcement of the Bioindustrial Manufacturing Innovation Institutes 
from the Department of Defense.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. 
(2020). Safeguarding the Bioeconomy. (Report No. 25525). Retrieved from 
https://doi.org/10.17226/25525.
    \10\ Bioindustrial Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII). (2020, 
January 24). Retrieved from https://beta.sam.gov/opp/
bc5905578334429a8a29c0150eb94b45/view.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These are important and necessary steps but I do not believe they 
will be sufficient to secure U.S. leadership in the future. These 
efforts will need to be supplemented with increased ambition, 
resources, and leadership to form a successful strategy for future 
biotechnology leadership in a rapidly changing world.
    What specifically could be done to secure future U.S. leadership in 
the bioeconomy? There are several strategic actions that I believe 
would enhance current efforts to position the U.S. to be a continued 
world leader.
    One strategic action is to support a national lab-scale effort 
focused on biometrology. Such an effort would focus on ensuring U.S. 
leadership in the foundational science and tools of measuring and 
making living systems. This effort is critical so that the U.S. is in a 
position to define and promulgate the standards and specifications for 
the transactions underlying the U.S. and global bioeconomy. These 
technology-agnostic capabilities, tools, and standards underpin more 
applied agency-and industry sector-specific efforts. Such an effort 
will require professional researchers drawing upon the knowledge and 
capabilities across DOE, DOD, HHS, DOC (NIST) and NSF.
    A second strategic action necessary for guiding such efforts is to 
co-situate a center for strategic policy scholarship in direct 
conversation with foundational science and technology development. 
There are many unaddressed foundational questions in how to design and 
deploy infrastructure and policies for a growing bioeconomy in a way 
that effectively balances innovation and security. We should support 
ongoing basic and applied scholarship on these issues including 
professional researchers from a number of disciplines. It is critical 
that this work not be divorced from technology development, as one of 
the most powerful ways to understand and guide future governance 
options is by having governance considerations directly inform 
technical design criteria.
    A third strategic action would be to form a concerted bioeconomy 
coordination and leadership function in government whereby agencies 
focused on science, security and economy work closely together. This 
could be something akin to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, 
where there is a staff whose first priority is to develop and deploy 
U.S. biotechnology strategy.\11\ This work is important to inform and 
guide efforts across many different agencies including developing 
robust interfaces with academia, industry and civil society.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ ``What Is the NNI?'' National Nanotechnology Initiative, 
www.nano.gov/about-nni/what.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A fourth strategic action is to develop new lines of basic and 
applied biotechnology research funding across agencies that integrates 
consideration of social, economic and security issues. We should 
support a variety of funding mechanisms to ensure a broad ecosystem of 
researchers. Major multi-year and multi-disciplinary centers are an 
important part of this ecosystem as they are nexuses for training, 
interdisciplinary research, and commercialization in high-risk high-
reward areas. It is important that such centers have transition plans 
and that their goals are coordinated across mission agencies so we 
don't lose the people and companies that they have fostered when these 
centers sunset. Critically, such centers should support basic and 
applied interdisciplinary work on social, political, ethical, legal, 
economic, environmental, safety, security and other issues coupled to 
getting better at the engineering of living systems. These should be 
treated as central research topics, not as afterthoughts that can be 
outsourced or done for free.
    I helped lead such an effort within a National Science Foundation 
(NSF)-supported multi-university Engineering Research Center (ERC) in 
Synthetic Biology, called Synberc, which defined and developed much of 
the field of synthetic biology as we know it today.\12\ By the end of 
10 years of NSF funding, Synberc involved approximately 40 university 
labs and 40 industry partners, many of which were formed during the 
lifetime of the center, such as Ginkgo Bioworks. I served for 5 years 
as deputy director of the ``Policy and Practices'' thrust of Synberc, 
which involved supporting basic and applied research, education, and 
knowledge brokering, and represented approximately 25 percent of the 
center's Federal funding at its 10 year sunset. These efforts generated 
new technology and policy approaches that helped anticipate and 
mitigate concerns about new biotechnology approaches and products, and 
they trained a next generation of practitioners to engage with social 
and policy issues proactively. Some of these efforts continue to be 
supported through the Engineering Biology Research Consortium 
(EBRC)\13\, but without research funding coupled to these types of 
coordination networks, we risk losing what we gained from these early 
strategic efforts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Bernstein, Rachel. (2016) Synberc Building the Future with 
Biology: Ten Years at the Genesis of Synbio. Edited by Leonard Katz et 
al., Engineering Biology Research Consortium, ebrc.org/wp-content/
uploads/2019/07/Synberc-10-years-book.pdf.
    \13\ ``About.'' Engineering Biology Research Consortium, 2020, 
ebrc.org/about/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A fifth strategic action is to support world-class training 
programs from K-12 through to graduate studies including specialized 
programs. The bioeconomy of the future will require many different 
skill sets and a citizenry equipped to participate and make wise 
choices about the products they develop and use. We should continue to 
develop and expand world-leading interdisciplinary training programs at 
the undergraduate and graduate level but also supplement these with 
renewed efforts at the K-12 level and in specialized training programs, 
such as 1-and 2-year associate degree programs, to meet specific 
growing industry needs.
    It is notable that the world leading training program in synthetic 
biology, the international Genetically Engineered Machine Competition, 
known as iGEM, was started in the U.S. 15 years ago at M.I.T. thanks in 
part to NSF funding directed through Synberc. Today the yearly 
competition has trained over 40,000 students from over 60 countries 
working in more than 2700 teams to prototype biotechnology innovations. 
These students are learning not only how to engineer biology but also 
to ask why their innovations are desirable, and for whom. For the last 
decade I have been a volunteer director of what we call the ``Human 
Practices'' element of the competition,, which provides incentives for 
teams to address social and policy issues coupled to their 
innovations.\14\ I have also helped lead safety and security programs 
at iGEM, and the competition has become a world-leading testbed for 
adaptive governance of dual use technologies.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ ``Human Practices Hub.'' iGEM, 2019, 2019.igem.org/
Human_Practices.
    \15\ Millett P, Binz T, Evans SW, Kuiken T, Oye K, Palmer MJ, 
Yambao K, Yu S, van der Vlugt C.Developing a Comprehensive, Adaptive 
and International Biosafety and Biosecurity Program for Advanced 
Biotechnology: The iGEM Experience, Applied Biosafety, In press, 2019. 
DOI: 10.1177/1535676019838075
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the U.S. has been a leader in developing the innovators of 
the future through iGEM and other related efforts, such as the 
BioBuilder program focused on middle-and high-school students \16\, it 
now risks losing this long term strategic advantage. In 2021, the iGEM 
competition will be moving to Europe and the quickest growing 
constituency in the competition are high school teams from 
China.\17\,\18\ The teams that perform the best in the 
competition are often those that receive support from their home 
countries to seed their efforts, and the U.S. teams have suffered 
without this support. The U.S. government should be supporting multiple 
iGEM teams and other bioeconomy clubs across every congressional 
district in the country and we should make sure we continue to invite 
the world to work with us and learn about our values.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\ ``The BioBuilder Educational Foundation.'' BioBuilder, 2020, 
biobuilder.org/foundation/about/.
    \17\ Headquarters, iGEM. ``We Have a Big Announcement: #GEM Is 
Moving, the #GiantJamboree Will Be in #Paris in 2021! Pic.twitter.com/
UQJw8WRaK8.'' Twitter, Twitter, 4 Nov. 2019, twitter.com/igem/status/
1191424787307999234?lang=en.
    \18\ iGEM 2018 Annual Report. (2019, March 13). Retrieved from 
https://igem.org/wiki/images/d/d1/IGEM_2018_report.pdf.
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    Thank you for holding this hearing. Biology is a technology that 
will only grow in importance to our societies in the future, and you 
have the power to set a course for a future U.S. bioeconomy that makes 
us all more secure. I hope you seize the opportunity.

    Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Dr. Palmer.
    Dr. Donohue.

          STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY DONOHUE, UW FOUNDATION

            FETZER-BASCOM PROFESSOR OF BACTERIOLOGY,

         INTERIM DIRECTOR, WISCONSIN ENERGY INSTITUTE,

                UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

    Dr. Donohue. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, and 
other Subcommittee Members, thank you for also inviting me to 
participate in this hearing.
    It is actually truly an honor to speak about securing 
leadership in this area in the presence of several of the 
Science Coalition's Champions of Science congratulate you.
    I want to thank the Subcommittee members for their history 
of supporting Federal investment in basic research, commerce, 
and legislation, like the American Competes Act.
    To provide you with my opinion upfront, the country, its 
citizens, and society will benefit from bold interagency 
investments in securing U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy. I 
ask you to consider the following issues as you map out a 
strategy to do this.
    We've already heard about the reports that illustrate how 
federally funded advances in genomics, molecular biology, and 
computational sciences, to name just a few, have set the stage 
for bio-based approaches to feed a growing population by 
increasing plant and agricultural productivity and quality. In 
addition, this investment will allow U.S. citizens to enjoy 
clean air, water, and a high standard of living, transform 
human health with next generation pharmaceuticals and 
antibiotics and empower new industrial production of bio-based 
fuels, chemicals, and materials from renewable resources.
    Because this bioeconomy touches so many areas, a Federal 
investment could create new jobs and support economic growth 
nationwide, allow the U.S. to become less dependent on foreign 
products, intellectual property, and manufacturing while 
transforming medicine and agriculture, safeguarding the 
environment, and developing new bio-based chemicals and 
materials industries.
    The same reports illustrate that other countries are making 
significant, often larger, investments in the bio-economy by 
simply capitalizing on previous investments made with taxpayer 
dollars. Moving quickly and boldly can ensure that U.S. 
companies, citizens, and the economy reaps the benefits of 
homegrown technologies.
    Many employees of this new bioeconomy will need training in 
STEM-intense fields, functioning in interdisciplinary and 
collaborative teams that span field-work, laboratory, and 
computational area.
    However, this bioeconomy is also very different in that its 
success will also rely very heavily on farmers, laborers, and 
educators who inspire future members of this community to be 
part of a new and diverse workforce.
    Senator Baldwin already mentioned that at UW-Madison, I 
direct Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, which is one of 
four U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Bioenergy 
Research Centers charged with producing hydrocarbon fuels and 
chemicals from lignocellulosic or non-food plant biomass.
    If I may, I would submit the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research 
Center is an exemplar along with its partner, BRCs, of the 
kinds of things that the bioeconomy needs to consider and can 
do for the country.
    We are building a nationwide crop productivity atlas so 
energy crops can be grown without competing for food 
production, while modeling how refinery replacement on the land 
can lower the cost of biomass transport and product 
distribution to consumers. Also combining traditional breeding 
with systems and synthetic biology to improve the productivity 
and value of energy crops to farmers and the industry, and 
developing strategies for converting as much of the biomass as 
possible into fuels and chemicals. We want to leave no carbon 
left behind.
    At the same time, we have trained over a thousand 
scientists and staff that are already part of the workforce in 
industry, government, technology transfer, nonprofit 
organizations, K through 12, and, yes, academia.
    Some unexpected discoveries that may hit home to many of 
you are the following: we recently patented a process by which 
we can create acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, 
from plant biomass instead of the coal tar where it is 
currently produced.
    Based on this innovation and others, we now have experts in 
dairy food processing, forestry, animal, and municipal waste 
industries coming to us to teach them how to convert their 
abundant carbon streams into valuable chemicals.
    Senator Baldwin mentioned technology transfer. I will say 
in collaboration with our partner, the Wisconsin Alumni 
Research Foundation, we have filed over more than 200 patent 
applications, executed over a hundred intellectual property 
licenses and options, and formed five startup companies and 
formed strong alliances with companies across the economic 
space that will be important for the bioeconomy to move 
forward.
    Before closing, I want to stress that this initiative can 
create products, jobs, and benefits close to home, allowing all 
regions of the country to reap its benefits. We have all seen 
the negative impact of disruptions in the supply chain of 
fuels, chemicals, medicines, or other essential services. By 
hosting elements of the bioeconomy across the U.S., we will 
have the supply chain that is more secure, more resilient to 
periodic interruption, and more able to respond to the ever-
growing needs of our citizens.
    Finally, as a member of the university community, I predict 
that tomorrow's workforce is ready to be part of a bold 
initiative to secure our competitiveness and global leadership 
in this field.
    Thank you for your time.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Donohue follows:]

  Prepared Statement of Timothy Donohue, UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom 
     Professor of Bacteriology, Interim Director, Wisconsin Energy 
               Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison
    Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, and other distinguished 
members of the Subcommittee, thank you for holding this important 
hearing and for inviting me to speak on securing U.S. leadership in the 
bioeconomy. It is an honor to be here alongside these expert witnesses 
and to speak about this topic in front of several of the Science 
Coalition's Champions of Science. I want to thank members of this 
subcommittee for their long-standing history of supporting Federal 
investment in basic research and legislation such as the America 
COMPETES Act that drives the innovation which makes the U.S. the envy 
of the world in making advances needed to move society forward. To 
provide my conclusion at the outset, I think the U.S., its citizens, 
and society will benefit from bold, inter-agency Federal investments in 
securing U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy.
    I am a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison where my research focuses on bio-based conversion of renewable 
resources into products. I have served on numerous Federal and 
international research and advisory panels, led large federally-funded 
cross-disciplinary biotechnology graduate training programs, and am a 
Past President and current Secretary of the American Society for 
Microbiology, one of the largest life sciences professional societies 
in the world. Since 2007, I have led the U.S. Department of Energy-
funded Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a renewable fuels and 
chemicals center that has trained over 1,000 students and staff, and 
developed technologies leading to 200 patent applications and the 
formation of five start-up companies. I also serve as interim director 
of the Wisconsin Energy Institute, an interdisciplinary academic 
catalyst for biological, physical, and computational research programs 
that is providing the workforce and knowledge needed to develop 
tomorrow's renewable energy and bio-based industries.
    I would ask you to consider the following issues as you map out a 
Federal strategy to secure U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy.
    The bioeconomy space is broad. We can consider this initiative due 
to previous federally funded basic science advances in genomics, 
molecular biology, and computational sciences to name a few. The 
advances made from these investments provide a foundation of approaches 
and knowledge to support the development of the bioeconomy. Recent 
reports from the National Academies, the Administration, Federal 
Agencies, and other organizations, plus the comments of other invited 
speakers today illustrate the potential for bio-based approaches to:

   Develop sustainable strategies to feed an ever-growing 
        population by increasing plant and agricultural productivity 
        and quality,

   Provide strategies to ensure that future U.S citizens enjoy 
        clean air, water, and a high standard of living,

   Transform human health by providing everything from new 
        pharmaceuticals, reagents for precision medicine, and next 
        generation antibiotics, and

   Produce cost-competitive fuels, chemicals, and materials 
        from abundant renewable resources.

