[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                    BUILDING BACK THE U.S. RESEARCH
                 ENTERPRISE: COVID IMPACTS AND RECOVERY

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           FEBRUARY 25, 2021

                               __________

                            Serial No. 117-2

                               __________

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


       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
43-446PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California           PETE SESSIONS, Texas
PAUL TONKO, New York                 DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
DON BEYER, Virginia                  YOUNG KIM, California
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAY OBERNOLTE, California
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DAN KILDEE, Michigan                 VACANCY
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
VACANCY
                        
                        C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                           February 25, 2021

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................     8
    Written Statement............................................     9

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................    10
    Written Statement............................................    11

                               Witnesses:

Dr. Sudip Parikh, Chief Executive Officer, American Association 
  for the Advancement of Science
    Oral Statement...............................................    13
    Written Statement............................................    15

Dr. Christopher Keane, Vice President for Research, Washington 
  State University
    Oral Statement...............................................    25
    Written Statement............................................    27

Dr. Felice J. Levine, Executive Director, American Educational 
  Research Association
    Oral Statement...............................................    45
    Written Statement............................................    47

Mr. Thomas Quaadman, Executive Vice President, Center for Capital 
  Markets Competitiveness, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
    Oral Statement...............................................    53
    Written Statement............................................    55

Discussion.......................................................    68

             Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Dr. Sudip Parikh, Chief Executive Officer, American Association 
  for the Advancement of Science.................................   112

Dr. Christopher Keane, Vice President for Research, Washington 
  State University...............................................   116

Dr. Felice J. Levine, Executive Director, American Educational 
  Research Association...........................................   127

Mr. Thomas Quaadman, Executive Vice President, Center for Capital 
  Markets Competitiveness, U.S. Chamber of Commerce..............   132

            Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record

Report submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 
  Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives
    ``Issue Brief: U.S. R&D Community Pandemic Recovery 
      Lagging,'' American Physical Society.......................   142

Letter submitted by Representative Bill Posey, Committee on 
  Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..   147

 
                         BUILDING BACK THE U.S.
                          RESEARCH ENTERPRISE:
                       COVID IMPACTS AND RECOVERY

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021

                          House of Representatives,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

     The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., via 
Webex, Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson [Chairwoman of the Committee] 
presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     Chairwoman Johnson. And without objection, the Chair is 
authorized to declare recess at any time.
     Pursuant to House Resolution 8, today, the Committee is 
meeting virtually. I want to announce a couple of reminders to 
the Members about the conduct of the remote hearing. First, 
Members should keep their video feed on as long as they are 
present in the hearing, and Members are responsible for their 
own microphones. Please keep your microphones muted until you 
are speaking. And finally, if Members have documents they wish 
to submit for the record, please email them to the Committee 
Clerk, whose email address was circulated prior to the meeting.
     Good morning and welcome to today's hearing. I want to 
thank our distinguished panel for joining us today and remind 
them that there are probably two of the names that I'll get a 
little bit mixed because I'm from Waco, Texas, and I only speak 
Waco English. But I want to thank our distinguished panel for 
joining us today.
     This week our Nation passed yet another heart-wrenching 
milestone. More than a half million of our friends, neighbors, 
family members, frontline workers, and fellow citizens have 
succumbed to COVID-19 since the disease first touched our 
shores a little more than a year ago. Even as vaccines are 
being administered around the country, help has come too late 
for them and for the more than 2,000 Americans who continue to 
die each passing day. Those numbers are staggering, yet we must 
remember it would have been even worse if not for the 
sacrifices that Americans have been making to bring this virus 
under control.
     The necessary mitigation measures undertaken by 
individuals and by businesses, institutions, and organizations 
of all types have created enormous disruptions to every sector 
of American life, including agriculture, manufacturing, 
hospitality, education, sports, transportation, and health care 
as we have attempted to slow this deadly spread of the virus. 
Scientific research has not been spared.
     We are here today to discuss the state of the U.S. 
research enterprise one year into this pandemic, and to explore 
what is needed to get things back on track. For my colleagues 
who are new to the Committee, let me say a few words about the 
critical role research plays in our society. For decades, 
federally funded research has generated new ideas and spurred 
breakthrough innovations, which fuel our economy and create 
jobs, inspire new generations of young people to pursue 
science, improve public health and education, and keep us a 
step ahead of our global competitors. Our research system is 
the envy of the world, and many nations have tried hard to 
emulate it.
     In this hearing we will examine the ways in which the 
pandemic has slowed the pace of research and innovation and 
reversed hard-earned gains in expanding our STEM (science, 
technology, engineering, and math) workforce. I am deeply 
concerned about the long-term consequences for the American 
people if we don't make these investments necessary to address 
the needs of our science agencies, universities, researchers, 
and students.
     Even before the pandemic, years of stagnant funding 
dramatically eroded our standing as the leader in science and 
innovation with countries like China nipping at our heels. It 
is not enough to recover simply to maintain the status quo. We 
must grow the research enterprise so that we can boldly tackle 
the urgent challenges ahead of us.
     For these reasons, I did not hesitate to join my 
bipartisan colleagues in the House in cosponsoring the RISE 
Act. I was also pleased to be joined by Ranking Member Lucas in 
reintroducing the Supporting Early Career Researchers Act, 
which is focused specifically on keeping the best and brightest 
in research careers that they have already worked so hard for. 
I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will continue 
to join me in advocating for their passage and the real funding 
for those two bills.
     In that regard, I look forward to learning from the expert 
panel about the specific challenges and needs one year into the 
pandemic, including any recommendations for updating these 
bills. Well, we have a lot to consider today, and I again want 
to thank our witnesses for appearing with us today.
     [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning and welcome to today's hearing. I want to 
thank our distinguished panel for joining us today. This week 
our Nation passed yet another heart wrenching milestone. More 
than half a million of our friends, neighbors, family members, 
front-line workers, and fellow citizens have succumbed to 
COVID-19 since the disease first touched our shores a little 
over one year ago. Even as vaccines are being administered 
around the country, help has come too late for them and the 
more than two thousand Americans who continue to die with each 
passing day.
    Those numbers are staggering, yet we must remember it would 
have been even worse if not for the sacrifices Americans have 
been making to bring the virus under control. The necessary 
mitigation measures undertaken by individuals and by 
businesses, institutions, and organizations of all types have 
created enormous disruptions to every sector of American life, 
including agriculture, manufacturing, hospitality, education, 
sports, transportation, and health care as we have attempted to 
slow the deadly spread of the virus. Scientific research has 
not been spared.
    We are here today to discuss the state of the U.S. research 
enterprise one year into this pandemic, and to explore what is 
needed to get things back on track. For my colleagues who are 
new to the Committee, let me say a few words about the critical 
role research plays in our society. For decades, federally 
funded research has generated new ideas and spurred 
breakthrough innovations which fuel our economy and create 
jobs, inspire new generations of young people to pursue 
science, improve public health and education, and keep us a 
step ahead of our global competitors. Our research system is 
the envy of the world, and many nations have tried hard to 
emulate it.
    In this hearing we will examine the ways in which the 
pandemic has slowed the pace of research and innovation and 
reversed hard-earned gains in expanding our STEM workforce. I 
am deeply concerned about the long-term consequences for the 
American people if we don't make the investments necessary to 
address the needs of our science agencies, universities, 
researchers, and students. Even before the pandemic, years of 
stagnant funding dramatically eroded our standing as the leader 
in science and innovation, with countries like China nipping at 
our heels. It is not enough to recover simply to maintain the 
status quo-we must grow the research enterprise so we can 
boldly tackle the urgent challenges ahead of us.
    For those reasons, I did not hesitate to join my bipartisan 
colleagues in the House in cosponsoring the RISE Act. I was 
also pleased to be joined by Ranking Member Lucas in re-
introducing the Supporting Early Career Researchers Act, which 
is focused specifically on keeping the best and brightest in 
research careers that they have already worked so hard for. I 
hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will continue to 
join me in advocating for their passage and for real funding 
for those two bills. In that regard, I look forward to learning 
from the expert panel about the specific challenges and needs 
one year into the pandemic, including any recommendations for 
updating those bills.
    Well, we have a lot to consider today, and I again want to 
thank our witnesses for appearing before us today.
    I now yield to Ranking Member Lucas for his opening 
statement.

     Chairwoman Johnson. Before I recognize Mr. Lucas for the--
his opening remarks, I'd like to present for the record a 
report from the American Physical Society entitled ``Issue 
Brief: The U.S. R&D Community Pandemic Recovery Lagging.''
     Thank you. And now I will ask for Mr. Lucas for his 
opening statement.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, both for being a 
pleasure to work with and for holding this hearing. I believe 
that today's topics, restarting American research, is one of 
the most important issues we face at this moment. In September 
we heard from students and academics about the far-reaching 
impacts of COVID shutdowns. Those problems are only getting 
worse as Congress continues to ignore this problem in COVID 
relief bills. American research universities support nearly 7 
million jobs, and hundreds of thousands of those are directly 
supported by research funding. As research funding dries, those 
jobs are threatened.
     The research itself is also suffering. When COVID hit, 
labs across the country had to close or dramatically limit 
their operations to provide for safe social distancing. It's 
estimated we're losing between 20 and 40 percent of our 
research output, which we absolutely cannot afford if we want 
to keep pace with China.
     The Chinese Communist Party is determined to overtake us 
in the industries of the future, areas of science and 
technology that will drive economic growth and national 
security in the years to come. The longer our research remains 
stalled, the more likely it is we'll fall behind our foreign 
adversaries on technologies like artificial intelligence, 
quantum information sciences and advanced manufacturing. The 
consequences of that would be devastating.
     In addition to our loss of research, we're facing the loss 
of our researchers. Graduate students and post-docs are 
particularly vulnerable to lab closures right now. Research 
interruptions make it difficult to complete their studies and 
graduate on time. And universities have instituted hiring 
freezes, making it difficult to find work. Our STEM pipeline 
and future competitiveness could be irreparably damaged if we 
don't act quickly.
     Unfortunately, we can't just flip a switch and restart the 
research work that's been halted by the pandemic. There's a 
cost involved in getting back up and running. Scientists need 
to cultivate new samples; field researchers need to reacquire 
equipment, permits, and tools; and labs need to figure out how 
to safely use and sterilize expensive and delicate equipment.
     For a time, research will cost more and take longer to 
conduct. We need to plan for that. But our science progress is 
worth that investment. That's why I was so disappointed that in 
the $4 trillion in COVID spending that Congress has already 
passed, not one cent has gone to research itself. In the 
massive and partisan $1.9 trillion budget reconciliation 
proposal being considered this week, billions and billions of 
dollars are going to special interests that already have $1 
trillion in unspent funding sitting in the Treasury from 
previous COVID packages. And yet in all that spending, only 
$600 million was allocated to helping the research industry 
recover from the pandemic. That's less than half a percent.
     We've relied on American science and scientists to combat 
COVID, but we're not giving them the funding they need to 
resume the work that's been stopped by the pandemic. We need to 
act now.
     I'm a proud cosponsor of the RISE Act, which would invest 
$25 billion in restarting American research. It provides the 
funding needed for researchers to complete work that was halted 
due to the pandemic. And it will allow Federal science agencies 
to make awards to research universities, independent 
institutions, and national laboratories.
     I'm also proud of the Supporting Early Career Researchers 
Act Chairwoman Johnson and I reintroduced at the start of this 
Congress. This bill creates a new postdoctoral fellowship 
program at the National Science Foundation to help support 
early career researchers.
     Both of these bills enjoy strong bipartisan support, which 
is why I'm hopeful that we can move forward on them sooner 
rather than later. In the meantime, I'd like to thank our 
witnesses for being here today. I'm looking forward to learning 
more about the challenges facing our research industry and to 
hear your ideas about how we can support American scientists 
and technology.
     And with that, Madam Chair, again, thank you. And I yield 
back.
     [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

    Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for holding this hearing. I 
believe that today's topic--restarting American research--is 
one of the most important issues we face at this moment. In 
September we heard from students and academics about the far-
ranging impacts of COVID shutdowns. Those problems are only 
getting worse as Congress continues to ignore this problem in 
COVID relief bills.
    American research universities support nearly 7 million 
jobs, and hundreds of thousands of those are directly supported 
by research funding. As research funding dries up, those jobs 
are threatened.
    The research itself is also suffering. When COVID hit, labs 
across the country had to close or dramatically limit their 
operations to provide for safe social distancing. It's 
estimated that we're losing between 20 and 40 percent of our 
research output, which we absolutely cannot afford if we want 
to keep pace with China.
    The Chinese Communist Party is determined to overtake us in 
the industries of the future-areas of science and technology 
that will drive economic growth and national security in the 
years to come. The longer our research remains stalled, the 
more likely it is that we'll fall behind our foreign 
adversaries on technologies like artificial intelligence, 
quantum information sciences, advanced manufacturing. The 
consequences of that would be devastating.
    In addition to our loss of research, we're facing the loss 
of our researchers. Graduate students and post-docs are 
particularly vulnerable to lab closures right now. Research 
interruptions make it difficult to complete their studies and 
graduate on time. And universities have instituted hiring 
freezes, making it difficult to find work. Our STEM pipeline 
and future competitiveness could be irreparably damaged if we 
don't act quickly.
    Unfortunately, we can't just flip a switch and restart the 
research work that's been halted by the pandemic. There's a 
cost involved in getting back up and running. Scientists need 
to cultivate new samples, field researchers need to reacquire 
equipment, permits, and tools, and labs need to figure out how 
to safely use and sterilize expensive and delicate equipment.
    For a time, research will cost more and take longer to 
conduct, and we need to plan for that. But our scientific 
progress is worth that investment. That's why I'm so 
disappointed that in the $4 trillion in COVID spending that 
Congress has already passed, not one cent has gone to research 
relief.
    In the massive and partisan $1.9 trillion budget 
reconciliation proposal being considered this week, billions 
and billions of dollars are going to special interests that 
already have $1 trillion in unspent funding sitting in the 
Treasury from previous COVID packages. And yet in all that 
spending, only $600 million was allocated to helping the 
research industry recover from the pandemic. That's less than 
half a percent.
    We've relied on American science and scientists to combat 
COVID, but we're not giving them the funding they need to 
resume the work that's been stopped by the pandemic.
    We need to act now.
    I'm a proud cosponsor of the RISE Act, which would invest 
$25 billion in restarting American research. It provides the 
funding needed for researchers to complete work that was halted 
due to the pandemic. And it will allow federal science agencies 
to make awards to research universities, independent 
institutions, and national laboratories.
    I'm also proud of the Supporting Early-Career Researchers 
Act Chairwoman Johnson and I re-introduced at the start of this 
Congress. This bill creates a new postdoctoral fellowship 
program at the National Science foundation to help support 
early career researchers.
    Both of these bills enjoy strong bipartisan support, which 
is why I'm hopeful that we can move forward on them sooner 
rather than later. In the meantime, I'd like to thank our 
witnesses for being here today. I'm looking forward to learning 
more about the challenges facing our research industry, and 
hear your ideas about how we can support American science and 
technology.
    Thank you.

     Chairwoman Johnson. Our first witness, Dr. Sudip Parikh, 
is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science--we call it AAAS--and the Executive 
Publisher of the Science family of journals, a position he has 
held since January 2020. Prior to his current position with 
AAAS, Dr. Parikh served as Senior Vice President and Managing 
Director at DIA Global, the General Manager of the Health and 
Consumer Solutions Business Unit and Vice President at 
Battelle.
     Our next witness, Dr. Christopher Keane, Dr. Keane is Vice 
President of Research (VPR) and professor of physics at 
Washington State University (WSU) where he has served since 
2014. Prior to his positions there, he served in multiple 
leadership positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Nuclear 
Security Administration. Dr. Keane is also Chair of the 
Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) 
Council on Research Executive Committee.
     Our third witness, Dr. Felice Levine. Dr. Levine is 
Executive Director of the American Educational Research 
Association (AERA). Her work focuses on research and science 
policy issues, the scientific and academic workforce, and 
diversity and inclusion in higher education. Dr. Levine is 
engaged in a multi-method study of the impact of COVID-19 on 
early career education researchers and doctoral students.
     Our next witness, Mr. Thomas Quaadman, Mr. Quaadman is 
Executive Vice President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center 
for Capital Markets Competitiveness, the Chamber Technology 
Engagement Center, and the Global Innovation Policy Center. In 
his role with the Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, 
he works to create and execute legislative, regulatory, and 
judicial strategies to reform the financial regulatory system 
and support policies for efficient capital markets.
     Our witnesses should know that you will each have 5 
minutes for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will 
be included in the record for the hearing. And when you have 
completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with questions, 
and each Member will have 5 minutes to question the panel. We 
will now start with Dr. Parikh.

