In this installment of Science Policy IRL, we explore another sector of science policy: private industry. Amanda Arnold is the vice president of governmental affairs and policy at Valneva, a private vaccine development company, where she works on policy for creating, manufacturing, and distributing vaccines that address unmet medical needs, such as for Lyme and Zika. 

Arnold has worked in the science policy realm for over twenty years, first as a policy staffer for a US senator, then as a legislative liaison for the National Institutes of Health, and as a senior policy advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Arnold talks to editor Megan Nicholson about the role industry plays in the science policy enterprise and what she has learned about the US innovation ecosystem from working across sectors. 

Resources: 

Read Amanda Arnold’s Issues article, “Rules for Operating at Warp Speed,” to learn about how the government can work to rapidly respond to future crises. 

Check out Ensuring an Effective Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise and the Strategic National Stockpile reports to learn more about the issues Amanda thinks about in vaccine development policy. 

Want to learn more about convergence? Check out these reports: 

(1) The Convergence of Engineering and the Life Sciences (2013)

(2) Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond (2014) 

(3) Fostering the Culture of Convergence in Research (2019)