    Because the bioeconomy is broad and an interdisciplinary affair, it 
is my opinion that a bold, inter-agency government investment is 
required to transform local, non-food, renewable materials into new 
revenue streams for farmers and industries across the U.S. The success 
of the bioeconomy could allow existing industries to access new markets 
with new bio-based and biodegradable products and materials, growing 
their economic impact and job base. Given the abundance and diverse 
suite of renewable materials that are available to feed the bioeconomy, 
this initiative could:

   Produce bio-based chemicals and materials that industry 
        cannot currently produce,

   Create new jobs and support economic growth nationwide,

   Allow the U.S. to become less dependent on foreign products, 
        intellectual property, and manufacturing processes, and

   Transform medicine and agriculture, and safeguard the 
        environment.

    Much of the innovation that will drive development of this 
bioeconomy is based on past taxpayer investment in basic science. The 
reports I mentioned earlier illustrate that other countries are making 
significant investments in the bioeconomy, often capitalizing on 
discoveries made in the U.S. Moving quickly and boldly will help secure 
our leadership position in this rapidly emerging field so that U.S. 
citizens, companies, and the economy reap the benefits of home-grown 
technologies.
    The needs of a bioeconomy workforce. These same reports also 
predict that by 2030 the bioeconomy has the potential to contribute 
more than 250 billion dollars in annual revenue and add more than a 
million jobs to the U.S. economy. The technical foundation of the 
bioeconomy will require many members of the workforce to have 
significant training in STEM-intensive fields. The success of the 
bioeconomy will also depend on a workforce with capacity, interest, and 
ability to be part of interdisciplinary and collaborative teams that 
span field, laboratory, and computational settings. Artificial 
intelligence, along with life cycle and technoeconomic analyses will 
become increasingly important as the bioeconomy develops. A distinct 
and important characteristic of the bioeconomy is that it's success 
will also rely on contributions from farmers, laborers, and educators 
who inspire others to be part of a diverse, educated workforce.
    The U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Research Centers as a 
bioeconomy exemplar. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I am the 
director and principle investigator of the Great Lakes Bioenergy 
Research Center. Great Lakes Bioenergy is one of four U.S. Department 
of Energy Office of Science Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) charged 
with identifying and solving the basic science challenges associated 
with producing hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals from lignocellulosic, or 
non-food, plant biomass. (Information on the BRC program and its active 
industry interactions is provided to the committee in supplementary 
material). The transportation fuels and petrochemicals sector has 
become a global, multi-trillion dollar per year industry to meet 
society's ever-growing needs for transportation fuels, plastics, and 
other chemicals that we depend on every day. The BRCs work together as 
a network to develop the knowledge needed for the sustainable 
production of a variety of bio-based fuels and chemicals that are 
currently derived from fossil fuels.
    I would propose that Great Lakes Bioenergy and its partner BRCs 
provide lessons for how the bioeconomy could operate. Our research 
considers the entire value chain that a bio-based refining industry 
will need to be environmentally and economically sustainable. This 
includes:

   The biomass available to support the production of fuels and 
        chemicals across the U.S.,

   The issues associated with growing dedicated energy crops on 
        non-food land,

   The energy, fertilizer, and other inputs into the production 
        of valuable bioenergy crops,

   The features of crops that will increase their value to 
        farmers and industry, and

   The placement of biorefineries that minimize the costs of 
        biomass transport and product distribution.

    In addition, the BRCs are addressing challenges that will allow 
tomorrow's biorefineries to generate valuable products from as much of 
the biomass as possible. By converting as much of the carbon in biomass 
as possible into fuels and products, a new biorefinery industry can 
reduce the selling price of fuels by also making profitable chemicals, 
including bio-based products that cannot be made by existing 
technology.
    Since its founding in 2007, Great Lakes Bioenergy has made 
contributions that cut across all of the areas highlighted above. They 
include:

   Building a nationwide atlas of crop productivity so farmers 
        can identify acreage available to grow dedicated bioenergy 
        crops without competing with food production,

   Combining traditional breeding with systems and synthetic 
        biology to improve the productivity and value of dedicated 
        bioenergy crops,

   Developing low-cost, renewable methods for isolating biomass 
        components needed to produce targeted products,

   Engineering microbial chassis that produce fuels and 
        chemicals from as much of the biomass carbon as possible, and

   Training over 1000 scientists who are now working in 
        industry, government, technology transfer, nonprofit 
        organizations, K-12 education, and academia.

    The U.S. bioeconomy is poised to utilize technology derived from 
Federal investment in basic research. As an example, Great Lakes 
Bioenergy findings have led to more than 200 global and U.S patent 
applications, over 100 intellectual property licenses and options, and 
the formation of five start-up companies. To achieve these goals, we 
and our technology transfer partner, the Wisconsin Alumni Research 
Foundation, have developed strong interactions with companies in the 
agricultural, fuels, chemicals, fermentation, engine, and venture 
capital sectors. The technology outputs and active industry 
interactions for all four BRCs is provided in the supplementary 
materials. I trust this overview illustrates that Great Lakes Bioenergy 
and the BRC program is an excellent model for the type of academic, 
industry, and technology transfer ecosystem that will be needed to 
secure U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy.
    In the course of these studies, Great Lakes Bioenergy also made 
several unanticipated discoveries that one would expect from high-risk, 
basic science, academic research programs. To give one example, we 
patented a process to produce acetaminophen, the active ingredient in 
pain relievers like Tylenol, from renewable biomass instead of coal tar 
that is the current source of this compound. Other advances in making 
products from renewable residues have led members of the dairy, food 
processing, forestry, animal, and municipal waste industries to fund 
academic research that will enable them to convert their abundant, low-
value waste streams into higher-value chemicals, biomaterials, bio-
recyclable plastics, and other polymers.
    Before closing, I want to stress that the bioeconomy can generate 
products, jobs, and economic benefits close to home. This 
distinguishing feature of the bioeconomy will allow all regions of the 
U.S. to reap the economic and other benefits of producing valuable 
products that they currently import, from renewable resources. Our 
citizens have also seen or experienced the disruptions to fuels, 
chemicals, medicines, and other essential services caused by natural 
disasters. By hosting elements of the bioeconomy across the U.S., the 
country will have a distributed and sustainable supply chain that is 
more secure, more resilient to periodic interruption, and more able to 
respond to the ever-growing needs of its citizens.
    Finally, as the father of a college-age son and a university 
employee, I have the pleasure to work with young people every day. I 
predict that tomorrow's workforce will be ready to help the bioeconomy 
advance society in a sustainable way. On their behalf and on behalf of 
my colleagues, I want to again thank the committee and its members for 
your past support of basic research, and for the invitation to speak 
today. We want to work together to advance a bold, inter-agency, 
initiative to secure U.S. competitiveness and global leadership in the 
bioeconomy. If asked, I stand ready to help as you plan and embark on 
this journey.

    Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Donohue.
    I apologize for stepping out. I had to vote at the Energy 
Committee and so I apologize for leaving momentarily.
    We will begin our questions. So thank you very much for the 
time here.
    Your opening statements brought up a question, I think, 
relating to sort of who do you turn to at the Federal 
Government for either regulatory guidance or assistance or 
collaboration?
    Dr. Palmer, you mentioned in your statement some strategic 
outlines that we should accomplish. For agriculture, it's the 
Department of Agriculture. For Coronavirus, it's the Department 
of Health and the various CDCs and within that system.
    For biotechnology, the bio-industrial revolution, as was 
said, whom do you turn to at the Federal level? Mr. Gammack, 
I'll start with you.
    Mr. Gammack. So it's a great question and we're starting 
here.
    Senator Gardner. Yes. So really, the answer is because it 
is so overlapping because there are----
    Mr. Gammack. It is.
    Senator Gardner.--so many pieces from different areas, 
there is no really one sort of agency, department, or 
coordination that you look at?
    Mr. Gammack. There isn't, and different departments have 
different stakes in the game, and so Dr. Palmer will talk about 
biosecurity and at Inscripta, we take bio-security very 
seriously.
    The U.S. Government has made tremendous efforts in 
biosecurity, understanding pathogens and so on. For us to get 
access to some of that data to help ensure our platform is 
secure would be beneficial, but we've had challenges in gaining 
access to some of those data, as well, and so there is a need 
for interdepartment coordination, interagency coordination.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Palmer, you mentioned Federal 
laboratories and some of the work they're doing.
    Is there a Federal laboratory in the system right now that 
is working more with the bio work that you're doing, the bio-
synthetic work that you're doing and others?
    Dr. Palmer. There are a number of national labs that are 
working in this space, and they all play important roles.
    At Stanford, we have SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory 
and nearby, we have Lawrence Berkeley National Labs that are 
both working in this space. It requires national labs to be 
working together to----
    Senator Gardner. And you don't see that necessarily see 
that right now in the----
    Dr. Palmer. No, and your question really comes to the point 
that I was trying to make: that we need better cross-government 
coordination on these issues. We need a strong coordinating 
office that's able to combine science and technology, economic 
considerations, and security considerations. It really requires 
all hands on deck.
    Senator Gardner. And if I could go through just real quick 
every single one of you and just hear the answer. Many of you 
mentioned the U.S. leadership. Many mentioned China, as well 
and other emerging programs in other countries.
    One of the two critical items that the United States needs 
to accomplish in order to remain a leader, is it on the 
workforce side, the training side, the education side? Is it on 
the Federal research dollars, the coordination side?
    Dr. Donohue, I'll start with you.
    Dr. Donohue. Well, I would come back to a point that was 
made by Jason from Ginkgo Bioworks. Technically, we need to 
figure out how to write DNA a lot faster and a lot cheaper. All 
of this DNA that we've sequenced is basically in the cloud. It 
is not in my freezer. So we need to be able to get these DNA 
sequences out of the cloud and put them in my freezer so that 
all of us at the table can do responsible experiments with.
    I do think we need a lot of interagency coordination that 
you just mentioned and you brought up in your last question 
because this initiative will reach across all of the obvious 
players, NIH, NSF, DOE, and USDA. It'll hit NIST because we're 
going to make new products. They need to be standardized and be 
put out there in the market in a responsible way. As we're 
looking at agriculture, we're looking to do it more with 
satellites and looking at crop productivity across the 
landscape instead of with undergraduates or with drones. Thus, 
we also need to be talking to NASA and NOAA about how to help 
us.
    Senator Gardner. I have got 1 minute left. So I want to get 
to all three. Dr. Palmer?
    Dr. Palmer. In terms of two strategic elements, the first 
is this foundational science of measuring and making. NIST 
certainly is critical in developing and promulgating standards 
in this space that can underlie the bioeconomy and critically, 
in developing interfaces with those types of public datasets 
alongside of the various constituencies who play a role.
    Second, I think workforce development is critical. We need 
the people who are able to use those data and are able to 
develop the companies of the future.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. Mr. Gammack?
    Mr. Gammack. So being sensitive with time, I'll agree with 
everything that the previous panel members have said.
    I will say that workforce training is critical. Try to find 
a computational biologist and hire them. It is very, very 
difficult.
    The other element I'll put on the table that hasn't been 
discussed is the de-siloing of information. There is an 
incredible amount of inefficiency in our scientific process 
where people will silo their findings, which isn't publicly 
available to others to then iterate and learn upon.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you very much.
    Dr. Kelly.
    Dr. Kelly. I would say on the Federal research side, there 
are opportunities for the government to do things that are pre-
commercial for the industry. The best example of this that I 
like, you know, the Human Genome Project did this on DNA 
reading. That's the human genome.
    You know, we have a natural resource in this country which 
is within our 50 states is 30 percent of the world's 
biodiversity for all the non-human genomes. I mean that's a 
natural resource like our oil wells, right? That is genetic 
code that for billions of years has been evolving and it's 
essentially encoding functional nanotechnology and by making 
that available to the companies in the United States and then 
importantly, as Dr. Donohue said, pulling it out of that cloud 
and then printing it and testing it. That's our code library, 
right, and if the U.S. established that as an asset, that would 
give us an enormous amount of soft power, I believe, out in the 
world.
    Those are the sort of things that are a follow-on to the 
Human Genome Project directed toward the engineering and design 
of biology that the government could fill a big gap.
    Senator Gardner. Great. Thanks, Dr. Kelly.
    Senator Baldwin.
    Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
    I want to dig a little deeper in some of the things that 
we've just been discussing. Related to workforce development, 
almost all of you have mentioned that the National Academy's 
report highlighted that we need to build and sustain a skilled 
workforce to support the bioeconomy, and I know across the 
state of Wisconsin and across the country, industries are 
already struggling to meet their workforce needs, particularly 
in STEM fields.
    It's clear that we must continue to ensure a strong 
pipeline of the scientists and the researchers, the innovators 
to make the discoveries that will drive the bioeconomy forward.
    But I'm interested in hearing what your perspectives are on 
the workers who will run the factories, the farms, the 
hospitals, and other facilities that will make these 
innovations sort of inter-reality. They will be STEM workers, 
too.
    Do you agree? If so, how do you think we should go about 
supporting both sides of that bioeconomy workforce?
    Dr. Kelly, I'd like to start with you and then go through 
the whole panel.
    Dr. Kelly. Sure. So I think there are two aspects that are 
sort of STEM manufacturing, if you want to think of it that 
way. One, the technology to print DNA and to read DNA is very 
much an advanced manufacturing technology.
    You visit our facility in Boston; it's 100,000 square feet 
of advanced equipment with operators in front of it printing 
DNA and engineering these cells. That's Number 1.
    We finish a cell. We finish that, say, microbe for Bayer 
and it's going to go be deployed in the environment. That's 
farming and fermentation, right? So the tools to deploy biology 
are not going to be new. It's going to be giving those skill 
sets that are actually not in Boston, in fact. Those are going 
to become more valuable skill sets in an era where a corn plant 
doesn't grow an ear of corn; it grows a microchip, right? That 
makes farming a lot more valuable technology in the future and 