                 TESTIMONY OF DR. SUDIP PARIKH,

         CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION

                 FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

     Dr. Parikh. Thank you. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member 
Lucas, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify today. As the CEO (chief executive 
officer) of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, or AAAS, and the Executive Publisher of Science 
magazine, I have the privilege of representing 120,000 
scientists and engineers from every discipline, from 
agriculture and artificial intelligence (AI) to x-ray 
crystallography and zoology, who work tirelessly to advance 
science and serve society for the benefit of all.
     And here's what they tell me. It seems strange to say it 
during a pandemic, but we live in wondrous times. The pace of 
discovery and innovation has never been faster. We've seen, 
we've seen the methane-covered mountains of Pluto. We have felt 
the gravitational ripples caused by colliding black holes. We 
have detailed extensive changes to our climate and environment. 
We've advanced quantum computing to the brink of broader 
utility and the creation of jobs and harnessed gene editing to 
potentially cure sickle-cell anemia and other diseases, not to 
mention the thrill of landing a rover on Mars in high-
resolution no less.
     Despite failures in our public health response to the 
pandemic, the biomedical research enterprise has never worked 
more quickly to understand and address COVID-19. The record-
shattering number of submissions to the journal Science and 
other peer-reviewed publications for COVID, it speaks volumes 
about the speed and intensity with which researchers are 
responding to this crisis. And they haven't stopped in other 
areas either.
     But we also live in uncertain times. Multiple intersecting 
challenges have the potential to become global crises. The 
COVID-19 pandemic is not going to be the last time that science 
is essential to society's triumph over existential threats. 
Addressing future public health concerns like Alzheimer's, 
climate change, food and water insecurity, and other 
challenges, some of which aren't even emerged yet, will require 
addressing short-term funding challenges and long-term support 
for science.
     But we can't do things the way we've always done them 
either. The cadence of emerging crises and the pace of 
discoveries requires permanent elevation of scientific advisors 
to the front ranks of policymaking. And at the same time, we 
need to more fully engage diverse communities with an 
intentional emphasis on those that have been ignored, 
marginalized, or harmed by scientific advancement.
     Today's hearing is incredibly timely. We are at an 
inflection point. As I said, we live in wondrous times for 
discovery, but that's a lagging indicator of previous 
investment. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic and slow erosion 
of investment, our Nation's universities and laboratories, the 
foundation of our innovation ecosystem, have faced an eroding 
capacity to nurture ideas, discoveries, and, most importantly, 
a highly skilled, diverse pool of STEM talent. And this is 
happening just as our global competitors are pouring investment 
into the sciences. What we do now could determine who benefits 
from scientific discovery in the form of better jobs and 
improved health.
     Scientists and engineers have risen to the challenge of 
COVID-19, but this success has come at a price. Lab workers 
have been forced to work in shifts, and this limited lab time 
has slowed research. Lab budgets have been strained by the need 
to extend salaries. With needed safety measures in place, human 
subjects research has been particularly challenging. And field 
expeditions have been canceled or curtailed.
     Early career researchers have been hit especially hard. 
For undergraduates in STEM, summer research programs were 
widely canceled, creating challenges in applying and 
progressing to grad school. For graduate students and 
postdoctoral researchers, job searches were suspended, leaving 
them in incredibly precarious positions of waiting for the job 
market to return.
     Mental health has also been a continued concern. For women 
and underrepresented minorities in STEM, the pandemic has just 
further exacerbated already existing disparities. One recent 
survey found that female scientists and scientists with young 
dependents reported that their ability to devote time to the 
research has been substantially affected. Another found that 
students of color at research universities, as well as low-
income and working-class students, were more likely to 
experience anxiety and depression, food and housing insecurity, 
and much higher rates of financial hardship.
     Science involves problem-solving and collaboration. Every 
time a research project is shuttered or delayed or a promising 
scientist drops out of the workforce, it raises the question 
what discovery or development that could have made us safer, 
led to better jobs, or healed the sick has been lost?
     This is the time to act. The wisdom and foresight of 
Congress in investing in science and engineering (S&E) has 
enabled America's global leadership. I look forward to 
discussing with you how we can ensure a future where the 
descendants of Native Americans, pilgrims, enslaved peoples, 
Ellis Island arrivals, and everybody else working together can 
come together to address the coming crises and build a better 
future for all Americans. Thank you.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Parikh follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Dr. Christopher 
Keane.

              TESTIMONY OF DR. CHRISTOPHER KEANE,

                  VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH,

                  WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

     Dr. Keane. OK. Good morning. Chairman Johnson, Ranking 
Member--Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and Members 
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify 
today before the Committee regarding the contribution of the 
Nation's universities to building back the U.S. research 
enterprise and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. My name is 
Christopher Keane, and I'm Vice President for Research at 
Washington State University. In my capacity as VPR at WSU, I 
serve as Chair of the Association of Public and Land-Grant 
Universities Council on Research.
     I want to highlight the work that WSU and our fellow 
public and land-grant institutions are doing to support our 
public health and economy during the pandemic, the impact the 
pandemic has had on our research enterprise, and the role 
Congress can play in mitigating the challenges research 
institutions across the country face.
     The Nation's public and land-grant universities, echoing 
the last speaker, indeed, have risen to the challenge in the 
campaign against the coronavirus. This includes conducting 
research relevant to COVID-19, testing, support of campus and 
community vaccination efforts, and other activities needed to 
return students to school and support the safe resumption of 
university programs while ensuring the health of our 
communities.
     Working with local, State, and national public health 
officials, industry, and other organizations, universities are 
making adjustments to meet the needs of our students, 
researchers, and communities. For example, WSU's Washington 
State Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (WADDL) has been 
modified to conduct CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement 
Amendments)-certified--that's the FDA (Food and Drug 
Administration) approval process--testing for the SARS-CoV-2 
virus. To date, WADDL has processed over 67,000 samples from 
surrounding residents, including about 25,000 samples from WSU 
faculty, students, and staff. WSU has provided cold storage for 
vaccines and is also partnering in the delivery of over 12,000 
doses to residents in eastern Washington.
     The university has continued to face severe impacts right 
now, including delays and disruptions to undergraduate and 
postgraduate education, revenue losses, and increased 
operational costs; amplification of gender, racial, and other 
previously existing inequities; disruption of the flow of 
talent, infrastructure impacts; food and housing insecurity, 
unfortunately; lack of childcare, and other factors. These 
impacts directly undermine our ability to support the 
fundamental research that drives innovation. Indeed, economists 
estimate innovation provides 50 percent of annual U.S. GDP 
(gross domestic product) growth.
     One story, at WSU Vancouver, one of our assistant 
professors recently shared this tale, quote, ``At the start of 
the pandemic, my children and I were targeted with racial slurs 
just because we were Asian American, and we didn't cause the 
pandemic. Add to that the emotional stress I have from 
homeschooling my special-needs child, and I just don't have the 
energy or ability to produce research papers. After many months 
of non-productivity, I finally chose to give up sleeping. I now 
regularly have resumed some sleeping, only getting 2 or 3 hours 
a night just so I can keep writing papers and stay on track for 
my career.'' That's a real story, and there's numerous others.
     WSU and the Nation's academic community are grateful for 
the Federal assistance provided by Congress over the past year. 
As Congress considers additional stimulus and recovery funding, 
I urge the Committee to pass the RISE Act that will provide $25 
billion to Federal research agencies to support projects at 
independent research institutions, public laboratories, and 
universities throughout the country. The funding would also 
support early career researchers and graduate students, 
researchers and disciplines not fully covered such as human 
subject research and field work and vital facilities.
     Making full use of all our national talent is critical to 
recovery, advancing the U.S. research enterprise, and remaining 
competitive globally. China's current annual R&D (research and 
development) expenditure growth exceeds that of the United 
States by roughly $60 billion, which in fact is double the 
total request for the RISE Act. So even if all the RISE Act 
funding were applied to federally funded research--and there 
are many other costs as well, of course--China would remain on 
a path to exceed U.S. R&D expenditures in the near future, 
ultimately threatening our position as the world leader in an 
innovation economy.
     We also need to encourage students to follow a career path 
in research, and I urge the Committee to support the Early 
Career Researchers Act. This will provide the financial support 
necessary for young researchers to be hired who may be 
otherwise lost to our national enterprise due to the current 
crisis.
     On behalf of the Nation's public and land-grant 
universities, I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today 
and express our thanks for the support provided by the 
Committee and Congress. The resources you have provided are 
allowing our research universities to meet the challenges of 
COVID-19. The pandemic, however, has emphasized and in many 
cases amplified many of the existing shortfalls I have 
outlined. I urge the Committee to support the RISE Act to 
advance the research enterprise at our universities and the 
fundamental research and new ideas it drives, allowing the U.S. 
innovation economy to flourish and better the lives of all 
Americans.
     Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I 
look forward to answering any questions you may have.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Keane follows:]
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     Chairwoman Johnson. Sorry I didn't unmute. Thank you very 
much for your testimony. Dr. Levine.

     TESTIMONY OF DR. FELICE J. LEVINE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

           AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

     Dr. Levine. Thank you very much, Chairwoman Johnson, 
Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee. I 
appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.
     As we reach the 1-year mark of COVID-19 hitting the United 
States with full force, the disruptions to the lives of early 
career scholars and doctoral students in higher education 
institutions have proven to be drastic, persistent, and far-
reaching. The harsh conditions are taking their toll on 
research progress, research, researchers, and academic careers, 
as my colleagues have just also addressed. It also exacerbated 
gender and racial inequities that may have long-lasting effects 
on future generations of researchers.
     Almost at the onset of the pandemic, scholars of the 
American Educational Research Association and the Spencer 
Foundation determined that it was essential to use our research 
expertise to gather information about the experiences and needs 
of early career scholars and doctoral students. We decided to 
undertake two studies, the Focus--the COVID-19 Focus Group 
Study, and the COVID-19 Impact Survey. The Focus Group Study 
report was just released in late January and is based on 
systematic study of 12 focus groups of early career scholars 
and doctoral students. We were able to hear their voices. The 
survey is a national study of some 6,000 doctoral students and 
early career scholars engaged in education research. The data 
collection just ended several weeks ago, and data analysis is 
about to begin.
     Today, I share just a handful of topline findings and 
facts that are prototypical of our results, along with other 
studies noted in my written testimony. They convey a reality 
that those committed to scientific progress, U.S. science 
leadership, inclusive scientific literacy, and diverse 
workforce must confront.
     First, we learned from our focus groups that scholars are 
facing research derailments and delays, uncertainties, and 
ambiguities. This finding is consistent with our survey data. 
Approximately 70 percent of both early career scholars and 
doctoral students said COVID-19 had substantially slowed 
progress on critical research tasks, 45 percent of the doctoral 
students reporting extending their doctoral completion day as 
one indicator of the impact of those delays.
     Second, systemic racism in particular after the killing of 
George Floyd has led to a dual pandemic and added professional 
pressures for scholars of color. They are experiencing not only 
emotional distress and exhaustion compounded by being asked to 
take on more work to help their institutions address these 
issues. And we need to understand how to strike a balance in 
that arena.
     Third, scholars, especially women, face uncertainties and 
barriers to research productivity while juggling family and 
home. This theme was dominant in both focus groups and the 
survey. Seventy percent of female doctoral students and 74 
percent of female scholars with childcare responsibilities 
reported a significant increase due to COVID-19 of these 
responsibilities.
     Fourth, researchers are increasingly concerned about their 
employment status and careers. Our survey data show that nearly 
24 percent or a quarter had already reported experiences of 
reduction or loss of income due to COVID-19.
     Fifth, scientific progress, as we know, depends upon three 
C's and a lot of A's of course, cumulative knowledge, 
collaboration, and connection. Yet another dominant focus group 
theme and survey result is a loss of opportunities for 
collegial exchange. Forty-six percent of the doctoral students 
and 57 percent of the early career scholars reported a great 
deal of loss, and over 80 percent of both groups referred to 
the absence of that kind of exchange and interaction as 
affecting and shaping their careers.
     However stark these data are, findings like these are 
helpful for the work that you are doing. Together, we have an 
opportunity to do better. AERA and our peer associations 
strongly support the RISE Act. It would provide a much-needed 
infusion of funds to address the cost of disruptions to 
research grants, provide financial support and flexibility for 
researchers, and help cover expenses to ramp research back up.
     AERA also strongly endorses the Supporting Early Career 
Researchers Act for all the reasons set forth by the Members 
and also from my colleagues. It will establish a new National 
Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship program to help early 
career researchers in the STEM pipeline in flexible and 
appropriate and essential ways.
     We are at a pivotal time to support the next generation of 
researchers and the research enterprise that relies on them. 
The risk to their futures and to our country that reaps the 
benefits from science are far too great to miss this 
opportunity.
     Thank you, and I look forward to participating in the 
question-and-answer session that follows.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Levine follows:]
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     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Your testimony 
was very complete. Mr. Thomas Quaadman.

               TESTIMONY OF MR. THOMAS QUAADMAN,

                   EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT,

          CENTER FOR CAPITAL MARKETS COMPETITIVENESS,

                    U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

     Mr. Quaadman. Good morning, Chair Johnson, Ranking Member 
Lucas, and Members of the Science, Space, and Technology 
Committee. Thank you for your bipartisan leadership on key 
research and development initiatives and for the opportunity to 
discuss the role R&D is playing in fighting the COVID-19 virus 
and how R&D can help the American economy keep its leading edge 
in an increasingly competitive international marketplace.
     R&D is a wide-ranging process that advances the strategic 
interests of the United States, improves the health and well-
being of all Americans, and gives our consumers access to high-
quality products that allows them to enjoy the highest standard 
of living in a global economy.
     As you know, there are three areas of research: Basic 
research, which is theoretical in nature; applied research, 
which is directed at a specific aim; and development, which is 
used to create new products or improve existing products.
     The American R&D infrastructure revolves around three 
pillars made up of the Federal Government, academia, and the 
private sector. Generally, the Federal Government, often 
working through academia, tends to focus on basic research, the 
business community leads on development, and all three play 
significant roles in applied research.
     Intellectual property (IP) rights provide a basis for 
collaboration and technology transfer among all three. This 
infrastructure thrives as a result of long-standing and strong 
bipartisan support from Congress, including funding and the 
passage of key bills last year. Other long-standing laws such 
as the Bayh-Dole Act and the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act 
make the U.S. intellectual property system the most reliable in 
the world. These bipartisan initiatives have made the United 
States the global leader in R&D since the start of World War 
II.
     While we know many past accomplishments, America's R&D 
leadership has been on full display in the effort to combat 
COVID-19. Pfizer and Moderna developed and deployed highly 
effective vaccines in less than a year, and Johnson & Johnson 
will soon follow suit. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 
based on new technology called mRNA that allows a person's RNA 
to be programmed to produce vaccines. This treatment can be 
revolutionary in treating other diseases such as cancers and 
chronic conditions that impact millions of Americans. MRNA was 
based upon decades of academic and private sector R&D. 
Artificial intelligence shaved off months if not years of 
research to narrow the scope for researchers to target other 
drugs that can be used to treat and prevent COVID-19. This took 
an all-nation approach. There have been over 1,100 clinical 
trials in all 50 States covering over 410 congressional 
districts.
     While we must still defeat the pandemic, the tools are 
coming online to do so. This would not have been possible 
without the long-term R&D efforts by life sciences companies or 
the short-term laser-focus bipartisanship in the Federal 
Government, academia, and the private sector.
     Despite these successes, America's global R&D leadership 
is in peril. Currently, 70 percent of spending in the United 
States is performed by the private sector. In the mid-1960's 70 
percent was undertaken by the Federal Government. Federal 
Government R&D spending has fallen to 2.8 percent of the 
budget, its lowest point in 60 years, and has gone down 
consistently since the 2008 financial crisis. China has been 
closing the gap rapidly. Since 2000, U.S. R&D spending has 
grown by 4.3 percent annually while Chinese spending has grown 
by 17 percent annually.
     A key factor of future competitiveness is R&D intensity or 
the share of R&D spending to the economy. Currently the United 
States ranks 10th. We believe there are concrete bipartisan 
steps that can reverse these negative trends and maintain 
America's leadership in research and development. This can be 
done by enacting and passing the RISE Act to mitigate the 
impact of COVID-19 on our national research enterprise and lay 
the foundation for future discoveries and innovation, ensure 
that recently enacted R&D legislation including the National 
Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act, CHIPS for America Act, 
and the Energy Act of 2020 are fully implemented and funded. 
Increase funding for the Technology Modernization Fund and 
other programs in order to digitally transform government. 
Modernizing government platforms will enable greater real-time 
collaboration and strengthen the Federal Government's research 
capacity. Identify additional opportunities to reverse the 
decline in Federal investments in R&D with a focus on basic 
research, maintain the ability of private companies to 
immediately deduct R&D expenses, enable the private sector R&D 
investment to a recommitment to the patent system. These steps 
will be critical for the United States to remain a leader in 
areas such as semiconductors while establishing a commanding 
position in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum 
computing. In doing so, we can recover from the impacts of the 
pandemic and lay the foundation for the United States to lead 
the industries of tomorrow. I'm happy to take any questions you 
may have.
     [The prepared statement of Mr. Quaadman follows:]
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     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. We've had 
fantastic testimony. And let me just say that many of the 
questions that I've had you have touched on. We know this, 
we'll now begin our questioning, and I'll yield myself 5 
minutes.
     The COVID-19 crisis has affected research across the 
board, but some disciplines have been harder hit than others. 
Experimental researchers have had limited access to their 
laboratory equipment and have experienced a larger disruption 
of their work than researchers working on theoretical science 
and computing. Perhaps more importantly, the STEM pipeline has 
been harmed by this crisis. Graduate student training and 
mentoring has suffered from limited access to library space, 
laboratory space, collaborators, and field sites. We are seeing 
elevated rates of anxiety and depression among graduate 
students, particularly among marginalized groups. 
Undergraduates aren't getting the hands-on research experience 
that inspired them to pursue STEM as a career, and universities 
are instituting hiring freezes to save money, which has 
resulted in a 70 percent drop in the faculty job market.
     As a result, some early career researchers are facing the 
difficult decision to leave research in order to support their 
families. Women researchers have taken on the majority of the 
additional childcare responsibilities that have arisen due to 
the pandemic, and this has resulted in slower research progress 
for women compared with their male counterparts, which 
threatens to widen the gender gap in STEM faculty 
representation, reversing years of incremental progress.
     A recent Council on Government Relations model estimated 
that research output dropped by 20 to 40 percent since March of 
2020. The study estimates that the financial impact is tens of 
billions of dollars across the research enterprise.
     What I would like you to help us focus on is while the 
CARES Act provided some funding for science agencies, it fell 
well short of the need and was focused specifically on COVID 
research. And likewise, the funding being considered as part of 
the current reconciliation package is focused on COVID-related 
research. The bill text should be published probably very soon, 
but the RISE Act will help, I think, tremendously.
     But what I'd like each of you to point out, we've got all 
the problems on the table and all the concerns. Please give us 
some direct recommendations that we can utilize and make sure 
that we don't deteriorate this enterprise anymore. I can start 
wherever you'd like. Dr.--yes. Is Dr. Levine still----
     Dr. Levine. Yes, I'm here. I can----
     Chairwoman Johnson. OK.
     Dr. Levine. I can start first. Yes, I can. You know, I 
think you have [inaudible] joined the research community in 
your command of exactly what we seek for supporting the 
research enterprise from high-energy physics to education 
research from field sites and studies to experimental studies 
in the social and behavioral sciences. And the money and the 
support for flexible funding is really imperative. Not only do 
we need to widen the net of those who can receive particularly 
early career flexible kinds of grants, for example, those that 
were part of the National Science Foundation Career-Life 
Balance (CLB) supplemental funding offered ways of 
supplementing for the kinds of things that researchers have 
lost. They may need childcare support. They indeed may need 
some additional counseling. They may need bandwidth to do some 
of the social networking worldwide that has been limited.
     The one thing I would say as a concrete recommendation 
while I praise CLB, it is a supplement. Now, were this kind of 
initiative also to be able to be an early career funding 
mechanism, you would really be able to widen the scope of 
scientists across fields of science. Every field of science has 
taken a hit. And that has also affected building capacity in 
scientific fields. If I can say for one moment, the deep 
commitment of this Committee for science education and capacity 
building at the K-12 level, at the undergraduate level. We need 
to ensure the talent pool is there to be able to do that 
teaching across levels of education. They are doing it multi-
fold in the past year since the onset of COVID-19.
     But we hear reports that for those who are teaching, for 
example, in universities and colleges in more rural locations 
where the bandwidth may be for their students, that the 
students ride and sit in a car with the children in the 
backseat, and they are trying to do online learning. So this 
has wide-ranging opportunities for this Committee to grapple 
with in a way that not only advances the enterprise of science 
but also the next generation of scientists. And that's why I 
mentioned science literacy. You need to have those skills to 
develop a modern workforce.
     Dr. Keane. Yes, Chairwoman Johnson, if I could add into 
that, this is Chris Keane, thank you for your great summary of 
the situation, by the way. It was very helpful. Just a couple 
things.
     Again, I support the RISE Act, but in thinking about 
financial relief, I think it's important to bear in mind there 
are sort of three issues. First, there's direct--relieving 
direct costs of the pandemic, which tend to squeeze budgets for 
hiring and everything else.
     Secondly, there's the 20 to 40 percent you mentioned, 
which really has to do with the cost of delay for existing 
projects and displacement of our researchers. Just getting that 
work done and making up for that loss of productivity in the 
short term is vital so we don't lose much of our workforce as a 
result of this crisis.
     And then the third component of relief is basically the 
longer-term investment in the R&D enterprise. Again, I would 
just point out as a stat that, you know, the $25 billion 
proposed in the RISE Act is less than half the gain that China 
is making on our [inaudible] expenditure figure every year. And 
so when you add up those three areas, direct relief from the 
pandemic, you know, addressing the 20-40 percent impact on our 
researchers, as well as the long-term issue of enhancing 
research expenditures and funding generally, it's a big 
request. We really appreciate your help on this.
     And just one other point I'd mention we haven't covered 
yet, the--with respect to diversity and inclusion needing the 
full benefit of our talents in the United States, that's vital. 
One thing we need is more data to support that actually, and I 
believe the STEM Opportunity Act if I recall correctly calls 
for collecting that data, so I'd urge you, via that act or some 
other means, to increase the amount of data that we collect on 
diversity, inclusion, and equity so we can better assess our 
situation. Thank you.
     Mr. Quaadman. Chair Johnson, if I could just quickly add 
as well, you know, we fully support the RISE Act, which is 
important to address human capital issues, also fully agree as 
well in terms of the need to help increase Federal research 
dollars, particularly around basic research.
     Additionally, we also think it is very important that we 
also engage in things like IT (information technology) 
modernization within the government, which is one of the things 
the pandemic has shown is how we have a great need for IT 
modernization.
     And just lastly, the bipartisan leadership that you and 
Congressman Lucas and this Committee have shown last year in 
the passage of the artificial intelligence legislation, as well 
as the America Energy Act, and other legislation, those need to 
be fully funded and implemented for us to start to deal with 
some of the longer-range issues as well.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Well, thank you very much. My time has 
really expired. I've enjoyed your input and want more, but I've 
got to now ask Mr. Lucas if he'll do his 5 minutes of 
questioning.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Madam Chair. As we've heard today, 
Mr. Quaadman, the impacts of the COVID pandemic will be 
particularly detrimental to basic research. And given the 
fundamental role basic research plays in facilitating applied 
and developmental research and subsequently new and improved 
products and services it creates, the losses will likely limit 
industries' future capacity to innovate and commercialize 
innovation stemming from scientific advances. Can you discuss 
how this threat is impacting industry and may impact the United 
States' future economic competitiveness?
     Mr. Quaadman. Yes. Thank you, Ranking Member Lucas. This 
is all to do with America's long-standing competitiveness. We 
have both China and the European Union, which are greatly 
increasing their research funding as a means to dislodge 
American global leadership. While our competitors have also 
faced some of the constraints because of COVID-19, we really 
need to address some of the issues in terms of funding. We also 
need to address other ancillary issues such as the ability to 
[inaudible] R&D expensing by the private sector so that we can 
continue to grow the private-sector role in this as well.
     But I would just raise one last point as well. The country 
that leads in innovation is the country that also sets the 
rules and builds the products that are based upon that 
innovation. That is the traditional role the United States has 
played, and that is not a role that we would want to cede to 
other countries that may not share the same values that we do 
in terms of coming up with those rules.
     Mr. Lucas. Continuing with you, Mr. Quaadman, on February 
2nd the Executive Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce, 
Neil Bradley sent a letter to President Biden and Members of 
Congress. And in this letter he warned against the use of 
reconciliation to pass the American Rescue Plan and stated, 
``Such an approach will certainly make it more difficult to 
reach bipartisan agreement on other policy priorities.'' Can 
you elaborate on why the majority's budget reconciliation 
process has been so detrimental in any progress toward 
bipartisan solutions for American families, businesses, and 
communities?
     Mr. Quaadman. Yes, thank you for that question, Ranking 
Member Lucas. First off, the four COVID relief bills that have 
passed before this legislation were bipartisan in nature. We 
believe that, you know, with the Democratic view of relief 
being broad-based and for Republican views that it be more 
targeted and temporary, that a synthesis of those views will 
lead to better legislation.
     Additionally, we don't think that the political well 
should be poisoned where we have to deal with other important 
pieces of legislation that are going to have to be bipartisan 
in nature such as infrastructure.
     The last point I would say with the reconciliation 
process, what the reconciliation process does is it creates the 
dollar figure, and then the policy needs to follow that dollar 
figure. We would rather see that we come up with what the right 
policies are and then determine what the dollar figure is after 
that.
     Mr. Lucas. Dr. Keane, in essentially my last question, in 
your written testimony you highlighted the important role land-
grant institutions have played in working in close 
collaboration with local, State, and national public health 
authorities officials to ramp up COVID testing. And I will 
acknowledge I'm especially excited to hear about the great work 
Oklahoma State University did in developing testing capacity 
for both its campus and the State of Oklahoma. Can you please 
discuss the mission of land-grant institutions and how it 
becomes even more important when facing this pandemic or 
pandemics of this type in the future?
     Dr. Keane. Thank you, Ranking Member Lucas, for that very 
nice question. Yes, I completely agree with you that the 
mission of our land grants is just--its importance has been 
highlighted by this pandemic. As you know, that mission is 
threefold: teaching, research, and service. And never have they 
been more important. And in fact on the teaching side our 
faculty and staff have risen to that challenge despite rising 
enrollments and getting used to the virtual world, extra 
[inaudible]. They have risen to the challenge and continue to 
educate our students.
     In the research world we've heard about, as you discussed, 
the things we've done in testing as a service that's provided 
to our local communities, and that's been very important. For 
example, here in Washington State the WSU, our testing facility 
is looking at the community in terms of supporting the spread 
of disease and the community understanding that, but also we're 
directly testing wastewater from our elementary schools, which 
supports the ability of our schools to open in fact. So there's 
a direct community benefit there.
     And finally, in service, the third part of our mission 
through extension, that's a huge part of what we do here in 
Washington State, at Oklahoma State, and many other land 
grants. We have a presence in every county where we aid our 
citizens every day and numerous other programs in that area.
     So all in all, the pandemic has just highlighted this 
critical mission of service, research, and teaching at the land 
grants in numerous ways. The APLU has a particular report on 
this subject. There's more information and numerous specific 
examples on their website [inaudible] and our other land-grant 
institutions, so thank you for the opportunity to express the 
importance of these institutions.
     Mr. Lucas. And probably it's underappreciated how 
important President Lincoln's signature on the Morrill Act in--
--
     Dr. Keane. Yes.
     Mr. Lucas. --1862 and the ability for non-wealthy 
Americans, average Americans scattered around to begin the 
availability of a public education. Thank you, Doctor. I yield 
back, Madam Chair.
     Staff. Ms. Stevens is next.
     Ms. Stevens. Great, thank you. This has been a very 
thorough hearing so far, and the testimonies have been 
absolutely tremendous.
     I represent Michigan, and we've seen this at Oakland 
University with 59 percent of Oakland University's research 
labs being operational, 25 percent face-to-face, and the 
impacts at the university level. Tom, in particular, I 
appreciated your testimony where you touched on the collective 
R&D efforts coming from the Federal Government, the Federal 
Government corporations, as well as from universities. And we 
know we're continuing [inaudible], right? We funded the NSF, 
you know, as a government and appropriated it, and we certainly 
also appreciate the Chamber's support of the American rescue 
package and the triage work that we need to do to continue to 
save lives and bring our economy back. Thank you for your 
partnership there.
     Dr. Parikh, I would love to talk with you. You have a--
just a fabulous background, and we so appreciate your 
leadership of AAAS. You know, we love the publication. I get it 
every week. Your testimony was quite thorough. One of the 
things I'd love to drill down on with you is regarding what 
we're actually talking about here, which is our basic R&D 
spend, right, in terms of what's being lost with the 
applications. Have you at all taken a look at the TRL, the 
technology readiness levels, particularly as we're in that, you 
know, early stage of technology readiness and that as we move 
forward to application? Because we do the basic R&D, and we 
know we're losing it. You know, we love your formula. You know, 
if we've got a formula down on the percentage, but have you at 
all taken a look at the technology readiness levels at all in 
terms of the impacts of COVID-19?
     Dr. Parikh. We haven't specifically, but we have a team 
that can do that kind of analysis. I'd be happy to come back to 
you with that. What we have--when you think about it, it's--in 
its simplest form, it's a conveyor belt, right? And so as this 
thing--as we have things that are moving from basic research, 
through development, through applied, through product, when we 
have this disruption that is COVID-19, it's the same thing with 
people. What ends up happening is you get a logjam in that 
conveyor belt. Yes, we have the funding for next year. You 
might ask, well, why can't we just use the funding from next 
year to continue this work? You can except there are students 
that are piling up behind the students that are currently here. 
There are products piling up, there are technologies piling up, 
and we've got to make sure that we're unclogging that conveyor 
belt.
     Ms. Stevens. Yes, we want to take a look at that because 
as we move into the application phase--and where I am in the 
world of this is, you know, intensive automotive, right, what's 
taking place with the proliferation of electric vehicles, 
autonomous vehicles. We're obviously also [inaudible] with the 
supply chain disruptions and what we've seen taking place with 
this chip shortage. Now, I've got a bill on that, the Resilient 
Supply Chain Task Force Act, which helps us monitor the ongoing 
health of our supply chains.
     But the next phase of what we're looking at here is 
production, and we have got to be making in America. We know 
this, but you don't just get to say let's make it in America, 
right? You have to do the basic R&D.
     Dr. Parikh. Absolutely.
     Ms. Stevens. Then you got to look at your technology 
readiness. So I'd really love for you to follow up with me on 
that.
     And I'm going to be generous to my colleagues because I 
love them and there's a great group here on both sides of the 
aisle that's here today. And I got about a minute left, but we 
got a lot of people online, so I'm going to cede the rest of my 
time, Madam Chair, and I will also say Chairwoman Johnson is 
spot on with having this hearing right now, and thank you. I 
yield back.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Next?
     Staff. Mr. Perlmutter is next.
     Chairwoman Johnson. OK.
     Mr. Perlmutter. Don't we want a Republican to go before 
me?
     Staff. I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Brooks is next.
     Unidentified speaker. And I may be next as well?
     Staff. Mr. Posey is next.
     Mr. Posey. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking 
Member Lucas, for holding this hearing. It's important to 
ensure that American science and technology research remains 
the best in the world.
     This pandemic has dramatically disrupted life for 
Americans, and we need to do whatever we can to return things 
to normal.
     My question is for all of the witnesses. You know, as 
mentioned, there's been significant disruptions in our STEM and 
research pipelines to our universities by COVID-19 pandemic, 
but perhaps the most concerning disruption has occurred far 
earlier in this vital pipeline. Just last week in our last 
hearing we heard about some of the effects of school closure on 
our students. My colleagues and I drafted a letter to our 