that skill set more valuable.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Gammack. So again, I agree with my panel members here.
    Certainly, the training in the hard sciences is going to be 
critically important. As I said, computational sciences is 
critical. We look at the amount of data produced in biology. 
It's astronomical. The challenge with the data produced in 
biology, it all needs to be retained.
    Unlike, say, astronomy where we can gather data, analyze 
it, then remove the data, in biology, we need to gather the 
data, analyze it, keep it, and reanalyze it because our 
learning's continually changed.
    So really developing that hardcore science around data 
analysis, big data analysis and ensuring that those training 
opportunities are available is critically important.
    The point that Jason brings up, which I agree with as well, 
is not everyone has to have a Ph.D. to be successful in the 
bioeconomy. The bioeconomy will revitalize the Midwest. We need 
those feedstocks. We need to build the plants in the Midwest 
and fermentation is a messy science. It's not a clean science. 
You don't need a high-tech lab to run a fermentation plant.
    And so retraining existing workers to work in plants that 
have yet to be built or will be built shortly that are under 
standard mechanical engineering principles that don't require 
Ph.D.s in biology or computational science but understand how 
to operate a plant and run a plant.
    Dr. Palmer. I would agree with my fellow panelists here.
    We really need a diverse workforce and we're seeing this 
even with the teams of the International Genetically Engineered 
Machine Competition. It is interdisciplinary team-based 
science. It's not just biological sciences; it is many 
different types of skill sets from business development 
elsewhere. Critically, there are a bunch of specialized skill 
sets that are pain points in the industry. Fermentation is a 
really good example of this where we just can't get enough 
people.
    We must also recognize that because biology is so broad and 
it will affect so many sectors, we need many people who are 
specialists in their specific sector who can develop those 
interfaces with biotechnology and develop those specialized 
products and services. There are rich opportunities and many of 
these one-to-two-year training programs or retraining programs 
will be critical, as well.
    Dr. Donohue. So I am not going to repeat what all my 
previous panel members have said, but I'll just put it out 
there in a slightly different way.
    STEM-based people who are not trained like I was when I was 
a student and a graduate student. I lived in a silo. I learned 
how to do biochemistry and microbiology. Everyone in my lab now 
is doing team-based science, so this is what's going to drive 
the STEM advances in this field.
    I know both of you Senators come from states that have 
agricultural and forestry activity. We need biomass producers 
to think about what they can put on their land to put meat and 
milk on their table. We have a dairy industry in Wisconsin. We 
know how to gather milk and move it to co-ops and then process 
it. We're going to need to do the same things with all of our 
renewable materials. Those are farmers, those are truckers. 
Within those refineries, it's not glorified technical Ph.D.s 
that are needed to run those facilities.
    When the bioenergy research centers were formed by DOE, I 
think they estimated that of the million or more jobs that 
would be created by this industry, only 10 to 20 percent of 
them required a Ph.D. degree. So the vast majority of people in 
this space will be blue-collar associate degrees people that 
will benefit from this.
    Senator Gardner. I had just leaned over to Senator Baldwin. 
As you said, we will need all degrees. I was hoping that 
included political science. She actually has a real----
    Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.
    You know, Dr. Kelly, you talked about agriculture. I have 
an agricultural background and grew up selling farm equipment 
for years. We sold seed or dealt with seed that had a coding on 
it. Whether it was a fungicide to keep the seed from rotting or 
a pesticide to keep the mice from eating the seed before it got 
planted, but you're talking about seed that's not just a 
coding, it's sort of interactive with the plant itself that 
turns it into something else.
    Could you describe that a little bit more, maybe go into 
some of the other types of technologies and breakthroughs 
you're talking about here?
    Dr. Kelly. Yes. Chairman Gardner, that's a great question. 
So, yes, the rate of improvement--I think people don't realize 
the rate of improvement in agricultural technology, you know, 
ranging from the beginnings in automation of farming, precision 
farming, satellite, you know. It's just on and on in terms of 
how technology gets deployed and what we're talking about here 
is essentially a living technology, right?
    So the seed is one important piece of living technology. 
However, for example, on your skin right now are a bunch of 
microbes living. There's a micro-biome associated with the 
plant and it turns out the interaction between those microbes 
and the plant is very important and so some existing seed 
treatments include microbes that help the plant be healthier.
    What's new here is where we're starting to be able to 
program those microbes to make them do things that they haven't 
been able to do before and so the example I really like again 
is this ability to fertilize the crop.
    Well, there's no way right now for corn to fertilize 
itself, but we know there are microbes out there that live in 
nature that do do that for other plants. If we could just 
reprogram the microbes that are friendly with corn to have that 
capability, well, suddenly now the corn has been given that new 
trait, that new ability. And so what's really important about 
this is the rate you can program a microbe is quite fast, and 
so we can iterate much more quickly on those designs with our 
partners who know the agriculture industry, Bayer, to find new 
important traits to track tolerance for lines of production.
    Senator Gardner. If I could inject real quick because----
    Dr. Kelly. Please.
    Senator Gardner.--if you look at a corn plant right now, 
you have traits. I don't know if it's a GMO trait or just a 
breeding trait that the corn leaf, instead of enfolding when it 
gets hot, will stay broad and point up so that it----
    Dr. Kelly. You do know a lot about this, yes.
    Senator Gardner.--helps the photosynthesis. But a hailstorm 
comes through and it doesn't matter how well it 
photosynthesizes or not. I mean, are you talking about 
something that could actually create a better healing process 
for after a hailstorm or something like that?
    Dr. Kelly. Super interesting question. Yes, so what is 
exciting is that these microbes are sort of all over the crop. 
So the ones I've been speaking about are the ones in the roots 
because that's where the nutrient production is, right, but 
actually in fact there are microbes all over the leaves of the 
corn.
    In fact, some of your pests that pop up are microbial, just 
sort of like acne on your skin is a microbial thing. So if you 
think about the best way to fight that, maybe it's not chemical 
pesticides in the future. It's actually live cells that help to 
repair after that hailstorm and prevent the crop from getting 
an infection effectively. We fight that biology with biology 
and those are some of the things that people actually are 
working on, yes.
    Senator Gardner. Mr. Gammack, we've had various debates in 
Colorado over the years about GMO labeling, GMO issues.
    I'd like to hear from the panel and we may not have time 
for this. How do we make sure that people understand what we're 
doing here because if we're going to feed, clothe the world, 
this technology has to flourish, right, and so how do we make 
sure that we are giving people the information they need to be 
comfortable with these debates?
    Mr. Gammack. Yes, no. It's an exceptionally good question, 
Senator Gardner, and, you know, we have a lot we can learn from 
the GMO stories because in many cases, science is weaponized, 
knowing the claims that were being made were not proper claims.
    So for us, when we look at how we educate folks, it's 
really important that they understand the beneficial 
opportunities that these technologies bring, and I think the 
synthetic biology or engineered biology world is somewhat 
unique, similar to the IT world, where innovation moves so 
quickly to the consumer.
    You know, the great example, I mean, if you would have 
asked me two years ago if Burger King would sell fake meat as a 
whopper, I would have thought you were crazy and, of course, 
now we know that the impossible burger is widely available in 
the United States, which is entirely a synthetic biology-based 
product.
    So for us, it's about really showing the value of the 