wonderful Chairwoman requesting a hearing on the concerns that 
too many of our K-12 schools remain closed when science says 
that they can reopen safely. Even before COVID-19 universities 
were concerned that U.S. students were not prepared for the 
rigor of STEM education that are necessary to advance America's 
research and development projects in schools as opposed to 
others where schools are already reopened, as in China. What 
will happen when an entire generation of American students are 
further behind than their international peers? You know, will 
our U.S. colleges and universities simply fill the STEM slots 
with more foreign students? I think it's around 36 percent 
right now. Should K-12 schools be reopened or should we just 
accept the damages to the U.S. STEM research pipeline as part 
of the pandemic's cost? And you can respond I guess in the same 
order that you gave your opening testimonies with Dr. Parikh 
first.
     Dr. Parikh. Thank you, Mr. Posey. K-12 education is so 
critical to the science and engineering enterprise. We have to 
have a broad pipeline at the beginning because every signal 
that is sent to a young student accumulates over time. And so 
when a young person is told, you know, maybe science is not for 
you, maybe you're better at the arts or you're better at 
something else, that really hurts us every time that happens to 
a young girl, every time it happens to a young man, every time 
it happens to somebody who has grown up on a farm or every time 
it's happened to somebody who's grown up in an inner-city. And 
so we've got to make sure that we're sending the right signals.
     On opening schools, it's a complex question. I will leave 
that to my public-health counterparts as opposed to me, a 
biochemist, but what I would say is that all the things that 
can be done to get us to the place where we can--vaccination, 
doing the right public-health interventions like wearing masks, 
maintaining social distance, doing all those things will get us 
there faster than not doing those interventions. I think it's 
critically important to do that.
     But education, we have got to make sure we're investing in 
that K-12 group beyond just the pandemic. We've got to get them 
doing science, and we've got to get kids doing science that are 
not our usual suspects because if we do that, we're never going 
to compete on sheer numbers with China. We've got to have all 
of our kids working toward STEM education and STEM fields.
     Mr. Posey. Dr. Keane?
     Dr. Keane. Yes, I--this is Chris Keane. Thank you for that 
question. As--you know, land-grant universities, as part of our 
service mission, as I mentioned earlier, do a lot of activities 
to support our K-12 education. Our extension programs provide 
programs for K-12 students, and also we take opportunities just 
to invite K-12 students in to see the exciting things that we 
do in research and education, get them excited about going to 
college----
     Mr. Posey. I don't want to cut you short, but we're short 
on time. Just kind of like your response to the questions I 
asked if possible.
     Dr. Keane. OK. I'll--yes, I'll stop there then. Sorry 
about that. I would just point out that, you know, our--like I 
said earlier our testing activity directly supports return to 
school. Thank you.
     Mr. Posey. Thank you very much.
     Dr. Levine. Well, thank you for the opportunity of being 
able to speak to K-12 education. I just want to underscore with 
what Dr. Parikh opened with that we want to use--and indeed the 
great investment of work on COVID-19 at the Institute of 
Education Sciences in the Department of Education, Education 
and Human Resources Directorate at the National Science 
Foundation--that COVID work. In addition to the work at the CDC 
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the health 
sciences this research also gives us wisdom and understanding 
about how to implement a return to school in safe and secure 
ways that include the collection of data so that we know what 
happens in real time, the possibility being discussed, so, for 
example, a PULSE survey around education, around absenteeism 
that would continue to implement measures of testing and to 
take the wisdom also of educators, teachers, counselors, and 
the school system about what can work in what ways.
     And we clearly need to go back to innovating. And this is 
an opportunity for both research and education to innovate in 
such a way that we can--that we can bring our children back 
into a school environment to interact with their peers, to be 
able to not only engage in science, which is extraordinarily 
important, but in the other ways in which in the K-12 system 
children are learning about ways of working together, 
collaborating together, so important for the STEM workforce, 
and we need to recognize that there were tremendous inequities 
[inaudible].
     And how we do this, the kind of queuing that I must say my 
colleague the biochemist spoke wonderfully about expectancy of 
things and implicit bias so that in my generation the most 
accomplished of my peers was a woman who wanted to go to 
medical school but it was implicitly and explicitly discouraged 
as ``not for women,'' and she ended up going to law school and 
being a great lawyer and having a wonderful career. That kind 
of expectancy effect and sadly implicit bias continues in 
particular for persons of color and for women.
     Mr. Quaadman. Mr. Posey, I'll be very quick. I know your 
time is expired, but, you know, the letter that Chambers sent 
to Congress this week on the American Rescue Plan included a 
section in there regarding school reopening, which we support. 
We made a suggestion of money being set aside solely for 
covering the expenses of those school reopenings and dealing 
with COVID cleanups and protecting children from COVID, but 
that the opening decisions need to be left to the States and 
the local districts.
     Staff. Thank you. And Mr. Perlmutter is next.
     Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you. And just a couple questions 
because we do have a lot of people in the queue. I represent 
the suburbs of Denver, and we have a lot of laboratories, 
national labs, Energy, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration), NIST (National Institute of Standards and 
Technology), USGS (United States Geological Survey) in the 
area. And as an example--and I'd like to get kind of an answer 
from all of you--the retooling costs associated with sort of 
reducing, you know, the number of researchers in a lab, so, for 
instance, the National Renewable Energy Lab has some 2,500 
employees and contractors, and when they had to shut down more 
or less in March, April, and May of last year, they went from, 
say, 2,500 down to 100 and then have been gradually returning 
the workforce.
     So I know as part of this package we're trying to make up 
for some of those lost costs. Have any of you thought about the 
retooling cost to get our labs back and operating at 100 
percent? And maybe, Mr. Quaadman, you want to kind of take a 
cut at that first and then I'll go to the other panelists?
     Mr. Quaadman. Sure, thank you very much, Mr. Perlmutter, 
and that's--that is an excellent question. And we view this 
that there are probably going to have to be multiple things 
that are going to have to be done. Clearly, the RISE Act, which 
we support and I think everybody here supports, is an important 
part of particularly protecting that human capital talent and 
making sure we're getting that back up and running, but you 
also make an excellent point in terms of the technology in the 
labs. We believe that there's more that is going to have to be 
done there. Additionally, putting more of an emphasis around 
basic research and applied research is going to be an important 
part of that.
     So we believe dealing with some of these short-term 
problems can actually help us pivot to also address some of the 
long-term problems, so we think this focus that this hearing is 
having today is an important start of that process.
     Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you. Dr. Parikh, do you have any 
thoughts on that?
     Dr. Parikh. I do, thank you, Mr. Perlmutter. Well, first 
of all, the research going on at NREL (National Renewable 
Energy Laboratory) is so important to the Nation. You know, 
going down to 100 people for a time in March means that when 
there's an experiment going--there are--every type of 
experiment--every type of experiment has--that is a long-term 
experiment has constant check-ins by people. As much as the 
technology is powerful, it requires people checking things in. 
And because we had to shut down so quickly, planning was tough, 
right, so if we had tissue culture that was ongoing, we would 
take that down and we would--instead of having many, many petri 
dishes full of tissue culture, we would take it down to one and 
freeze it and save it for when we come back. But then when you 
come back, you got to grow it back out again before you can do 
any research at all. And that takes time, it takes people, and 
it takes reagents, it takes the lab space, and so it takes 
funding, it takes resources. And so as Dr. Quaadman said, the 
investment that we make here at this sort of inflection point 
is going to pay short-term dividends and long-term dividends.
     Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you. I'd like to change the subject 
just a little bit for Dr. Levine and Dr. Keane in terms of the 
students. So in the front range of Colorado we have the School 
of Mines and University of Colorado. CSU (Colorado State 
University) has a big infectious disease lab that has been 
operating. In terms of the talent pool and this pipeline of 
young scholars, again--and you've answered this already, but 
just specifically what has sort of this delay of a year done to 
that pipeline? And I'd start with you, Dr. Levine.
     Dr. Levine. Well, I think the delay of a year has had 
several adverse impacts. One, even the workforce, the talent in 
labs, structured labs or even the broader laboratories of field 
research doing intervention studies, while there's been a 
tremendous amount of really exciting work ongoing, as Dr. 
Parikh underscored earlier, innovation and collaboration to try 
to do things in a very different way, there is that loss of not 
working hand-in-hand, not being able to bring in, not having 
the support to bring in the postdocs, the layered way in which 
science occurs.
     The laboratory is an environment where the undergraduate--
I started my research career as an undergraduate working with 
doctoral students, working with postdocs and with faculty. That 
kind of exchange does not happen and has not happened in the 
same way, and it's going to take an investment. It's also going 
to take an investment in things like REUs, research experiences 
for undergraduates, and that kind of investment can make a 
difference. But I think the consequence is substantial.
     Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Doctor. And Dr. Keane, I'm 
sorry, my time is expired. Somebody else will get to you.
     Staff. Thank you. Mr. Sessions is next.
     Mr. Sessions. Thank you very much. And I want to thank 
each of our panelists for being here today. Certainly, Dr. 
Keane, Dr. Parikh, Dr. Levine, thank you. Thomas, thank you, I 
think it's Quaadman, we appreciate you being here.
     The question that I have focuses on giving people money 
while we're still closed, and I'd like for you to address that 
in your own way because I think this money should be given when 
people open, not when people stay closed. Anyone of you, 
please.
     Mr. Quaadman. Well, Mr. Sessions, I--you know, I guess I 
could take an early crack at that. Look, we believe--this is 
one of the reasons why I gave the answer that I did to Ranking 
Member Lucas is that we think that there should--there needs to 
be a discussion of, you know, the broad range of potential 
policy initiatives that we need to address the COVID vaccine. 
So part of the reason why we do need broad-based relief is to 
deal with small businesses that are teetering on the brink of 
closure, some permanently----
     Mr. Sessions. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I made a mistake, Tom. 
As it relates to the RISE bill.
     Mr. Quaadman. Sure. So I was just going to get there. And 
with the RISE Act what we need to do is to make sure that we 
are keeping the human capital in place, that we can have that 
human capital move forward as we open up those labs so that we 
can flip that switch and get things up and running because, 
unfortunately, what has happened over the last year is because 
there's some work that can be done, right, in terms of research 
paper or the like, but there's other type of experimentation 
which cannot be done, and we need to get up and running as 
quickly as possible not only to keep pace with our competitors 
but actually to get up and running before they can.
     Mr. Sessions. Yes, well, I understand competition, but I 
also heard our panelists say it's up to States and local 
people, universities. For instance, I represent a small 
university, Texas A&M down in College Station, that is one of 
the leading, I believe, research and development universities 
in the world. But my point is if they make a decision to stay 
closed, let's say, until January of next year, that means that 
they have students that are dropping out, that means students 
that are going somewhere else. The question is do we fund them 
before they open?
     Dr. Parikh. Mr. Sessions, if I may, the students we're 
talking about funding here are the graduate students in the 
sciences and engineering and, you know, they are--they're 
working right now. They are writing research papers. They are 
doing what they can with labs at half capacity and that sort of 
thing. The challenge becomes this conveyor belt that I've been 
talking about. So you have these students are working right now 
and we've got to keep them--they're in this holding pattern. 
And then we got students coming up right behind them. And if we 
lose those students because they say, you know what, I don't--
science and engineering is hard enough anyway. I'm not going to 
make a whole lot of money when I first graduate, maybe I should 
go be a lawyer, I should go into something else, when that 
depletion of that human capital that Dr. Quaadman was talking 
about is so critical to us right now because every other nation 
on earth is investing in that human capital. If we bleed that 
human capital in the short term, the money appropriated a year 
from now won't do the same thing as the money appropriated 
today.
     Mr. Sessions. OK. I do understand this, but we're kind of 
dancing around this. Look, I spent a number of years at Bell 
Labs in New Jersey. My son just finished medical school a 
couple years ago. I get graduate medical education (GME). I do 
get these are the brightest and best. Why do we want to delay 
anything or make it more difficult? That's not my point. Should 
a university or a program receive money before they open?
     Dr. Keane. So, Representative Sessions, thank you for that 
question. This is Chris Keane. Just--I know time is short, just 
a quick example. So, as you've heard, we have continued a lot 
of operations virtually, but take a laboratory just as a very 
simple example. A laboratory had to close because of COVID. On 
the other hand, some of the students and faculty could go home 
and write papers and write grant proposals and do other work 
that they, you know, normally wouldn't have the time to do if 
they were in the lab, so these folks do a lot of critical work, 
and so they can do [inaudible] of work at home.
     Mr. Sessions. OK. Let the record reflect that we're not 
sure about whether--I know people are doing work. I did work 
during this, too. I think we ought to consider that the 
inducement for going back to work, because that's a question, 
you get the money when you produce that, and that means you 
make a series of decisions about your workforce including 
making sure they all have the COVID vaccine. We've heard 
testimony in this Committee how the vaccine works, and just a 
week or two ago we heard that the vaccine is the No. 1 thing 
you can do. And then you have a safe workplace, a whole lot of 
other things. I'm just saying in my mind going back I don't 
mind funding that, but I do have problems with not finding a 
way to get back to work, which is what we were paying for. So I 
appreciate the opportunity for each of you. I would expect you 
to be advocates, as I am, for the sciences, for GME, graduate 
medical education, graduate education, and all of the 
mathematic and physics programs. But I think we ought to put a 
caveat in there when you go back to work.
     Thank you very much. I yield back my time, Madam Chairman.
     Staff. Mr. McNerney is next.
     Mr. McNerney. Am I recognized?
     Staff. Yes, sir.
     Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Well, I want to thank the 
Chairwoman for holding this hearing and the Ranking Member, 
very good, and also the panelists. I appreciate your work here.
     Dr. Keane, in your testimony you state that in order to 
comply with Federal grant financial timeframes, many projects 
are having to close out without meeting their stated goals. 
What is needed to help grant awardees get the time and 
resources needed to make up for the COVID-related setbacks?
     Dr. Keane. Thanks for that question, Representative 
McNerney. I think--it's a great question. I think the comments 
you've heard from the Committee and elsewhere about the 20 to 
40 percent, which was developed by a number of our APLU 
members, that's sort of--that's an estimate, you know, of the 
loss of work due to delay. I think one can make some estimates 
of what the financing is to recover that, I think that 
basically is a short summary of what's needed.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, thank you. Well, Dr. Keane, in normal 
times before the pandemic, the life of a science researcher may 
have been professionally rewarding but was financially 
challenging. And I speak from personal experience here. 
Graduate students must forgo well-paying jobs for about a 
decade while their peers move ahead financially. And meanwhile, 
the grad students have no assurance at all of landing a modest 
or secure job at the conclusion of their studies. And I know 
Dr. Parikh sort of talked about this, but how does the pandemic 
impact this dynamic?
     Dr. Keane. Yes, well, it's--yes. No, I was going to say, 
certainly, Representative McNerney, the pandemic has been 
difficult on graduate students, postdocs and others, and it's--
we've lost some critical talent there. And so we've tried to 
adapt by doing various things virtually and things of that 
sort, but it is a significant issue.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, thank you. Mr. Quaadman, I'm 
interested in understanding what's worked in leveraging R&D to 
help us bring the virus under control. In your testimony you 
mentioned the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. 
How did that collaboration come about, what did it accomplish, 
and what lessons do you think could be applied to future 
crises?
     Mr. Quaadman. Thank you very much, Mr. McNerney. And I 
appreciate the promotion but I'm not a doctor. I have a J.D. 
but not a doctorate.
     But first, I would also like to thank your leadership and 
the leadership of Mr. Gonzalez of the Artificial Intelligence 
Caucus as well, which has been very critical.
     I actually think the COVID-19 High Performance Computing 
Consortium is a very interesting development, right, where we 
had the private sector through Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft 
combining with National Science Foundation, Department of 
Energy, along with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 
UT (University of Texas) Austin, and the University of 
Wisconsin where they created a sharing mechanism of computing 
power to help in terms of research regarding COVID-19.
     Part of the challenge that we have with R&D is also to 
ensure that smaller actors and smaller businesses have some of 
that access to let's say computing power as an example in terms 
of their R&D. So if we can create similar sharing mechanisms--
and frankly, the National Artificial Intelligence Act that was 
passed last year creates some frameworks like this--it actually 
allows us to have a much more comprehensive approach to R&D, 
and we hope that is replicated elsewhere.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, thank you. Well, last week, millions 
around the globe watched in high definition as NASA (National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration) successfully landed the 
Perseverance rover on Mars. Landing a rover on another planet 
is a huge accomplishment in any time but must be more difficult 
under a pandemic. Dr. Parikh, how have conditions under COVID 
challenged this type of high-pressure mission-critical event 
for large, distributed research and engineering teams?
     Dr. Parikh. It's been incredibly challenging, and that's 
why it's even more compelling and more inspiring to watch the 
video from last week. The way it's happened is that people have 
had to work in the same that we are, right? They're working 
over Zoom, they're working over Webex in contrast to being in 
the same room, drawing on a piece of paper, and that makes it 
harder. But I can tell you that the inspiration that comes from 
watching these engineering teams double-check and triple-check 
their work because they are having to work this way, I think it 
also just highlights what a small team of diverse people can do 
in competition with gigantic teams around the world is just 
extraordinary to see that type of inspirational work. And the 
science that's going to come from it is amazing as well. But 
just the engineering feat of landing on Mars is--look, my 
kids--my 11-year-old, that's what gets him excited about 
science. They like biochemistry, but they love that.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, they don't want to go to Mars 
themselves. At any rate, I want to yield back and I thank again 
the Chairwoman for yielding to me.
     Staff. Mr. Webster is recognized.
     Mr. Webster. Thank you, Chair. I had a question to Dr. 
Parikh. So we're in competition not with just ourselves but 
with other countries, especially in the area of STEM and, you 
know, trying to make sure we're there, we're setting the pace, 
we're out front, all of that, and somebody was talking about 
losing potential STEM stars to a law degree or some other 
profession. Are we also losing to our competition? Are there 
countries that we're losing out or people are getting 
[inaudible] research dollars, something like that, and moving? 
Is that happening?
     Dr. Parikh. It is happening. So we see--just overall, you 
know, the NSF puts out the science and engineering indicators, 
and the U.S. global share of science and engineering 
publications has always been ahead of everybody else. Well, 
that is not true anymore. China has overtaken us. It's also 
been in terms of number of S&E degrees that are awarded. But 
they also have very, very targeted programs to recruit stars 
from Europe and from the United States and then to also keep 
talent within their borders.
     And, look, there are challenges to that in terms of 
intellectual property and that sort of thing, but even if 
everything was fair, what it says is they've got--they've got a 
plan, and plan beats no plan almost every time, and so we have 
to have a plan. We have to be making sure that we are doing our 
absolute best to recruit the best talent from the United States 
whether it be from the farm belt, the sun belt, or the coast, 
and also the best talent from around the world. We have been 
the beneficiaries of a crossroads of talent here in the United 
States, and we cannot let that pass. We are still right there 
at the top, but we are in danger. We are in real danger of 
losing that position because all these successes that we've 
talked about, they're lagging indicators of previous investment 
and all the stuff that's gone on for the last 30 years. It's 
not a--it's not any guarantee of what's to come.
     Mr. Webster. Thank you, sir.
     Dr. Levine. If I could amplify just on that, I really want 
to underscore that our leadership edge in science has been very 
well-served by the United States really being an international 
leader in the international community of science, so we lose 
our competitive edge when scientists and scholars and students 
from other parts of the world don't look to us as the educative 
environment to do what they do best. And whether they remain in 
the United States or they go to other locations, that 
significantly affects not only the knowledge we produce but the 
sense of centrality we are in the international community.
     I'm not an economist by training, but my sense of some of 
the work on patents is that when a country has had the highest 
participation of the international community in our higher 
education system, that we have--that has enabled discoveries in 
our own country. And that's just one example of something I 
think we need to really be looking at and a point I earlier 
wanted to make but you've asked the right question at the right 
time.
     Mr. Webster. OK. Well, there's this conveyor belt that's 
jammed up all over the place and there's STEM students in high 
school and all the way to postdoctorate, all that, so shouldn't 
we put our money where the bleeding is and try to stop the 
bleeding if we're prioritizing? Is that a good statement to 
make?
     Dr. Parikh. I think that's absolutely a good statement. We 
should prioritize. We should prioritize. And I think human 
capital is right there at the top. Making sure that we have the 
supply chains fixed as well is right there after it and by 
supply chains I mean, in terms of bringing back the 
infrastructure, bringing back the technology, bringing it back 
online. But human capital is at the top of my list.
     Mr. Webster. All right. I yield back.
     Staff. Mr. Tonko is next.
     Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And I thank you, Madam Chair, and 
our Ranker for today's hearing. It's so apropos that we be 
talking about the future here--through this lens. And to all of 
our witnesses, thank you.
     Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen and 
experienced for ourselves the impact this virus is having on 
work, on America's workers throughout our economy, and on 
workplaces across the country. For many, video meetings and 
conference calls had to quickly become the status quo. For 
others, much of their work simply cannot be done remotely.
     The ability of scientists to advance their research 
remotely depends in large part, I believe, on the nature of 
their project and their discipline. For instance, research 
involving computations, data analyses and modeling and 
simulations lends itself more easily to work from home, but it 
is difficult if not impossible to conduct research requiring 
physical and biological samples and specialized equipment 
outside of a laboratory.
     And so, Dr. Parikh, what areas of scientific inquiry have 
been most negatively impacted by COVID? And how are you seeing 
the researchers adapting to that?
     Dr. Parikh. Yes, thank you for the question, Mr. Tonko. 
You are absolutely right. You laid it out very well in terms of 
the challenges to field research, the challenges to clinical 
research, the challenges to research that happens in a lab 
bench because, you know, if you've been in these laboratories 
you know that, especially in the successful ones, they're 
dense, right? We have graduate students and postdocs and 
scientists who are working together, and they're dense for a 
reason. We want them talking. We want them collaborating. We 
want them to run into each other on the way to the restroom and 
talk about math and physics and biology at the same time 
because that's where the excitement comes from. And so that--we 
are definitely hurting in the experimental sciences and in the 
clinical sciences.
     And in the places where we have pivoted our critical 
sciences to COVID, it's an opportunity cost, right? We have 
work going on in Alzheimer's and work going on in cancer and 
work going on in sickle-cell anemia. That's got to keep going 
as well, and we've got to make sure that we're able to ensure 
that continues.
     But I don't want to underestimate the impact also on 
things like physics. You know, being able to continue work on 
some of these amazing radio telescopes, you know, our ability 
to contact to the Voyager space probes was affected by this. We 
couldn't send 30 people to Australia to work on the antenna. We 
could only send five or six. And so there's a real cost across 
the sciences, but the experimental sciences are definitely 
where the biggest challenges are.
     Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And, Dr. Parikh, again, for fields 
of inquiry that have been able to adapt more easily to working 
remotely, do you see any opportunities where this could spur 
greater collaboration and innovation?
     Dr. Parikh. Oh, my gosh, you know, we have seen--if 
there's been one upside to the pandemic, it has been that 
collaboration from peer to peer in the United States and around 
the world has just grown exponentially. You see young 
scientists talking to one another in the United States, in 
Europe, in China, in Japan. They're having conversations. And 
look, we need that because, again, COVID is not our last 
crisis, and we need to know that these scientists who are able 
to talk to each other right now, that's a relationship, and 
that relationship is going to continue for the next thing and 
the next thing and the next thing, and that is--that's 
incredibly important. We've got to keep up our part of it, 
though, as the United States and make sure we've got wonderful 
scientists here bringing everybody to us.
     Mr. Tonko. Thank you. The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in 
many setbacks, and it will take our enduring commitment to help 
America's scientific research community recover. And to this 
end, last year, the Federal Government provided guidance, as 
well as administrative and salary flexibilities for 
universities and COVID relief legislation, including that which 
funded support research agencies. But based on your testimony--
and I can confirm this based on my conversations with research 
institutions in my district in upstate New York--greater 
support is needed.
     So, Dr. Keane, in your testimony you mentioned the 
administrative flexibilities that the Office of Management and 
Budget (OMB) provided to universities from March to September 
of last year. To what extent did these flexibilities from our 
Federal agencies, especially related to grant commitments, help 
mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic?
     Dr. Keane. Thanks, Representative Tonko, for that 
question. Those flexibilities were very important to our 
faculty, students, and staff. They allowed things, for example, 
to, you know, to cover cost of PPE (personal protective 
equipment) and other unusual items. They allowed salaries to be 
paid. Under certain conditions [inaudible] working at home 
perhaps on different project than the contract. So it was 
essential to help transition through. And there's been a lot of 
interest as part of the recovery package trying to do something 
along those lines for--thank you.
     Mr. Tonko. Well, thank you, Dr. Keane. And with that, my 
time has wound down, so I yield back, Madam Chair.
     Staff. Mr. Garcia is next. Mr. Garcia, you are muted. Mr. 
Garcia, you are muting and unmuting. I'm not sure if you're 
using a spacebar or if you're using----
     Mr. Garcia. There we go. Can we--can you hear me now?
     Staff. Yes.
     Staff. Yes, sir.
     Mr. Garcia. OK. All right, thank you. I apologize for 
that.
     Dr. Parikh, I think you hit on something earlier that we 
all kind of glossed over, and that's the RISE Act deters the 
proliferation of lawyers, and I think we should rename it as 
such.
     I want to focus in the realm of national security. We have 
roughly 44, 40 percent of our national R&D project is coming 
out of the national security realm, the labs, the DARPAs 
(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencies) of the world. 
National security is relative, right, so as we either 
accelerate or decelerate relative to China and other threats, 
that's where threats will manifest, and that's where our 
weaknesses will become vulnerabilities. How are we able to 
compare how we're doing within classified realms, especially--
but through our labs like DARPA and, relative to, say, the 
Communist Chinese military science research steering divisions? 
Do you have any insight how we're doing at the national 
security levels of both military and similar infrastructure 
investments? And I think, Dr. Keane, it sounds like you were 
touching on this earlier, but let's start with you.
     Dr. Keane. Yes, thank you. Thank you for that question, 
Representative Garcia. I think your question points out the 
vital importance of the research enterprise and the 
universities produce the young talent that goes to work in the 
national security enterprise. I have my own personal experience 
that's in the nuclear weapons program where there is just 
tremendous issues, you know, bringing in talent. As you 
probably know, the big labs right now, Livermore, Los Alamos, 
and so on are trying to hire 1,000 people a year to support the 
refurbishment of our stockpile, so this just speaks to the 
important mission that our universities and research ecosystems 
play in training these professionals to handle these national 
security challenges.
     Mr. Garcia. Yeah, but I think what I'm asking is how much 
insight do we have relative to China? Are they struggling in 
the same way that we are percentagewise? I think you mentioned 
that the rise of investments from the Federal Government on our 
side represents about half of what----
     Dr. Keane. Yes.
     Mr. Garcia. China is accelerating to our pace of over the 
last couple of years. That statement there, one, where is the 
data behind that statement, and how do we assess how much of an 
impact either COVID or the lack of investments writ large 
outside of COVID are having relative to the Chinese 
infrastructure investments?
     Dr. Keane. So I don't have any data relative to Chinese 
infrastructure, Representative Garcia, but the data I quoted is 
from the NSB (National Science Board) indicators 2020. If you 
look at that, you'll find a plot that basically shows R&D 
expenditures by country with China rising rapidly and the 
others, including the United States, relatively flat or only 
moderately rising.
     Just a quick statistic, you know, from I believe it was 
2000 to 2017 China's average annual rate of increase has been 
17 percent in expenditures, and ours is 4, 4.5 percent. That 
pretty much summarizes it.
     Mr. Garcia. OK. And then so how do we ensure that these 
significant investments that we're making in the COVID packages 
are actually also gaining traction in the classified programs 
area, significant military development efforts that may not be 
enveloped in DOD (Department of Defense) programs of record 
quite yet? Some of these are at the university level, some of 
these are in labs. How do we ensure that these big dollars, 
these chunks of money being spent on COVID are actually still 
going through in support of our national security interests?
     Dr. Keane. Well, quickly, I'll say the university side, 
our primary connection was training workforce and so improving 
our infrastructure allows us to train better people in all 
fields, and people's careers change when they enter the 
national security word, so we do the fundamental training. I'll 
leave it to others to comment on the infrastructure in the 
national security world.
     Dr. Parikh. Mr. Garcia, I can speak a little bit to this. 
You know, the--there are two things at play here. One is the 
funding you're talking about in terms of how do we make sure 
that the national security research apparatus also sees some of 
this funding? I think that's very important. You're right. 
Approximately half, almost half of the--of our research dollars 
end up in some way going through national security.
     My thought here is that we need to make sure that part of 
the scientific enterprise also sees these dollars because 
it's--that will also flow to the universities because they are 
the workhorses of that enterprise as well.
     The other impact is on people, and if you look at China, 
you know, you were noting those dollars. The other thing to 
note is that they produce lots of scientists and engineers. And 
so when Dr. Keane talks about we need 1,000 hires a year at our 
national laboratories, it's easier when you're producing a lot 
more talent. And we're bringing that talent--we have to import 
some of that talent in addition to what's on the ground here, 
so we've got to do--it speaks again to that human capital 
aspect but also making sure that the full half of our 
enterprise that is defense-related needs to also see that 
funding.
     Mr. Garcia. Yes. Yes, OK.
     Dr. Levine. If I could just add, one of the things that I 
think supports that infrastructure that we're talking about at 
the national security level is that if you look at the National 
Science Foundation indicators, locations like China have also 
invested substantially in building the talent pool to study the 
human resource issue, meaning the social and behavioral 
sciences have really grown in locations like China.
     One of the areas internationally that is so central is 
work on the workforce. We've more or less disinvested in 
research on the workforce, and we support that activity, the 
investments in each of the Defense Departments and the social 
and behavioral sciences is not what it was 10 years ago, and 
there's often debates about really important activities like 
the Minerva Research Initiative that not national security 
research, but the knowledge base from that done in universities 
really has a tremendous value to our national security 
interests, I think that's part of the mosaic that you're asking 
about.
     Mr. Garcia. Yes, absolutely. OK. Thank you all. I yield 
back.
     Staff. Mr. Foster is next.
     Mr. Foster. OK. Am I audible and visible here?
     Staff. Yes.
     Mr. Foster. Well, thank you. And thank you to our 
Chairwoman, Ranking Member, and our witnesses.
     I'd like to speak a little bit about Federal careers as 
potential jobs for early career researchers. Drs. Keane and 
Levine, you both highlighted in your testimonies that there 
were high levels of uncertainty in students and postgraduates 
with regard to future research opportunities due to COVID.
     Now, pre-COVID, as my colleagues know, I was very active 
as a leader of the National Labs Caucus where I would drag my 
colleagues on visits to the national labs, including the 
national security labs. And during these visits, we would often 
arrange luncheons with young scientists and engineers who were 
getting things done, having a wonderful time, but there were 
simply not enough of them.
     It was reasonably suggested by a professor friend of mine 
that there might right now be a real appetite amongst 
graduating STEM students, both graduate and undergraduate, to 
take STEM jobs in the government. Part of this is because of 
the Administration's renewed emphasis on science and scientific 
integrity and policy but also due to the genuine bipartisan 
support in this Committee and in Congress for ramping up 
Federal science funding over the next decade, which might make 
a career path in the Federal oversight of a growing science 
program more appealing than it may have been previously.
     So, first, do you believe that this appetite exists? And 
if so, how do we capitalize on it?
     Dr. Levine. I think that's a tremendously important 
question and I'm going to say opportunity. I should, I suppose, 
disclose that I myself went to the National Science Foundation 
as a visiting scientist for 3 years and stayed for 11. The 
opportunities with the scientific workforce within government, 
including actually in many State governmental agencies and 
institutions, is just enormous, and I think that having an 
understanding of those career ladders, that you are not 
stepping out, you're stepping in, that these are significant 
science jobs where you can have very productive careers and 
that kind of synergism also between the academy and higher 
education and these laboratories needs to be amplified and 
supported, postdoc programs and other instruments that at this 
point in time, if the jobs are there, I think it's a great way 
of bringing some of the silos--you know, some of the silos 
together, and I [inaudible] raising it.
     Mr. Foster. Yes. Well, do you think, for example, a 
virtual job fair highlighting the STEM jobs that are available 
across the many agencies of the Federal Government would be 
well-received right now?
     Dr. Levine. Absolutely. Absolutely love it. And some of 
the agencies we work with at the American Educational Research 
Association--we're planning for our annual meeting, you know, 
those kinds of opportunities, whether they're visiting 
physicians or longer-term physicians, we're seeing a lot of 
handshake around that. And one of the things that's most 
important to understand is as the jobs have been delayed, 
denied, put on a back burner, including in higher education, 
the biggest concern of early career scientists is they don't 
know what jobs are real and what jobs are not real, so it's 
kind of incumbent upon us to collectively have this as a 
priority both in universities and [inaudible]----
     Mr. Foster. On a sort of related issue, over the last four 
years, there's been a well-documented wave of early retirements 
of STEM professionals in government, you know, with a 
tremendous loss of accumulated experience and knowledge. Many 
of these were frankly driven by frustration over policies and 
proposed budget cuts, which we now are hopeful are going to be 
reversed. And so what do you think of standing up a program to 
call back some of these early retirees just for a couple years 
with the explicit goal of mentoring a next generation of 
younger and more diverse Federal STEM workforce?
     Dr. Levine. I think it's a terrific idea. Every year as I 
get older and older, I underscore how terrific that is. I think 
that that--a loss of our sort of talent pool even in higher 
education institutions strapped for resources. And that's not 
to say those faculty leaders aren't remaining active as 
scientists, but having some kind of bring-back-mentoring kind 
of model I think is----
     Mr. Foster. Yes. Yes, even if it's just a half-time job, 
my feeling is that a lot of people would be more than happy to 
pass their accumulated wisdom to the next generation, you 
know----
     Dr. Levine. And let me say the National Academy of 
Sciences really capitalized on that kind of model in a 
noncrisis situation. Scientists from government may work in 
direct study panels and have various kinds of mixed models. I 
think you've hit--you know, you've pointed to something really 
important.
     Mr. Foster. All right. Well, thank you, and it looks like 
my timer is down to zero. And I yield back.
     Staff. Ms. Kim is next.
     Ms. Kim. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, and Ranking Member 
Lucas, for holding this important hearing. I am concerned that 
many of the lockdown and remote learning measures has worsened 
our students' low scores in math and science. Students in 
grades K through 12 are the future of our STEM talent pipeline, 
and if they do poorly in subjects like math and science, our 
talent pool would eventually decrease, along with our 
competitiveness. As our Nation looks to recover from the COVID-
19 pandemic, we should not forget our STEM students.
     So I would like to pose a question to all witnesses. How 
has the COVID-19 crisis impacted our future domestic STEM 
workforce pipeline, and what are the implications of the 
potential loss of talent for the United States research and 
innovation ecosystem and economic competitiveness? Well?
     Dr. Levine. One of us? I suppose we worry. I--you know, 
this is a--kind of a point that's been implicit, I think, of 
all four of our presentations, that we, you know, we worry 
about what that means in terms of everything from special 
services that will help deal with some of the socioemotional 
kinds of crises, and tensions, and ambiguities that early 
learners are experiencing as family members have died or lost 
their employment, and how--so that the development of the math, 
and science, and engineering talent pool needs to be understood 
in the ecosystem of--in which students and early learners live. 
We need to be considering what kind of programs that we offer 
wrapped around, and opportunities equitably and inclusively, 
around the school year having, or around that--the--this band 
of time off. What happens with after school programs? How do we 
invest in early education programs so that they are rich 
learning environments, and how do we both measure and 
accommodate learning loss?
     Staff. Miss----
     Dr. Levine. That's a need for--that's a real need for 
data, also, that would be adjunctive to developing models of--
I'll say models of accelerated compensation for loss this year.
     Ms. Kim. Yeah, following up on that, Dr. Levine, over the 
last few years we have made some progress in increasing the 
number of women in STEM, and when I served in the California 
State Legislature, I had been one of the strong proponents of 
especially young girls coming to Sacramento, and in our 
capital, to also demonstrate the work that they're doing. So 
this is something that I have a great passion on. But how has 
the pandemic disproportionately impacted women in academic 
research, and what steps can this Committee take to address and 
tackle those roadblocks?
     Dr. Levine. Well, I--the major way is the context in which 
students, graduate students, undergraduates, early career 
scientists, the context in which they live, and the 
disproportionate burden, particularly on women of color. Broad 
family responsibility. We'll see this in a number of 
preliminary--kind of top level findings from our survey, and 
also our focus groups, as disproportionate child care 
responsibilities, so that, at the end of the day, one is 
struggling with how to put the package together, and to, you 
know, keep the family all aware of what--one illustration was 
in one of the focus groups someone started the conversation by 
saying, I'm a faculty member, and I--I'm building upon the work 
I'm doing in kindergarten teaching, and I thought, I wonder 
whether she was a kindergarten teacher. And then she was 
talking about the fact that she was--she had a 5-year-old, and 
she was spending a big proportion of her day learning how to be 
a kindergarten teacher.
     So that has consequences not only for her performance as a 
scientist, and her ability to engage at the level at which she 
is capable of performing, but it also affects, you know, let's 
put it this way, the role modeling of the fact that is cueing 
about the roles of women. Now, that's not to say that men with 
family responsibilities aren't also doing a very substantial 
share. It's just the data also show a--kind of a 
disproportionality where that stands.
     Ms. Kim. Well, thank you. I yield back. I notice my time 
is up now. Thank you very much.
     Staff. Mr. Beyer is next.
     Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much, and, Madam Chair, thanks 
so much for pulling this together, all of our witnesses. Very 
grateful, very fascinating.
     Dr. Parikh, I have an intuitive question for you. We've 
heard through all the different testimonies about how 
detrimental and deleterious the COVID crisis has been for 
research, for the careers, or--et cetera, but we've also seen 
an historic commitment to biology and to genetics through the 
COVID crisis. Fastest ever vaccines to display--mRNA vaccines. 
How do you balance the 20-year leap forward in biological 
sciences against the downsides of the COVID pandemic on 
research?
     Dr. Parikh. It's an excellent question, Mr. Beyer. You 
know, the--if you had asked 2 years ago could we produce a 
vaccine from, you know, from sequence, to putting it into 
millions of people in a year, there wouldn't have been many 
people that said yes. There wouldn't have been many people at 
all that said yes. I would not have said yes. And so the 
progress that has been made and demonstrated by the biomedical 
research community is incredible, and it's inspiring to young 
people, right? There are people now--there are young kids who 
say, you know, I want to be, if not Dr. Fauci, then that other 
scientist. You know, but what I would say is, in doing that, 
we've raised expectations. We've raised expectations, and 