product and moving it quickly to the consumer so they 
appreciate both the economic value as well as the lifestyle 
improvement for the consumer. I think it's really, really 
important for us.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. Does anybody else want to add 
to that?
    Dr. Palmer. Education and then training is critical to 
this, as are these types of K through 12 programs, including 
clubs. We're already seeing the emergence of community 
biospaces where people can interact directly with the 
biotechnology and understand the choices they're already making 
about how biotechnology impacts their lives.
    These types of groundswell investments in the citizenry 
that will be shaping biotechnology are critical so that they 
can appreciate the way that biology manifests in every 
different place in this country and many different places in 
the world. We've seen this through places like the iGEM 
Competition where young people are excited about this 
technology and they're able to work with their families and 
their communities to tell them what this technology looks like 
and what it can do.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Kelly, did you have something you 
wanted to add?
    Dr. Kelly. Yes. I would just add, you know, that about half 
of your therapeutic drugs today are made with GMOs. So my 
father is a Type 1 diabetic. So, you know, since 1981, when 
human insulin came on the market, he has been consuming a GMO, 
right. And that, you know, people are able to make that 
judgment if they see the value, and so I think a lot of what's 
coming is things like the impossible burger: consumer-facing 
positive traits where people say, yes, I'll take that trade.
    Senator Gardner. Very good. Thank you.
    Senator Baldwin.
    Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
    Dr. Donohue, I think about our long history in a 
bioeconomy, and how the current bioeconomy is susceptible to 
disruptions or artificial shifts in market signals.
    So, for example, with corn going into ethanol, when you see 
recent actions taken by the EPA that undermine the renewable 
fuel standard and expectations of the markets that will be 
there; or a lumber mill going under when it's the largest 
employer in a county, that affects the forest economy, and the 
timber economy in the northern part of our state. So all of 
these challenges can be major disruptions.
    Can you discuss how innovations and the investments in bio-
based product research can help improve economic resiliency to 
keep our economy running strong with an eye to future 
opportunities that can ensure our companies stay up and running 
even when these disruptions or economic forces drive change?
    Dr. Donohue. So I'll take a first stab at that as an ivory 
tower academic and let some of my other more industry savvy 
people answer a great question.
    So I see a lot of what we're doing as making two types of 
futures. One type of future is providing other products for 
existing industries that are struggling. So you mentioned the 
dairy industry. You mentioned the forestry industry. They have 
one market. They sell one thing, but they have residues. We all 
have residues.
    Companies don't like to call them waste but that's the 
colloquial term for these and anything that we can do to make 
value out of those residues affects their bottom line.
    We've already shown at academic lab scale that if we can 
make a product out of the other part of plant biomass, the 
ligin that people were telling us to burn 12 years ago, we can 
actually reduce the selling price of the fuel by 25 percent 
without affecting the bottom line of the refinery, right? So 
you're making co-products.
    We have the dairy industry coming to us and talking about 
that issue right now. We're working with people for the Center 
for Dairy Research on campus, and with some funding from the 
National Dairy Council, we are trying to make food-grade 
products out of milk permeates, out of leftover yogurt, and out 
of Greek yogurt. They're all different. I know what the 
chemical composition is now.
    What can we make to help a struggling dairy industry make 
other products to impact their bottom line?
    The second future is new industries that you've heard 
others talk about. If we do this right, we can place those 
industries all over every state in the country because I think 
every state has something to give and that will create rural 
economic development and jobs.
    These refineries need to be close to where the materials 
are. If they need to be shipped a thousand miles to go from 
where they're available to where they're going to be refined, 
the economics just go in the tank. So we can do this locally 
for people.
    Dr. Kelly. Maybe add one thing. You know, I think we tend 
to take biology for granted, you know, you mentioned the timber 
industry, farming, right?
    Think about when you plant a seed, right? You plant a seed, 
you add air, water, and sunlight, and this thing manufactures 
itself out of the air, it produces solar panels on the leaves. 
You know, it's an unbelievable piece of manufacturing 
technology, dramatically superior to our traditional kind of 
industrial revolution era manufacturing, and what we've lacked 
is the ability to program it to make all the things around us, 
but the reality is it's an intrinsically much more powerful 
manufacturing technology.
    So if you play the tape out on this exponentially improving 
technology, it makes it easier to program those cells to do new 
things. Well, everything's going to end up being biologically 
manufactured. You're not going to be closing lumber mills. 
You're going to be opening them, right? That's where all the 
manufacturing's going to consolidate, particularly in a world 
where we're looking to try to make things more renewably.
    So, you know, I actually am bullish on the long arc here 
and I think this transition should drive more toward those bio-
based manufacturing industries, not less.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you.
    As we look toward leadership and the points that you have 
made, you know, I think about if we have one sort of agency, 
one department that is sort of coordinating amongst all of 
them, it can be good, but also I don't want to cutoff any kind 
of innovations by saying this is the route that you take.
    So would it be helpful to identify perhaps a national lab 
as sort of the coordinator or something like that? I've asked a 
similar question to this before but I want to make sure I'm 
understanding. Would it help to have OSTP heading this? Would 
it be NSF that should be in charge of it? Should it be DOE? 
Would it help to have one sort of center that can coordinate 
across all the spectrum of government agencies and programs? 
I'll just quickly go down the panel, if we could quickly answer 
that question.
    Dr. Donohue. So as an academic, I would say I would think 
you need good interagency cooperation. Many places live in 
silos.
    Senator Gardner. And can that be done without identifying 
one person to create that coordination?
    Dr. Donohue. I don't know enough about how things work 
within the Federal Government. So I think I'll bounce that one 
back to you, Senator.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. Dr. Palmer?
    Dr. Palmer. We need many agencies that are coordinating. 
Again, as I said previously, economy, science, and security all 
need to be working in lockstep and those mission portfolios 
differ across different agencies.
    I offered one model, which is the National Nanotechnology 
Initiative as a potential starting place. We need to really 
look at the benefits of different types of interagency 
coordination. The existing H.R. 4373 has some coordination 
capacities that are articulated there. I think they need to be 
stronger so that this isn't the second priority but the first 
priority of a dedicated staff. We also need central investments 
in foundational science and technology capabilities that 
interfaces with mission-specific strategic activities, like the 
DoD's Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIS).
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. Mr. Gammack, Dr. Kelly, 
anything else?
    Mr. Gammack. So again, without repeating what they said, I 
am in complete agreement, although I will kick it up a notch.
    This needs to be the next moon shot. This is the next 
iteration of our economy and if that can be done through 
interagency connectivity, great. I don't have the same level of 
confidence. I think it needs to be a higher priority.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. Dr. Kelly.
    Dr. Kelly. I think Commerce started NASA, right? So there 
you go.
    I would say what we're doing with artificial intelligence 
is also a good roadmap, right? It's a very cross-cutting 
technology. Sometimes it can be used to make a drug, sometimes 
it can be used to make new food. It's going to hit all these 