here's the problem, is that going into these fields is really 
tough. And so you've got young people who say, yes, I want to 
follow in Dr. Fauci's footsteps. Here's the problem, is that I 
run into this clogging the system that says, you know what, if 
you can't afford it when the pandemic happens, and you're a 
graduate student in Cambridge, and you don't have a family 
safety net to take you back in, then how are you going to 
continue your graduate studies on that, you know, that very 
small stipend?
     So we've got this paradox--I mean, incredible inspiration, 
and yet the reality of the scientific career doesn't quite 
match up to that yet. And part of what--yeah, part of what this 
Committee can do is to help make those things align and match 
up.
     Mr. Beyer. Let me interrupt you, only because we're 
limited to 5 minutes, but I'd love to have the other 30-minute 
conversation on this.
     Mr. Quaadman, I come at this from a Ways and Means Member, 
with my pals Dan Kildee and Gwen Moore, and I'm concerned 
about, No. 1, the impact of TCJA (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), that 
dropped the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21, 22, a quarter 
don't pay anything. I noticed in your statistics that 
corporations paid 400 billion in R&D last year, and I looked it 
up, and there was $525 billion in stock buyback, so 25 percent 
more in stock buybacks than in research. Do you think moving 
back to having stock buybacks pre-authorized by the SEC 
(Securities and Exchange Commission) could move us in the right 
direction on research and development?
     Mr. Quaadman. So, first off, I would say, as I said in my 
testimony as well, we do think it is important for that portion 
of the tax reform bill to be addressed so that we can continue 
the real time expensive R&D expenses. The only thing I would 
say in terms of stock buybacks, it's a little bit of an apples 
and oranges situation, because you have certain businesses that 
are not involved in R&D, that all they can do is actually give 
their money back to their investors. So I believe this is 
something that the SEC is going to probably be looking at after 
Gary Gensler is confirmed as chair, so we will have to see if--
I think it's a little bit of an apples and oranges issue.
     Mr. Beyer. By the way, Tom, I agree with you on the 
immediate expensing of R&D expenses, and that was just one of 
the things--it wasn't a policy decision. It was forced by the 
Byrd Rule in order to get TCJA through reconciliation, which I 
hope we can fix. But, Tom, a larger question--while listening--
going through statistics, and our--your notion that our Federal 
R&D, the 2.8 percent's the lowest it's been in 60 years as a 
percentage of GDP, GDP increased from 2010 to 2020 by 22 
percent, and our Federal R&D as a percentage of GDP was 
essentially flat. How do we make a national commitment to 
Federal R&D as a percentage of GDP so that we say it should be 
4 percent, or it should be 5 percent, and make the long-term 
commitment to that?
     Mr. Quaadman. Well, Mr. Beyer, I think that is an 
excellent question, and it actually goes to some of the points 
that Mr. Garcia was making as well about R&D with national 
security. Look, the Federal Government plays a very critical 
role in our R&D process infrastructure, and that basic research 
plays out in many, many different forms down the line. So I 
think, you know, if we take a look at the combination of the 
America--the CHIPS for America Act, the National Artificial 
Intelligence Act which passed last year, the Energy Act that 
passed last year, those can be used as a pivot point to start 
to increase Federal R&D, but as I referenced earlier as well, I 
think there are a number of other steps that we would like to 
talk to you about as to how we can increase that Federal 
research dollar, and see if there's some sort of mechanism to 
increase it over time, and also to ensure that we are keeping 
pace with our international competitors.
     Mr. Beyer. Yeah. Thanks. My time's up, but thank you for 
the specific recommendations you gave us today.
     Staff. Mr. Feenstra, I think.
     Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Ranking Member 
Lucas. I first of all, I want to thank each of the witnesses 
for their testimony today. It is crucial for us to hear from 
each of you on how to best maintain the United States' role as 
leaders in science and innovation, and how we can help our 
Nation's research enterprises recover from the effects of the 
pandemic. I also want to say I really enjoyed the conversation 
concerning research and development tax credits. The State of 
Iowa is one of the leaders in research and development tax 
credits, and myself being chair of Ways and Means in the Iowa 
Senate over the years, I have seen a tremendous value in what's 
happening with research and development tax credits, and how we 
have really driven research in our State, you know, when it 
comes to agriculture and biofuel.
     But, with that, I have a couple of other questions. I'd 
like to center these questions to Dr. Parikh, and then to Dr. 
Levine, if possible. Representative Webster asked, and 
discussion was talked about, about losing high tech jobs 
overseas as students graduate, and we see this at our 
universities, Iowa, Iowa State. I was a professor at Dordt 
University, teaching business and economics, and we saw it 
there also. So the question is, Iowa State, we take STEM 
careers very seriously. Our Governor heads up a State advisory 
council to increase interest and achievement in STEM studies 
and careers. It works through partnerships that engage 
employers, nonprofits, students, and policyholders. So, as we 
talk about this, how should we increase STEM career interest 
after this pandemic? How do we get these kids to stay here, get 
them engaged? How do we get them involved? I know we've had 
some discussion about this, but I would like to hear more on 
your thoughts in this area.
     Dr. Parikh. Thank you, Mr. Feenstra, for the question. You 
know, one of the things is--something to come after the 
pandemic, is--people have gotten excited about this 
collaboration between government, and industry, and business in 
bringing therapies and vaccines to the people. Well, one of the 
challenges that we still have is this silo between academic 
scientists and industry scientists. There are a lot of 
industry--there are a lot of academic scientists, and our CVs, 
our resumes, don't look the same. And we don't know--it's very 
hard to cross those barriers. And I think everyone would gain 
if that student who's at Iowa State, and goes through the 
academic track, but then there's a fluidity where they can move 
into academic jobs or into industry jobs or into defense jobs, 
if that were easier, that would be a huge benefit to the 
country, and to business, and to the students themselves. So I 
think that's one way that we can do something after this 
pandemic is over that would make a huge difference for moving 
the science forward, and for people.
     Dr. Levine. Let me just underscore, along similar lines, I 
think we need to look at our higher education system as part of 
the ecology of producing important work in science. So, for 
example, better networking of terrific faculty at--whether it's 
Grinnell, or other institutions that are primarily 4 year 
institutions, like--mentioned--of Iowa, that those faculty who 
are really igniting the interest of students in their 
undergraduate courses, that those faculty can place 
undergraduates in a summer program, in a lab, in a university, 
or in a national laboratory, or in an industrial setting, in a 
social behavioral sciences and a large survey research 
organization where they can touch and feel what happens on the 
ground.
     I would not have myself pursued a science career if I was 
not invited as an undergraduate to work in a social psychology 
laboratory. That turned me from pursuing a different 
professional set of interests to the lab, and we need to be 
investing in higher education, including community college 
settings where there are exceptional faculty doing this work, 
to see this as part of the infrastructure. Not just the kind of 
synergism that I refer to, and Sudip just did, about the 
different kinds of silos, but also the siloing of institutions, 
and thinking of teaching as not as meritorious and knowledge-
producing as research.
     Some of the stereotypic thinking of--as productivity, so 
that we encourage team science, which we all talk about as 
extraordinarily important, into disciplinary science shouldn't 
be viewed as left over after you achieve your credentials as a 
building block of your field. Team science as a disciplinary 
science produces extraordinary knowledge. We need to emphasize 
the--as we think about the science of the future. And I share 
the view that, actually--one of the most exciting--I lead this 
life in which I'm so excited by what we're inventing, and so 
overwhelmed by how to do it faster and better, so on the best 
days I'm just really excited about what the scientific 
community has been able to do.
     Mr. Feenstra. Thank you so much for your comments. And I 
know my time is up, but I just quickly want to say this, is 
that I think we have to be innovative also when it comes to 
this private/public partnership. I know Tom, you mentioned 
this, on how we can do tax incentives with the colleges, the 
universities, and the private sector of saying, hey, what can 
we do to incentivize where these kids can go from the college 
role to the job role? And we've done this in research and 
development with a great tax credit. I just think there's ways 
to nuance this to even make it more successful. Thank you for 
your time, I yield back.
     Staff. Mr. Kildee is next.
     Mr. Kildee. Thank you. Can you hear me OK?
     Staff. Yes.
     Mr. Kildee. All right. Well, first of all, thank you to 
Chairwoman Johnson for holding this really important hearing. I 
do appreciate the testimony of the witnesses, and hearing ways 
that our researchers have been affected by the pandemic, and 
yet have still helped to combat, really in a pretty remarkable 
way, the spread of coronavirus. It is truly a remarkable 
achievement that we've seen just in the last year, particularly 
around--but obviously around vaccination.
     Obviously our national research infrastructure is critical 
to all of us in so many ways. We have to ensure that it 
survives this moment that we're in right now, and that's why, 
like many, I'm just--in this hearing support the RISE Act to 
provide the relief necessary to--and to support federally 
funded research. Not only to provide emergency relief to 
support our researchers--public health crisis, but we also 
obviously have to sustain these research investments as we look 
forward toward economic recovery, and the long-term economic 
viability of the U.S.
     Part of rebuilding our economy obviously includes 
investment in the infrastructure, but also specifically 
including energy infrastructure and clean energy technology. 
And I know Congresswoman Stevens, my in-state partner, 
mentioned this, but, you know, for example, putting more 
electric vehicles on the road, reducing carbon emissions, 
supporting investment in American-made manufacturing, this all 
protects our planet and helps us grow our economy.
     So I wonder, Dr. Parikh, if you could perhaps address this 
question. If we don't invest in R&D in the technology of the 
future, like electric vehicles, other countries will, and I'm 
curious about what your sense of that challenge really looks 
like for us. And then, if I have time, I would like to ask Mr. 
Quaadman also. Dr. Parikh?
     Dr. Parikh. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. You know, what's 
remarkable is over the last 75 years we developed this 
ecosystem, and we invested in it, and we did it pretty much 
alone, right? There weren't a lot of other nations that were 
doing this, and so we benefited greatly from it. And what's 
happened is everybody now understands the blueprint, and you 
all know this as Members of this Committee, that everybody now 
understands that blueprint. And we have to innovate beyond 
where they--where they're copying us. And if we don't, the 
scale of investment, that's coming, right? China can invest 
just as much as we can.
     And so it's not about just the scale. We need the scale, 
but we also need the thoughtfulness of how do we incentivize 
industry, how do we incentivize industry and academia to work 
together, how do we do it in a targeted way, in a coordinated 
way?
     We have over 20 agencies that do science research and 
development across the Federal Government. Now, in the past, 
they didn't always work together. But if we're going to attack 
climate change, if we're going to attack the need for better 
batteries for electric cars, if we're going to attack the need 
for quantum computing, we have to have a coordinated effort. We 
need NOAA, and NIH (National Institutes of Health), and CDC to 
work together on climate change. We need DOE, NSF, and DOD 
working together on batteries. So that requires more 
coordination that we've ever had before, so we've got to do 
both those things. We've got to be able to invest heavily, you 
know, and that's going to be a lot more than we're doing today. 
As Mr. Quaadman said, we should be doing way more in terms of 
GDP in research and development, but the second piece is we've 
got to coordinate our activities in a way that actually attacks 
the problems that we're trying to solve.
     Mr. Kildee. Thank you. I wonder, Mr. Quaadman, if you 
could comment, but also specifically any thought you have on 
the necessary incentives for private sector investment? Like, 
for example, the change in the R&D tax credit that'll go into 
effect in 2022, what impact that might be having in terms of 
the way those--that expensing will be amortized. Are we 
providing the proper incentives? Did the Tax Cuts and JOBS Act 
actually work against us, in the sense that it changed the way 
companies can to look at that investment?
     Mr. Quaadman. Yeah, thank you very much for that question, 
Mr. Kildee, and I would just say too when the Chamber released 
its climate principles in mid-January, last month, you know, 
two things that we had in there is we have to embrace 
technology and innovation to address climate, but then we also 
need to ensure that there's U.S. climate science leadership to 
address the problems as well. So I think the American Energy 
Act, as an example, provides for funding for a number of 
different technologies, such as advanced nuclear, carbon 
capture, a number of other things that can--that could help 
lead us through that.
     I would also say too--No. 2, to your point, it is very 
important that we do change that R&D tax credit. That is going 
to be very important for how business will allocate funding. 
But the last point I want to make too, which it has come up in 
a couple other questions, but I think undergirds a lot of this, 
Federal research is also important. Some of what we've talked 
about with the COVID vaccines, there is 2 decades of research 
that went into mRNA before we even got to the vaccine. If we 
take a look at GPS (Global Positioning System), that research 
started in the 1950's. So we also have to understand too, there 
could be decades of research in the basic research field where 
the Federal Government plays a unique role that the private 
sector and the academic researchers can come in later on, when 
we're talking about applying the development research. But 
really it's that core that we need to get going as well.
     Mr. Kildee. Great, I appreciate--my time's expired. I 
really appreciate the testimony of the witnesses, and, Madam 
Chair, I appreciate you holding this hearing, and I yield back.
     Staff. Mr. LaTurner is next.
     Mr. LaTurner. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, 
thank you for having this hearing so we can discuss the 
importance of research, and the United States remaining at the 
forefront of the world of science and technology. One of the 
key reasons the United States became a world power was the 
emphasis we placed on innovation. We invested in research and 
development in the universities like the University of Kansas 
(KU), which I am so proud to represent, and national 
laboratories as well. We led by example in scientific and 
technological advancements. But now others in the world are 
emphasizing their research programs, and are working hard to 
overtake us. China is pursuing aggressive plans to become the 
world leader in technology, supplemented by their own national 
policies, and billions of dollars in investments.
     It comes as no surprise that national research efforts 
were among the many things impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 
Laboratory closures, health restrictions, and cancellations of 
conferences and travel have strained researchers and disrupted 
our normal operations. The virus has lowered our research 
output, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in divestment, and 
nearly halted the academic research and STEM workforce 
pipelines. If we want to come back from this, and stay ahead of 
China, we must look to getting our research enterprise back in 
full working order, and ensure there is a place for our future 
generations of researchers and innovators. I hope that this 
Committee can come together to make sure the rest of the world 
looks to America for future scientific advancement.
     Mr. Quaadman, partnerships between the Federal Government, 
academia, and the private sector are commonplace in our 
national R&D or enterprise. Can you discuss the importance of 
the public/private partnership, especially as it relates to 
overcoming the COVID situation that we've been in over the last 
year?
     Mr. Quaadman. Yeah. I think it was very important that we 
had the ability of the Federal Government, academia, and the 
private sector to come together extremely quickly to ensure 
that there were either research dollars in place, or that there 
were deployment dollars put in place, as well as a sharing of 
knowledge, which we talked about the computing consortium as an 
example of that.
     We've--we saw--frankly, we also saw that in the 1960's 
through large agreement with the moon program as well. So it 
just goes to show, if we get our act together, and can work in 
concert together to ensure that we are putting our best foot 
forward, nobody's going to beat us. The problem we've had over 
the last several decades is, you know, we're sort of riding 
along on some successes that we've had in the past, but we did 
not have a concerted strategy, and I think we are at a point 
here where we could sort of take a little bit of a deep breath 
to make sure we get things back up and running, but also look 
at the long term as to what we need--what policies do we need 
to put in place to make sure that we are going to continue our 
leadership.
     Mr. LaTurner. I appreciate that. Dr. Keane, the University 
of Kansas is the largest employer in the Second District of 
Kansas, and one of the largest employers of the State. 
Researchers at KU, like most citizens in the country, have had 
great restrictions to return to work. What I'm concerned about 
is that grants that have been awarded in the past can't be 
completed, and the potential for new scientific discoveries 
will stall. Can you speak to the type of impact legislation 
like the RISE Act would have on the university research 
community, and how that can affect the larger communities and 
cities that universities reside in?
     Dr. Keane. Thank you, Representative LaTurner, for that 
question. It's a great question. The RISE Act will definitely 
help the situation. We talked earlier about the 20 to 40 
percent loss in output. It's essentially due to, you know, the 
time out we've had, and then looking ahead, the difficulties in 
ramping up again. So the RISE Act will support researchers that 
will allow us to come back fully, and that will support the 
local economic development within those areas. As you know, 
universities are very strong engines in the local economy in 
their various communities, certainly in my area in rural 
Washington. So I would strongly urge that we--that the 
Committee pass the RISE Act, provide the resources to enable 
that research to finish that was interrupted. And I think also, 
as we've heard, we need to look to the future as well.
     If I could also just for a moment emphasize as well some 
of the issues with HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and 
Universities) and others on this, they're in a particularly 
tough spot because they don't have a lot to fall back on in 
terms of infrastructure and other things, in terms of getting 
the full range of our talent. They, as well as--faculty, as 
we've already heard, have been particularly strongly impacted, 
and deserve attention.
     Mr. LaTurner. I appreciate that, Dr. Keane. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, thank you Ranking Member Lucas. I yield back my time.
     Staff. Mr. Casten is next.
     Mr. Casten. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I feel 
like I need to apologize. We have such a good bunch of 
speakers, I would love to ask the same questions of all of you, 
because I think some of the differences in nuance would be 
interesting, so if you want to follow up, please do. But I'm 
going to pick, for totally selfish reasons, as a biochemical 
engineer and biochemist, I've got to represent, so I'm going to 
go with you, Dr. Parikh.
     I want to follow on the discussion you had with Mr. Tonko, 
and this, you know, that we've seen this falloff in research, 
and it's been focused on specific sectors, and I, you know, I 
think a lot have covered that, and I don't want to dwell on 
that, but what I'd like to understand is--we have--science is 
an international endeavor. There's lots of collaboration 
between labs. For a whole lot of reasons that we don't need to 
get into here, but we can acknowledge, COVID affected different 
countries very differently, the rate of mask uptake, the rate 
of social distancing, deployment of testing, and particularly 
in the Southeast Asia region, including Australia and New 
Zealand, the reality of COVID was much less grim, as far as 
what it meant for social distancing than what it was here. Of 
those sectors of our scientific endeavor that have been most 
deeply impacted, have any of them been able to work with their 
collaborators to move that research overseas, and if so, will 
that research come back to the United States after, or is there 
a permanent loss that's there?
     Dr. Parikh. Mr. Casten, that's a terrific question. I 
don't have hard data on numbers of projects that may have 
moved, but certainly, at the individual peer to peer level--
look, these conversations are happening all the time. We've got 
scientists here that talk to their collaborators. Maybe they're 
former students who are in Europe now, or who are in Australia 
now. And basic research works in a way where we do share 
information, we do share reagents, we do share intellectual 
conversations, because the point is to actually do the basic 
research so you can get to the intellectual property. And so 
that is happening.
     There's no doubt that when experiments can't happen here, 
as a graduate student, I'd be wanting my idea to flower 
somewhere, because I have the intellectual ownership of that. 
Maybe not IP, but intellectual ownership of it, and so that is 
definitely happening. And right now it's manageable, because we 
can keep these students in the pipeline with funding like the 
RISE Act. What happens--what could be bad is if we don't do 
things like the RISE Act, we don't ensure that that pipeline 
gets unclogged, if those students follow those projects, those 
students follow those ideas, or they just leave the sciences. 
And that's what--that's a true worry for us.
     Mr. Casten. So let me go from a mildly complicated 
question to a really complicated one, and put you on the spot 
with the clock at 2:30 and counting. When we think about the 
economic downturns, you know, there's--and I know the metrics 
on economic downturns. It's harder in science, but, you know, 
we'll see a collapse in the economy, and on a good downturn, 
``good'', we sort of restore to the historic growth trajectory. 
So if you think about, like, the dot com crash, we got--we came 
down, and we got back--so we saw some above-average growth. In 
a bad downturn, like the 2008 crash, we fall off and we, you 
know, maybe we return to the historic rate of growth, but we 
never get back to that historic trajectory.
     Dr. Parikh. Yeah.
     Mr. Casten. The reason I ask about that sort of 
international--not just the brain drain, but if the research 
has moved overseas, is there, you know, as you think about the 
restoration of--where we are, are we--is this going to be a 
good downturn or a bad downturn, from a scientific perspective? 
And from a policy perspective, beyond throwing money at the 
problem, which I'm sure we will, are there policy tools that we 
should be thinking about right now to make this a good downturn 
in the scientific? That make sense?
     Dr. Parikh. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, and----
     Mr. Casten. And, again, if any of the rest of you have 
answers, please send them in writing, but I--time here after 
Dr. Parikh is done.
     Dr. Parikh. I appreciate that. No, I think it's an 
excellent question, and what we do here is going to determine 
what happens. I mean, we are at this inflection point. We're--
we can't just move some money at it, and move on, and yes, 
we'll keep that historical trajectory, I hope. But, in reality, 
others are moving in the environment as well, so we have to do 
a couple of things. One is the investment. The second is that 
coordination factor I'm talking about. We haven't done that 
before. It is so important that we--if we're going to say that 
climate disruption is important to us, we've got to coordinate 
our activities. If we're going to say that batteries are 
important to us, we've got to coordinate those efforts between 
the academic environment and business. If we don't do that, 
then we're--our unconsolidated work is going to be incredibly 
powerful, and yet the sum will not be greater--the whole will 
not be greater than the sum of the parts. We've got to have 
that coordination.
     So I think that's the policy issue. As we get out of the 
pandemic, and as we--if we save this generation of human 
capital, then the next thing is we've got to be able to 
coordinate our activities, otherwise we can't--a plan beats no 
plan. The Chinese have a plan on these things, and we have some 
on some areas, because of good legislation from this Committee 
and others, but we've got to make sure that we're thinking 
about this in a holistic sense.
     Mr. Casten. Well, thank you so much. I see I'm out of 
time, but would love to continue the conversation with you and 
your staff--and, again, sorry to the rest of you that I didn't 
get to talk to, but we'd welcome them as well, to the extent 
you have a point to add. Thank you, I yield back.
     Staff. Mr. Gimenez next.
     Mr. Gimenez. Thank you, thank you very much, and I want to 
thank the Chairwoman and the Ranking Member for putting this 
together, and everybody that's been on the panel. The question 
that I have is something that Mr. Parikh said, something about 
the supply chain. Does talent follow the supply chain?
     Dr. Parikh. Does talent--thank you for the question, Mr. 
Chairman. I think talent follows the opportunity. You know, in 
times when the finance industry looks like the place to be as a 
young person, people want to go to the finance industry. And 
you are--you're so influenced by your parents. And I just had a 
conversation with a program in the south side of Chicago, and--
we're trying to get young people interested in the sciences. 
They only get interested if they know there's a job there, that 
there's a life there. And so, yes, it follows the opportunity, 
as much as it follows the supply chain.
     Mr. Gimenez. So if the supply chain is leading, or left 
the United States, and we want to get some of this talent back, 
would it be a good policy to try to bring the supply chain back 
to the United States?
     Dr. Parikh. I'm following your question now. Look, 
absolutely, because the more parts of the supply chain that are 
here, there are more jobs for that talent. They can work in 
manufacturing, they can work in the translational sciences, 
they can work in--on the policy side related to the 
manufacturing, so absolutely. I think that's a true statement.
     Mr. Gimenez. How can we incentivize the supply chain to 
come back to the United States?
     Dr. Parikh. I'm going to defer to Mr. Quaadman on part of 
that, because he is the--he's much more of an expert on the 
industry side. What I will say is that, you know, the 
investment in research, if you notice these areas around the 
country, the geographic areas, the clusters where science is 
happening, a lot of time the translational stuff happens around 
there as well, and then you can see the manufacturing. But I'll 
defer to Mr. Quaadman on the--on details.
     Mr. Gimenez. OK.
     Mr. Quaadman. Sure, Mr. Gimenez. Thank you for that 
question. That's an excellent question, so let me answer it in 
two separate ways. No. 1--came out with--report with China, and 
one of the things--recommendations that was made in there was 
also to increase our domestic manufacturing base, and I think 
the CHIPS for America Act is a very good example of that. And 
we can send you a copy of that report, and have a further 
discussion with you on that. Second, we are also looking at 
President Biden's Executive order from yesterday. We fully 
agree with the aims of having a resilient supply chain, and a 
diversified supply chain, and we also look forward to providing 
our--on that as well.
     Mr. Gimenez. OK. Shifting gears a little bit, you know, 
the pandemic has been horrible, but also it's taught us a 
different way of doing business. And so is there any upside 
here for research, in that the pandemic has forced us to 
conduct business in a little bit different way? And maybe it's 
been positive on some research, and it's been negative on 
others, so what's been your experience?
     Dr. Keane. Representative Gimenez, if I could take a crack 
at that one for a minute? First of all, I think we've all 
learned a lot about but--about virtual techniques, and some of 
them are just going to remain, as you might imagine, certain 
types of meetings that will become virtual forever. They 
actually are more effective at promoting diverse input. I think 
we've also learned some other things, not just associated with 
remote technology and--things like artificial intelligence. The 
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence out here in 
Washington State, their leader put together a body of papers on 
COVID-19, 200,000, analyzable by some of their machine learning 
platforms and so on. So, essentially, it's as if you could draw 
on 200,000 papers to get an answer you're looking for, which is 
obviously a faster rate of progress than most of us human 
researchers could do. There have some major changes that have 
happened, some very positive advances out of this crisis, and 
so I think there'll be a lot of great advances that'll be 
incorporated into the research enterprise in the future. 
Thanks.
     Mr. Gimenez. Well, last question, since I'm new to this 
Committee, where do we stand in terms of artificial 
intelligence research here in the United States versus probably 
our main competitor, China?
     Dr. Keane. I'm not an expert in that, but I will just say 
that the advances--there have been advances in machine learning 
due to some advances about 4 or 5 years ago, and so the 
applications of AI right now are exploding. It will 
fundamentally change how we conduct research, and lots of other 
areas of our lives.
     Mr. Quaadman. I would just add too that is the jump ball 
of the 21st century, as to who's going to win that. And I think 
we're taking some very good steps to ensure we've got the 
policies in place so we can help with the development, we can 
help be a leader there, but by no means are we assured of 
winning that race.
     Mr. Gimenez. I know that my time is up, and so thank you 
very much, but I'll just close by saying that I think you're 
right, the race to artificial intelligence is the jump ball of 
the 21st century, and we need to win it as a nation. Thank you. 
Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
     Dr. Levine. If I could just add one dimension on that 
point quickly? One of our potential competitive edges is that 
AI needs the kind of modeling and development that takes into 
account the diversities of reasoning and decisionmaking. And 
what we have in our democracies, and in our commitment, 
hopefully our renewed commitment, to equity is to bring those 
voices into the AI community. There are many very central 
locations already doing that. It's the kind of thing we need to 
invest in, and that's where I think our competitive edge can 
reside. We don't think in one way, and we need to bring that 
diversity of reasoning into modeling in AI. It's happening now, 
and we need to invest further in it.
     Staff. Ms. Ross is next.
     Ms. Ross. OK, I've unmuted. Can you hear me?
     Staff [continuing]. Can.
     Ms. Ross. That's great. Well, thank you, Chairwoman--and--
Member Lucas. It's been a--hearing, and it--it's--much from 
research dollars going to our universities, and also going to 
several of the organizations that do research. We're now ranked 
among the top 10, I believe No. 6 in the country, and I have 
North Carolina State University in my district. I also have two 
HBCUs in my district, and I really appreciate the mention of 
the HBCUs, because they are doing excellent work, and are 
educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, so I want to 
thank you for that.
     My first question is for----
     Staff. Ms. Ross, you appear to be experiencing bandwidth 
issues, and your connection is cutting in and out. You may want 
to turn the camera off, and that may help with your audio.
     Ms. Ross. OK. No. OK. OK. I'm sorry about that. I'm going 
to have to yield back.
     Staff. OK. We'll go to Mr. Obernolte.
     Mr. Obernolte. Well, thank you very much, and thanks to 
our witnesses. I've really enjoyed the hearing. One recurrent 
theme that has surfaced in the testimony seems to be concern 
about our investment in research and development compared to 
China's, and how that might undermine our strategic position. 
That's a concern that I very much share, and so I had a couple 
questions regarding that.
     First, to Dr. Keane, you quoted some very interesting 
statistics about how we were falling behind China in our 
investment in research and development, and I'm wondering, are 
those statistics including both private and public sector 
investments in research and development? And, you know, kind of 
as a follow-on, it seems to me that measuring private sector 
investment in R&D in the United States is actually a little bit 
problematic because it's not something that's always reported. 
You can get it from publicly traded companies' disclosure 
statements sometimes, but quite often that's a trade secret 
that companies don't share. So how confident are we in those 
statistics?
     Dr. Keane. Yeah, thank you for that question, 
Representative Obernolte, great, great questions. First of all, 
the source of that data, as I mentioned earlier, I believe is 
the National Science Board Indicators Report, which is based on 
the survey data that the National Science Foundation collects 
from industry, universities, all manner of folks that perform 
research. So the answer to your first question, then, is that 
those numbers include all research, federally funded 
universities, industry, nonprofits, et cetera, and all those 
folks typically respond to these survey--NSF.
     With that said, your question about the quality of the 
data, I don't have an NSF colleague here, but, you know, we 
could certainly connect you with someone to talk about that, 
and how they collected--but it is all expenditures from all 
sectors, and it is based on a--it's currently a systematic 
survey that's been done for many years by the National Science 
Foundation.
     Mr. Obernolte. All right. Thank you. You know, not to say 
that the data's invalid, something I'm very concerned about, 
but to be able to solve the problem we need to make sure we get 
our arms around exactly how big the problem is, and because our 
economy is much less centrally planned than China's I'm 
concerned that we don't have a full picture of what our private 
sector investment in R&D is.
     And then, for my second question, to Dr. Quaadman, 
basically on the same topic, but you had said something I found 
very interesting in your testimony, expressing concern that in 
the past most research and development was publicly funded here 
in the United States, and that now that's kind of flip-flopped, 
and we're 70 percent privately funded, and only 30 percent 
publicly funded. And I'm wondering if you could defend a little 
bit, you know, why you're concerned about that? Because it 
seems to me that, you know, maybe there's a difference in the 
type of research going on. Maybe public funding is more toward 
basic research, and private funding is more toward applied 
research. But, you know, why is that something we should be 
concerned about?
     Mr. Quaadman. Well, because--think of it this way, all 
right? Because the--a lot of the business funding, it's either 
in development research or it's in applied research, right, 
where you're trying to develop products off of other research 
that's--theoretical--or from the basic research arm. So if 
you're not doing some of that basic research, you're not going 
to get some of those other impacts. So if you think about it 
this way, in the example I used earlier, with GPS, right, that 
started with the Federal Government in the 1950's. Think of all 
the different ways we're using GPS now. By the way, with the 
implementation of 4G, with data localization and sharing, et 
cetera, that's how you got ridesharing, right? And we would 
sort of say now, like, going into an Uber and a Lyft, that's 
sort of second nature. So now if you look at it this way as 
well, as we start to implement 5G, what are going to be the 
products that come after that?
     The point is, if we're not doing that basic research, 
you're not going to have those positive benefits--societal 
benefits that occur due to some of the development research 
that happens, and that's when you start to look at what--as we 
are, not spending as much on the basic research. We're not 
going to have that bang for the buck later in the future.
     Mr. Obernolte. Sure. I agree with you, however, I think 
it's kind of a nuanced point. Basic research is sometimes the 
most easily duplicated. Applied research is very difficult to 
duplicate because you're, you know, you're applying it to a 
specific application. So----
     Mr. Quaadman. Um-hum.
     Mr. Obernolte [continuing]. I mean, I actually think that 
this is something that we as a nation should be talking more 
about, because I think it's an incredibly important topic to 
talk about, what kinds of research we're funding, who is 
funding it, if it's public sector or private sector, and how 
that stacks up against other countries, particularly China. But 
thank you. I see my time's expired. Thank you very much to our 
panelists. A really interesting discussion, I look forward to 
continuing it in the future. I yield back.
     Staff. Ms. Bonamici is----
     Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chairwoman 
Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas, and thank you so much to our 
witnesses for joining us today. I--I've now relocated to a 
computer where I'm not going to be dropped, I hope. So I really 
appreciate the Committee's continued focus on the effects of 
the pandemic on our Nation's research enterprise following our 
hearing last fall on the needs of universities and I'm very 
glad that we're securing funding for the National Science 
Foundation and NIST, the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology in the American Rescue Plan, but we need to pass the 
RISE Act to truly recognize the expenses and the challenges 
that have been accrued in ramping up, or down, spending, and 
then eventually restarting Federal research. So today I want to 
focus on the long-term consequences of the pandemic for the 
research community, specifically for our workforce, in solving 
the next moon shot challenge.
     But I also wanted to note that, you know, this Committee 
has had countless hearings over the years about how to grow and 
diversify the workforce, and STEAM (science, technology, 
engineering, arts, and mathematics). I say STEAM intentionally. 
Mr. Quaadman mentioned innovation, which is critical, and there 
was a suggestion along the way that--interested in the arts 
should be redirected to STEM. I submit that the better solution 
is integrating the arts into science, technology, engineering, 
and math. Brain research shows that arts education helps 
students be more creative and innovative, and Europe and Asia 
are not cutting the arts.
     So I'm--I do want to focus on the economic consequence of 
the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they have exacerbated so many of 
the inequities and the barriers facing women in communities of 
color. Because of entrenched gender roles, women are continuing 
to take up the majority of childcare and caregiving 
responsibilities. That's directly affected their research, as 
Dr. Keane mentioned. One professor at the University of Oregon, 
Dr. Machalicek recently noted that she regretfully now deletes 
every request for a proposal because she simply doesn't have 
time [inaudible] caregiving responsibilities. She hosts an 
online writing group for--they have to be at night, after 
bedtime for--children.
     Now, Dr. Levine, you noted several data points in your 
testimony that suggest that Dr. Machalicek is not alone in her 
experience. What steps can universities and the Federal 
Government take to support women in research fields to make 
sure that they aren't left behind as we get through the 
pandemic and build back?
     Dr. Levine. What an excellent question, and that citation 
not only resonates with what we heard so powerfully in our 
focus group, but just looking at the top line, as we're 
bringing the survey into an analytic format, we're just seeing 
it pop off the page. We need to do something that provides much 
more comprehensive wrap-around services. That's one of the 
reasons why I mentioned early on that supplemental funding that 
NSF has, that should be a kind of thinking that leads to wrap-
around support, potential childcare services, additional, 
potentially, RA (Resident Assistant) support, and other kinds 
of time off, salary release time, as a good way of catching up 
and that, and those who have elder care responsibilities.
     And one of the reasons why I emphasize--this is 
particularly an issue for women of color is that one of the 
things we picked up in the focus group very clearly is how much 
additional family care, based on many first generation career 
scientists, then need to also not only invest in their own 
child care, but wrap-around care to their family members, so we 
need to----
     Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. And, Dr. Levine, I don't 
mean to cut you off, but I really want to get another question 
in to Dr. Parikh. And even in the midst of an unprecedented 
pandemic, the climate crisis continues. We need climate science 
to help mitigate and adapt. Oregon State University (OSU), in 
my home State, is home to a world class ice core analysis 
laboratory, and they rely on ice core samples from the national 
archive at the NSF ice core facility in Denver, so COVID 
restrictions on Federal staffing and travel have significantly 
slowed their access to samples, in particular for a new project 
studying what is believed to be the oldest pristine ice samples 
ever discovered. So OSU's research vessels have been restricted 
as well, limiting supplies--or, excuse me, samples, for algal 
blooms--temperatures of the ocean. These gaps are 
irreplaceable, so, Dr. Parikh, I appreciate your focus on our 
Nation's innovative leadership, but how will these disruptions 
affect our ability to solve challenging problems like the 
climate crisis?
     Dr. Parikh. It's an excellent point, Ms. Bonamici. It 
shows that, yeah, this goes beyond the biomedical research 
sciences. It goes beyond our challenges related to the here and 
now. It goes to future crises, and there's no getting back the 
time that that ice core couldn't move from Denver to Oregon. We 
can't get that back. What we can do is ensure that, going 
forward, we have the human capital that was going to do is 
still there, and the next generation's also coming, and that we 
also have thought about the resiliency of that scientific 
enterprise.
     You know, we can--sometimes you think about these things, 
there are freezers that hold unique biological samples in this 
country. There are freezers that hold unique core samples from 
the Arctic. We need to make sure we have resilience in that--in 
those invaluable assets that only our Nation has because we 
invested the time, and the energy, and the resources to go get 
it. So let's make sure we have that resiliency in place as 
well.
     Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. I see my time has 
expired. I yield back. Thank you, Madam Chair.
     Staff. Mr. Babin is up next.
     Mr. Babin. Yes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and 
Ranking Member Lucas. I want to thank all of you witnesses as 
well today. This conversation we're having is critically 
important in many ways, but probably one of the most important 
are the implications that this has on our national security 
during this time of the pandemic. The U.S. Justice Department 
has accused China of sponsoring hackers who are targeting labs 
that were using state-of-the-art technology to develop our 
COVID vaccines. The Director of the FBI (Federal Bureau of 
Investigation) has said that acts of espionage and theft by 
China's government pose the ``greatest long-term threat'' to 
the future of the United States.
     My first question goes to Dr. Parikh and Dr. Keane. There 
have been multiple examples of Chinese hackers attempting to 
steal COVID vaccine data from different universities around the 
country. In your opinion, how susceptible are our universities 
to Chinese hackers, and what do each of you see as being a 
solution to better protecting our technology and our research? 
Dr. Parikh, if you would answer first, and then Dr. Keane. 
Thank you.
     Dr. Parikh. Thank you, Mr. Babin. This is a critically 
important question. You know, I can attest that every one of 
our institutions, our national laboratory, even the AAAS, we 
are constantly under attack in cyberspace, and it's from 
multiple nations around the world. The challenge for us is to 
make sure that we are being--we are protecting our intellectual 
property, we're protecting the things that need to be protected 
for defense, as laid out by the National Security Directive--
Decision Directive issued by President Reagan during the cold 
war, Directive Number 189. We need to make sure that we are 
protecting those assets, while balancing the need for 
collaboration. And, you know, basic research has collaboration 
that is required as well.
     So in terms of policy, are--you're asking if the 
universities are better today than they were yesterday, they 
are. They are. Will they be better tomorrow? I think so. And 
part of that is that we are learning. We are constantly 
learning. This is a fluid situation. It has gotten worse over 
time, and the universities have been, in my opinion, and now I 
turn to Dr. Keane to answer directly, but, in my opinion, from 
the outside, they have been very responsive to this--to these 
attacks.
     Mr. Babin. All right. Thank you so much. Dr. Keane?
     Dr. Keane. Yeah, thank you very much for that question, 
Representative Babin. So let me first of all state that 
universities are actually dedicated to implementing measures 
to, you know, conduct our research in a secure manner. Just 
also a little bit of background, in terms of life under 
attacks, you know, as Dr. Parikh just talked about, we're in a 
similar situation. Over 90 percent of the e-mails that we get 
at Washington State University are attacks or spam, so our 
firewalls are constantly defending us against all manner of 
things.
     In terms of what we're doing about it, you know, a variety 
of things. First of all, we have, you know, significantly 
increased faculty awareness on this. We talk to our faculty all 
the time. We are improving our systems for disclosure of 
conflict of interest and conflict of commitment. Conflict of 
Commitment, the simple way to think of that is we want to make 