different places, but some central goals there are important.
    Senator Gardner. And you would all agree, and this is yes 
or no, you would all agree with additional funding through the 
National Science Foundation, yes?
    Dr. Kelly. Yes, particularly for some--I think these types 
of things where we can tap our natural resources, you know, 
like a U.S. genome survey kind of version, like the U.S. 
Geological Survey, I think, is a big idea like that or a moon 
shot would help.
    Senator Gardner. Mr. Gammack.
    Mr. Gammack. Yes, in complete agreement.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Palmer.
    Dr. Palmer. Yes.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you very much.
    One last question and then I'll give it back to Senator 
Baldwin. Could you talk a little bit about the role that--the 
concern that I have with China and what we could see happening 
when technology may be used for a nefarious purpose. How should 
we protect both the human rights aspect of this technology? How 
do we make sure we're protecting and ensuring this technology?
    The example I used at the beginning of the hearing, how do 
we make sure that these technologies and programs are being 
used for purposes that are respectful of human rights and human 
dignity? Dr. Palmer, Mr. Gammack?
    Dr. Palmer. Foremost we need to set an example. We need to 
develop these technologies and we need to use them here in ways 
that really are representative of the public interest and show 
the ways in which we can balance innovation and security. Then 
we need to make sure that we are sharing those norms and 
values.
    Think the way we do it is in many ways through training, 
through bringing people here to discuss and learn how to use 
this technology. Even then, it's not just going to be the 
technology itself; it's going to be the way we develop our 
international norms and partnerships and values. There are many 
different aspects of this here. Again, it comes down to these 
types of policy and strategy and security questions needing a 
home as well. They need a home in which we can look at them and 
keep looking at them over time because that balance will 
change.
    Senator Gardner. Very good. Mr. Gammack.
    Mr. Gammack. Again, so in violent agreement with Dr. 
Palmer.
    I think it's important that we set a global standard 
through our leadership and technology. I think it's also 
important that we engage diverse communities with that 
technology, diverse communities outside of our borders as well 
as inside our borders.
    I will say that I touched on earlier the desire and need 
for us to really have a solid data strategy and ensuring that 
critical data stays in the United States. It doesn't leave the 
United States and developing those data assets that can be 
leveraged by researchers and companies across the country.
    Senator Gardner. Do you think--I mean, does that bring up 
the issue of export control? Do we need export control in some 
of these areas?
    Mr. Gammack. I think a logical approach is important. I 
think we need to look at how technologies are being applied. 
Dr. Palmer just wrote a paper on dual use technologies, which I 
think is a great primer on how we should look at this.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Kelly.
    Dr. Kelly. Just to be blunt, I think we should be careful, 
and thank you for the excellent question. What we have in 5G 
now with Huawei is not a place we want to get into with 
programming life, right?
    You know, we need to make sure that, you know, we benefited 
from the fact that we had intel. You know, we had Facebook. We 
had Google. Yes, China could carve out and have their own 
Internet for themselves. You can always check out, but the rest 
of the world ran on our systems, Microsoft, you know, Windows, 
right, like we benefited.
    This is far more strategic technology than computers and, 
you know, BGI is just announcing last week that they're reading 
DNA cheaper than now Illumina is in San Diego, which is sort of 
our flagship sequencing company. So, you know, I do think we're 
in the midst of a race here.
    Senator Gardner. Dr. Palmer.
    Dr. Palmer. I just want to urge caution that we have to be 
very careful in our choices about data collection and sharing 
and security. It is not a trivial question of how to accomplish 
the right balance. If we close down data, we are going to lose 
on the foundational science that we need in order to build 
these industries.
    The interfaces between public datasets and public 
repositories and all of our academic centers and industries are 
just as important as the data itself. This, again, comes to a 
need to invest in policy, scholarship, and strategy to look at 
an analysis of these types of governance choices before we rush 
too quickly ahead and enact things that can hinder us in the 
long run.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you.
    Senator Baldwin.
    Senator Baldwin. I have one final question, also.
    So transitioning promising research into commercial 
applications is always a challenge. We've had many policy 
discussions and enacted legislation to help researchers bridge 
what we call the ``valley of death.''
    I wonder if you can provide examples of what has worked 
well to foster commercialization of research and also identify 
top challenges, you see in the effort to improve tech transfer 
of bio-based products.
    I'm going to start with you, Dr. Donohue, but I'd love to 
hear the perspective of the full panel.
    Dr. Donohue. Thank you, Senator. I think you know what I'm 
going to probably say.
    We at the University of Wisconsin have the benefits of 
working with Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, called WARF. 
They've been doing this for 95 years, and if the leadership of 
WARF was here, he would say the way to be successful is to 
place yourself at a top flight research institution, like UW-
Madison, bring in the best faculty in the world, and do it for 
95 years and you will be successful.
    But having said that, when the Great Lakes Bioenergy 
Research Center was funded, WARF saw this as the single largest 
grant on the UW-Madison Campus coming from a mission-driven 
agency, DOE, and we were challenged to develop knowledge that 
was going to help industry.
    So we've worked very closely with them and we have the 
ability to do that. There are researchers in other agencies we 
would like to bring in to work with us who are now saying to 
us, like USDA-ARS, we want to own all your IP and so when you 
look at regulatory issues that's a problem, right, even within 
different government agencies.
    They are also saying in terms of data access, we would like 
to review every paper with the right to hold on to it for an 
indeterminate amount of time before the conclusions from that 
work get released. I don't think that's a good idea either.
    We need to understand the balance of what gets out and what 
doesn't, but we need to make knowledge from taxpayer-funded 
research available to the community or else the community, 
academics and industry, doesn't have the ability to work with 
it.
    Dr. Palmer. I spent about 5 years within a National Science 
Foundation Engineering Research Center, the largest pot of 
money given out by the NSF. These are 10-year projects with 
multimillion dollar-per-year investments. By the end of that 10 
years, we ended up with more than 40 labs across the country 
and more than 40 companies that were members. That type of 
precompetitive environment was able to spin off many companies, 
including Ginkgo. These places for knowledge brokering and 
knowledge transfer, places to understand research trajectories 
and take high-risk/high-reward, field-building exercises are 
going to be really critical.
    Certainly, there are pain points. How do we develop the 
intellectual property frameworks that will enable different 
types of licensing arrangements? Also, it was important to have 
this social and policy research coupled to the technology so we 
could develop technology and policy approaches that anticipate 
regulatory reforms that may be needed or gaps in current 
regulations.
    These multidisciplinary centers that allow companies and 
academics to work in precompetitive spaces are going to be 
critical.
    Mr. Gammack. So I am here because of the University of 
Colorado-Boulder. So a brilliant scientist at the University of 
Colorado had a tremendous idea on how to enable genome 
engineering at scale and started Inscripta and so for us, the 
relationship with the University of Colorado is incredibly 
important. It's been a tremendous relationship, both from a 
licensing perspective but also helping us understand the edges 
of the technology and continuing to work with us and iterate.
    Important to us, as well, is the availability and access to 
capital and we've been very fortunate here at Inscripta in that 