sure that a faculty member doesn't spend 100 percent time on 
one project, and then go out and get a grant to do exactly the 
same work with somebody else, right? And so we have systems in 
place that we--or monitor that, and we've gone to electronic, 
and other sort of ways to help us do that, as have many 
universities.
     I also just want to close on this--my comment on this 
topic by pointing out that the recent legislation in the 
National Defense Authorization Act, and also ongoing efforts to 
try and harmonize research security related--across agencies. 
Right now there is significant administrative overhead because 
we have different requests--for example, interactions with 
China or whatever--country--in different formats from different 
agencies. So we spend a lot of time trying to sort out the 
different forms, which isn't, you know, value added. So 
anything that could be done by the Congress or the Committee to 
try and take a coherent multi-agency approach to research 
security would be welcome. Thank you.
     Mr. Babin. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Keane. Real quickly, 
Mr. Quaadman, in your capacity with the U.S. Chamber, how is 
the theft of basic research by China going to hurt our economy 
and our competitiveness? If you could just give a few seconds 
to that?
     Mr. Quaadman. Yeah, I mean, obviously it's harmful to 
both. One of the things that the Chamber has done, through our 
Global Innovation Policy Center, in a few weeks we'll be 
releasing our 10th IP Index, which ranks each--ranks the top 53 
economies as to their treatment of intellectual property. China 
and India historically have not ranked high there. They've 
actually ranked fairly low, for obvious reasons. What that has 
also done, though, that's also sparked a U.S./China dialog 
where we work with these issues with both business and 
government leaders, as well as with India. So part of our 
belief is that it's--it is important to shine a light on these 
problems because it creates incentives to try and address some 
of them from the other side as well.
     Mr. Babin. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'll yield back, 
Madam Chair.
     Staff. Ms. Moore is next.
     Ms. Moore. Thank you so very, very much, Madam Chair, Mr. 
Ranking Member, all of our witnesses, Dr. Parikh, Dr. Keane, 
Dr. Levine, Mr. Quaadman. I have learned so much from this 
hearing today, and I have more questions than I do time, so let 
me try to get through this.
     When we look at--I want to make a declarative statement, 
and then sort of get a response from you. When we look at the 
numbers of women who engage in research, I guess of any type, 
whether it's biomedical, or defense, or any other kinds, like, 
30 percent globally, and you've all attested to the fact that 
women have various family responsibilities that Dr. Keane said 
keeps them out of academia for numbers of years longer, they 
don't go into research because of the framework of being 
family, and so on. I just want to know, is there anything about 
the RISE Act, or other sorts of research, that specifically 
focuses on maintaining these women, and now that we've gone 
through this pandemic and seen some slippage, is there any very 
specific plans with the universities, or with research firms, 
or Chamber of Commerce, is there any specific research that 
focuses on maintaining women?
     And I don't say this out of some sort of just abstract 
notion of we need affirmative action. I mean, it matters, and 
it matters a lot, whether women and minorities are engaged in 
these kind of programs. I'll just give you an example. I took 
a--kind of a blood pressure medication, and my mouth swelled 
up, and I was looking all ugly, and I called one of my friends, 
who's a Black female cardiologist, and she said, you--as a 
Black person, you should've never been taking that medicine in 
the first place. And--so the consequences of not having women 
in the field--and I want you to talk about that. And then 
there's been a lot of talk about national security issues, and 
I notice that women in the Soviet realm, and perhaps even in 
China, much higher participation of women in research. Want to 
know if that has any implications for national security, or for 
our keeping pace. And so I guess I would ask that of Dr. 
Parikh, Dr. Keane, Dr. Levine.
     Dr. Parikh. Ms. Moore, thank you for the question. My 
goodness, the value of having diverse voices at the table, 
women, underrepresented minorities, is not just because of the 
moral imperative. The moral imperative is obvious. The real 
reason is because it actually helps our economic 
competitiveness, and it creates solutions, so the example you 
gave is a perfect one. When we talk about solutions to this, 
they are--we've got to aim it at every spot in that pipeline. 
So, for the kids, K-12, we've got to make sure they're not 
getting the signals--the wrong signals, to get out of the 
sciences. We've got to make sure they're getting interventions 
to help them if there are challenges that are keeping them out 
of the sciences that are not related to study. Got to make sure 
we're intervening there.
     And then, at the graduate school level, we have graduate 
students that are in their 20's, and we have post-docs in their 
30's. They need to not just be treated as apprentices. They 
need to have some benefits that are employee-like because they 
are of the age to have children. They are of the age to be 
married. We need to make sure that they have those kinds of 
benefits. So I think those are a couple I've given out. I'll 
give to--time to the others as well.
     Dr. Keane. Yeah, if I could comment, Representative Moore? 
Great question. So the answer to your question is, yes, there 
is research going on to try and actually come up with real ways 
to improve the situation. But one of the things we need to do, 
obviously, as a first step is to think about, you know, why are 
we in the situation we're in? And, to that end, just as an 
example, there was a very recent, just--think this last month, 
a study that came out by the National Bureau of Economic 
Research that surveyed 20,000 Ph.D. woman respondents about 
their lives, and that turned up some interesting facts, you 
know, such as on average women have lost double the time to 
research that men have in the pandemic. And also we can see, by 
looking at large scale data and publications, that women are 
definitely publishing less than men.
     And I know--but that is also just a whole number of 
potential ways to improve the situation, universities extending 
tenure clocks, waiving certain types of service for women, 
providing care, and other, you know, the--relieving other forms 
of faculty service so women can focus on research, OK? So 
there's a whole bunch of ideas in the pipeline to address this 
question.
     Dr. Levine. Well, I'll just add a couple of words to that, 
because those are, you know, the important points, I think, to 
drive home to an exceptional question. I think that we also 
need to recognize that--hierarchy and positionality, often of 
women in the workforce. We have, you know, we are very aware 
that in leadership roles women can be silenced in subtle and 
not so subtle ways. So they can be central to a team, but not 
yet rewarded in the same way, so that--we have to understand 
the nature of the work, because women as scientists are often 
more inclined toward collaborative models so that--if the 
pecking order is sole author, versus multiple author. So this 
is a really important broader issue that we need to take--
consideration.
     While we support, for example, expanding and extending the 
tenure clock during this time, and accounting for different 
kinds of activities, we also need to be sure that the status 
hierarchy doesn't backslide and say, 3 years from now, so what 
happened? You know? So we have to be very attentive to the--to 
essentially subtle indicators that may not seem to leave women 
behind, but after all they have an adverse--and for women as 
well--of color as well. A great opportunity and challenge for 
all of us together, and in collaboration with this Committee, 
and its sensitivities, and higher education and research 
institutions.
     Ms. Moore. OK. Thank you. I yield back. Thanks for 
indulging, Madam Chair.
     Staff. Mr. Gonzalez is next.
     Mr. Gonzalez. Did I hear Mr. Gonzalez? I'm sorry, I 
thought I heard it, but I don't want to jump the gun.
     Staff. Yes, you're next.
     Mr. Gonzalez. OK, great. Well, thank you, Chairwoman 
Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas, for holding this hearing 
today, and to our distinguished witnesses for your testimony. 
As those who served on this Committee with me last Congress 
know, I personally believe that appropriately funding and 
supporting our research enterprise is among the most important 
things we can do for our economy long term. You know, we tend 
to solve problems that are sort of staring us right in the 
face, but the truth is the investments that we make in our 
research enterprise are ultimately going to create jobs 5, 10, 
20, 30 years from now. And so I look forward to partnering with 
my colleagues in making sure that we're continuing to increase 
funding where appropriate, focus that funding so that we can 
invent the transformative technologies of the future that will 
help us sustain our economy, and continue to lead across the 
world.
     Mr. Quaadman, as you know, China and other economies are 
investing aggressively, particularly in the industries of the 
future, like 5G, AI, quantum. Can you describe what steps the 
U.S. needs to take to remain a leader in the industries of the 
future, and what concerns do you have if we fail to do that, 
and cede that ground to a China, or another country?
     Mr. Quaadman. Thank you very much, Mr. Gonzalez, and, 
first off, let me also thank you for your co-leadership of the 
Artificial Intelligence Caucus as well, and your leadership on 
these important issues. Look, I would say there are a number of 
different things here. No. 1, we're clearly in a race. I think 
I read recently Art Schmidt's testimony before Congress 
recently, where he said that the United States may only be 1 to 
2 years ahead of China in terms of artificial intelligence 
research.
     I think some of the steps taken last year, both with the 
passage of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act, 
where we created a framework, both in terms of public and 
private partnership, to help incentivize that research, and 
provide some funding, is important. I think the OMB guidance 
released at the end of last year also helps with that, because 
we need the funding on the one side. We also need to have the 
collaborative atmosphere that allows for that development to 
take place.
     Lastly, though, whoever wins that race to be the leader in 
artificial intelligence is going to set the standard, so NIST 
has a very, very critical role, if we were to be in that 
position, of developing what those standards are around the 
artificial intelligence, how they can--how it can be used, how 
it could get deployed. And that's very important because we 
bring in all the different stakeholders in a very collaborative 
effort to do that, and there are a lot of thorny ethnic--ethic 
issues associated with that which impact personal liberty, 
freedom, et cetera that we have very highly developed attitudes 
and values around that others may not. So we--that's one of the 
reasons why it is very important for the United States to be in 
that leadership role.
     Mr. Gonzalez. Absolutely. And one thing that I've seen 
proposed, that I think is a good idea, and I hope we do it, is 
to create some sort of G7, plus Australia and New Zealand 
maybe, standard-setting organization or body that could help 
inform how these technologies are developed, and what the 
values are that underpin them. Just as a concept, what are your 
thoughts on that concept? Feel free to disagree with me. I will 
not take offense.
     Mr. Quaadman. No, I would say two things. One is I think 
that's an interesting idea, because if you take a look at it 
within the scope of the G7, and Australia, and New Zealand, 
there are a lot of those shared values that we have that can be 
helpful in terms of doing that. The other thing, I think we 
would just need to really think this through as well, is that, 
you know, the EU's also a competitor, right? So I think there 
has to be a decision if we're going to collaborate on that. And 
if it's going to be competition, that's fine, right? I mean, 
the United States does very well when it competes, but we have 
to realize we are competing, and that if we need to win this 
race, it's no different than the race to the moon, or to some 
other technologies that we made sure we were leading in in the 
1960's, 1970's, or 1980's.
     Mr. Gonzalez. Absolutely. And then with my final 
question--well, we won't be able to get into this in 30 
seconds. Maybe I'll submit it for the record. But one thing I 
am concerned about is our human capital development here in the 
U.S., and the feeling that, you know, some other countries are 
outpacing us in the development of our human capital, and I 
want to make sure that we're always in the lead there, and so I 
look forward to partnering with all the institutions here, and 
the Members of Congress on making sure that the U.S. is always 
as competitive as humanly possible. To your point, if we can 
compete on a level playing field, we will win. And with that, I 
yield back.
     Staff. Mr. Sherman is next. Mr. Sherman's recognized.
     Mr. Sherman. Why thank you. Madam Chair, thank you for 
bringing us together. The importance of science was illustrated 
to the entire country over the last year, as we deal with this 
COVID crisis. The response of the science community hasn't been 
perfect, but given the sudden and unexpected nature of this, 
has been very good. We haven't always followed the science, but 
we will straighten that out as well. And the vaccines that are 
coming to us are as a result of the scientific knowledge that 
has been put together over the last decades. That's why it's 
important that we move forward with the RISE Act, to keep 
research going, and to preserve our research capacity for the 
future. And I thank you for introducing that legislation.
     We have--others have talked about artificial intelligence, 
and I just want to point out how important it is that it's kept 
under human control, and that we engineer into the basic 
elements of artificial intelligence. You can't just add it in 
at the end, get it into the hardware, into the systems, in 
avoidance of self-awareness, in avoidance of ambition, or a 
desire to persevere. When we talk about promoting science, 
naturally we're the Science Committee, and we focus, usually, 
on what's government doing, the space program, our grants to 
academic research. But we've got a limited amount of money, and 
I'm sure what money we have for science we will work hard to 
make sure it's spent in the best way.
     But there's a much larger amount of money, and that--and 
the best practical research is often done by our private sector 
with their own money. And we tend to focus on the startups that 
have no revenues, and they will, of course, do research. That's 
their whole reason for existence. They only, you know, money 
comes as invested by the investors. The only thing they're 
going to do with it is spend it on their startup research. But 
the vast majority of private research is being done by 
companies that have revenues that are expected to earn a 
profit. And so if you want to influence how much of that 
research is done, you have to look at our accounting system, 
at--because Boards of Directors get up in the morning, and they 
say, how much can we show as earnings per share?
     We had an accounting system up until 30 years ago in which 
we treated research appropriately, as we had for the past 200 
years. We made a mistake, and this the first time in this 
Committee that I'll say that perhaps the greatest threat to 
research is based in Norwalk, Connecticut. That is the location 
of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), a 
governmental agency that often argues that it's not a 
governmental agency. Mr. Quaadman, we have, over the last 30 
years, a system where if you invest money in a building, that's 
not an expense. It doesn't hurt your earnings per share, it's 
investment. But if you invest money in a research project, 
that's an immediate expense. It hurts your earnings per share, 
and makes you look worse than those of your competitors who 
aren't spending money on research. Can you give a feel for how 
much this impacts the amount of money spent on research by 
corporate America, focusing not on those few startups, but on 
the big companies that are expected to show a profit?
     Mr. Quaadman. Yeah, thank you very much, Mr. Sherman, and 
thank you for your leadership, both for investors and for 
capital formation as well, and your doggedness on this issue, 
because I know you've been after this one for decades. Let me 
start here in terms of--we have to separate tax policy out from 
accounting policy, because they're two different things.
     Mr. Sherman. I'm just focused--I just----
     Mr. Quaadman. Yes.
     Mr. Sherman [continuing]. Interrupt you, we invest 
billions of dollars over in the Ways and Means Committee 
promoting research----
     Mr. Quaadman. Yeah.
     Mr. Sherman [continuing]. But what I'm talking about is 
the accountants based in Norwalk, Connecticut pushing us in the 
other direction. Go ahead.
     Mr. Quaadman. Agreed. Our CEO, Tom Donahue, in 2005 gave a 
speech at Nasdaq where he raised concerns about companies 
trying to hit the quarterly earnings guidance, right, within a 
penny or two, right, and that there are polls that actually 
show that businesses would make decisions that run counter to, 
let's say, their long-term capital expenditures. In terms of 
the first principle for the Chamber in terms of accounting, we 
always believe that it's important to start from the place of--
that, you know, financial reporting needs to reflect economic 
activity, and not to drive it. Additionally, we've also called 
for, for years, about the need for a cost benefit analysis in 
the determination of accounting standards, that we actually 
have data to understand this along the lines of the problem 
that you're raising.
     So I believe that Russ Golden, in his last days as FASB 
Chair, testified before you at your Subcommittee about looking 
at intangibles, which this gets into, and I think there needs 
to be--we need to have somewhat of a data-driven discussion 
around that to determine what the extent of the problem is that 
you're raising, and what we have--what we would have to do to 
sort of--what we'd have to do to address it.
     Mr. Sherman. My own work makes me think that we're talking 
about hundreds of billions of dollars in research that would 
otherwise have been conducted over the last 25 years had they 
not made this bad accounting decision. I yield back.
     Staff. Mr. Meijer is next.
     Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Ranking Member, 
and to our witnesses here today. I really appreciate the time 
for you to share your thoughts and experiences. Obviously COVID 
has created disruptions across our Nation, but ensuring that we 
bounce back as rapidly as possible is key not just in our 
academic settings, not just in our economic settings, but also 
in our research and development settings.
     I've been speaking over the past several months with 
members of the Michigan research community, both those at the 
Panhandle Institute in my district in Grand Rapids, at Michigan 
State University, at the University of Michigan, at Wayne State 
University, and other institutes of higher education throughout 
the State of Michigan, to see what we can do to ensure that a 
lot of the critical research that they've been conducting, you 
know, as they had to scale back staffing hours in the labs, as 
they had to deal with, you know, perishable equipment and 
supplies, on how we can make sure we bounce back as quickly as 
possible. And I just want to address this to the witnesses in 
general, and please feel free, any of you, to respond. I guess 
how are researchers best adapting to the new environment that's 
been created by this pandemic?
     Dr. Keane. I'll--if I could--I'll take a quick cut at 
this----
     Mr. Meijer. Yes, sir.
     Dr. Keane [continuing]. First. So thank you--thanks, 
Representative Meijer, for that question. It's a very important 
one. You know, the short answer is in many ways. I think people 
are learning how to make effective use of virtual tools for a 
whole bunch of reasons, in a whole variety of ways. I think 
we're also learning how to conduct research in our laboratories 
with different staff. You know, we can come back at some of 
these laboratories now at lower staffing levels. We've gotten 
much better figuring how to use equipment, and actually conduct 
work on the situation.
     There's some things that are harder than others to deal 
with, such as human subject research, which, you know, has 
really come back in things like biomedical research in 
particular, haven't quite come back because of the close nature 
of interaction. You know, but overall the enterprise--we 
estimate at WCU, and my colleague, DPR, is elsewhere, we think 
we're sort of at 60 to 70 percent of pre-pandemic at the 
moment, but the remaining things are hard to crack. But we--as 
I mentioned earlier, we still have to worry about finishing off 
all the work that was delayed. Before we--it was very helpful 
to have flexibilities and no-cost extensions, but to finish the 
work has a cost. So, anyway, that's the quick answer. Thank 
you.
     Mr. Meijer. I know, and I appreciate that, Dr. Keane. I 
guess, just building on that, you know, we've already, you 
know, kind of touched upon, kind of in length, some of the 
funding concerns, but in terms of other concerns, are there 
policy modernizations that you feel are needed to make sure I 
guess specifically at the Federal level to make sure that U.S. 
researchers remain competitive and grow? Are there any gaps 
that have really been created that they're concerned or that we 
may be able to address through a policy angle?
     Dr. Keane. I'll mention just one I did a few moments ago, 
because it's a topic of a lot of discussion right now, and that 
is the monitoring of international, right, and disclosures. We 
used to have very different and conflicting guidance from 
agencies, which is just--it takes us a lot of time to 
respondent to. I would--I will also say that a lot of our 
agencies have done a fantastic job responding and simplifying. 
Rapid, you know, proposal, review, and award processes have 
been immensely helpful, and should be encouraged by the 
Committee, I would suggest, from a policy level, just as one of 
a number of examples of agency reforms that have been put in 
place and been very productive.
     Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Dr. Keane. And, Madam Chair, I 
yield back.
     Staff. Madam Chair, we have one other Member whose camera 
is on, but I don't see them. Ms. Wild, are you present? I don't 
see her. She would be our last Member, so I think we may be 
done.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Well, thank you very much. Let me 
thank all of you who participated, and most especially our 
really great witnesses. This has been a very worthwhile 
hearing, and I know that we will probably have a follow-up 
sometime not too far in the future.
     Before we bring the hearing to a close, I want to again 
thank our witnesses, and let you know how resourceful you have 
been. And the record will remain open for 2 weeks for 
additional statements from Members, and for any additional 
questions the Committee might have for the witnesses. Our 
witnesses are now excused, and the hearing is adjourned.
     Mr. Quaadman. Thank you, Chairwoman.
     Dr. Levine. Thank you.
     Dr. Parikh. Thank you----
     [Whereupon, at 1:08 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                               Appendix I

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                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

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                              Appendix II

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                   Additional Material for the Record

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