4 years, we've raised $300-ish million in those 4 years to be 
able to develop our technology and bring this technology to 
market.
    The other area that's critically important is ensuring that 
our consumers have the ability to acquire, use, and leverage 
the technology. So ensuring that the grants are funded through 
NSF, NIH, and various granting agencies is critically important 
for us, as well.
    Dr. Kelly. Thank you, Senator Baldwin. I will say I know 
you have been a strong supporter of UW-Madison and they are 
absolutely one of the centers for synthetic biology and so, you 
know, appreciate you stepping forward to do that.
    What I would say, I think Ginkgo is absolutely a recipient 
of this. The first $5 to $10 million into the company was from 
DARPA, NSF, SBIR, ARPA-E, and then since then we've raised $800 
million in private capital because it helped us bridge that 
valley of death.
    I think there's an enormous opportunity for the government 
to play a role here because I interact with Silicon Valley 
venture capital quite a lot. We were the first life science 
company to do Y Combinator, which is like Dropbox and Airbnb, 
all these tech companies. And what is missing in our ecosystem 
is the ability on the venture side privately to evaluate 
emerging high technologies, it's just not there. How are you 
supposed to do it? You've got to be a material science expert 
and a genetics expert, but the government has this because they 
have experts to approve grants. So they can provide a technical 
filter on these companies, give them some money, say, ``your 
technology's not garbage. I just had some serious people look 
at it, go on your merry way'', Then they can prove out in the 
market, the commercial side, and then the private capital's 
there to show up after that, but it's that initial technical 
filter. I think you could grow the SBIR Program a factor of a 
hundred and it would pay off for this country in a heartbeat.
    So I do think there's an opportunity where the government 
could do that for the private industry. They don't have the 
capability.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. I just have two quick questions 
and then we'll close the hearing.
    Thank you, Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
    Mr. Gammack, you talked a little bit about getting access 
to information and the data that you're looking for. You talk 
about democratizing access to the biological world. What does 
that democratized access to the biological world mean to you, 
to Inscripta?
    Mr. Gammack. Yes, it's a great question, Senator Gardner. 
Thank you for asking.
    So, you know, for us, I don't like to use Apple analogies 
because a lot of people use Apple analogies, but it's a great 
company to foundation for analogies.
    The tool that we're creating and the tools that we create 
are similar to how we should think about an iPad 10 years ago. 
I mean, today, you don't walk into a coffee shop without 
signing your finger on an iPad to pay for your cup of coffee. I 
guarantee you 10 years ago at Cupertino, they never debated 
should we build an iPad because it's going to become the point 
of sale device at every coffee shop. They created an iPad 
because they had certain apps in mind.
    So for us, what developed that massive IT information 
economy was the creation of platforms that others could plug 
into and create very, very high-value apps. So we look at 
Inscripta similarly where we want to create a high-value 
platform that scientists smarter than those in Boulder can plug 
in to and really leverage biology.
    You know, if we can only access biology through a few 
centers, we're not going to have the same iterative cycles of 
advancement that we saw in IT. So the need to invest in tool 
creation--right now, we're still stuck in local minimums. We 
know what we know and we can investigate what we know, but we 
need to create tools that allow us to explore the entire genome 
in a non-biased way and that's the only way we'll truly really 
be able to understand those fundamental building blocks.
    So for us, scientists gaining access to core technologies 
that allow them to interrogate not a single question but 
thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of 
questions at a time is going to be important and that's been 
our focus and so we talk about democratization.
    It's about providing those tools to the trained scientists 
so they can really allow their minds to expand and leverage the 
full power of biology.
    Senator Gardner. Very good. Anybody else want to add to 
that? Dr. Kelly.
    Dr. Kelly. I want to add one quick thing. You know, I think 
if you look back at computers, say, in the 1950s and 1960s, you 
maybe had 10,000-20,000 people who programmed computers. It was 
the sort of high art and impossible, right?
    I was sitting down with Marc Andreessen, the fellow that 
launched Netscape, and he said ``there are like tens of 
millions of people now who have programmed computers.'' My 7-
year-old daughter Quinn, she programs on the iPad, right, you 
know, and so that's where this is going to go, right? If the 
technology really gets cheaper and easier every year to program 
cells, everyone's going to want to do this. Gardeners are going 
to want to--you know, it's just going to be a thing that is 
like as easy as programming a computer today and I think 
companies like Inscripta are going to lead the way on that 
democratization.
    Dr. Donohue. And so I'll just make one other point from 
history and from today.
    So my first year in graduate school, people had figured out 
how to clone viral genes and put them in bacterial plasmids, I 
heard about this in courses, and it was pretty cool, right, and 
that was a chance event built by molecular biology. It was also 
an event that had all sorts of ethical as well as scientific 
issues. This country and its scientists stepped up and led a 
global conversation on how we were going to do the next 
experiments responsibly.
    We have a company here today that's built on CRISPR. That 
was a chance encounter five or seven years ago, some of it in 
academic, some of it in industry, because fermentations were 
going south.
    Big instruments, big science coordinated is important, but 
don't lose sight of the fact that the next greatest advance 
might come from the single investigator-funded grant or a 14-
year-old riding a skateboard somewhere who's brighter who will 
grow up to be brighter than any of us at this table. This 
individual creativity needs to be part of the conversation 
moving forward.
    Senator Gardner. Thank you. Dr. Palmer, we talked a little 
bit about the export issues, security issues, those kinds of 
things.
    When you're working with a company, how do you understand 
the aims of the company that you are working with that may be 
coming to you asking for a biologic solution? Are you looking 
at the background of that company? Are you looking at their 
funding stream? Are you looking at their board to fully 
understand who controls the entity?
    As we look at the importance of this technology, I mean, 
how do you make those kind of determinations?
    Dr. Palmer. It's all of the above as well as the overall 
ecosystem that they're working with. There are a lot of 
different incentive structures, a lot of different motivations 
within any firm. They have interfaces with many other firms and 
so it's really holistically looking at many of these questions. 
What's fascinating about this space is I see so many companies 
that are really invested in trying to do the right thing and 
anticipating these types of governance challenges.
    Ginkgo and Inscripta are just two examples. The key here is 
to provide the space and the infrastructure to allow those 
companies to work together to come up with the standards, then 
to reinforce those through government actions and government 
support. We've seen precedent of this in areas like the DNA 
synthesis industry. We're seeing interest in it in other types 
of industries as well and we need to continue to foster this.
    Senator Gardner. Very good. I appreciate that, and thank 
you so much for this hearing today.
    I'm going to go ahead and close the hearing. The hearing 
record will remain open for two weeks. During this time, the 
Senators are asked to submit questions for the record. Upon 
receipt, the witnesses are requested to submit their written 
questions to the Committee as soon as possible but by no later 
than Tuesday, the 31st of 2020. So let's just say two weeks. 
All right? Two weeks.
    I will conclude the hearing and thank the witnesses. Thank 
you very much for your service today. for your testimony. and 
for taking the time to be with us today and appreciate it.
    Thank you very much. We'll now adjourn the hearing. Thank 
you.
    [Whereupon, at 10:34 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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