Since 1973, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellowship (STPF) has brought thousands of scientists and engineers into the policy world. The fellowship is a very popular pathway into science policy, and AAAS fellows have featured in several episodes of our Science Policy IRL series. 

In this episode, we talk with the STPF fellowship director, Rashada Alexander. After completing a chemistry PhD and postdoc, she applied for an STPF fellowship that placed her inside the National Institutes of Health, where she worked for 10 years. 

Alexander talks to us about how her fellowship experience helped her look up from the lab bench and find meaning in her life. In particular, she found ways to build relationships, learn how to read a room, and navigate organizational structures—skills that are not always valued in scientific labs. She explains why scientists and engineers should apply for this transformational experience. 

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Most people are familiar with DNA, but its cousin, RNA, has become widely known only recently. In 2020, of course, RNA was in the news all the time: the COVID-19 virus is made of RNA, as are the vaccines to combat it. Technologies based on RNA could lead to innovations in biology, medicine, agriculture, and beyond, but researchers have only scratched the surface of understanding what RNA is capable of. 

A new report from the National Academies, Charting a Future for Sequencing RNA and Its Modifications: A New Era for Biology and Medicine, proposes an ambitious road map for coordinated projects to understand RNA. This large-scale effort is inspired by what was achieved for DNA two decades ago by the Human Genome Project. 

On this episode, host Monya Baker is joined by Lydia Contreras, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, and one of the authors of the report. Contreras talks about what RNA is, the challenges and potential of this effort, and what lessons could be learned from previous efforts with the Human Genome Project. 

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The Ongoing Transformation will be back next week with a fantastic episode on RNA and the future of biology. This week we are sharing a podcast from the Progress Network that we think you’ll enjoy. On What Could Go Right?, Progress Network founder Zachary Karabell and executive director Emma Varvaloucas talk to experts about the world’s challenges—and developments that could lead to a brighter future. 

In this episode, Karabell and Varvaloucas tackle an issue at the top of many people’s minds: climate and energy. Specifically, how can the green transition move the global energy system away from fossil fuels? They're joined by Jigar Shah, the director of the Loan Programs Office at the US Department of Energy. Shah shares his insights into the current landscape, future potential, and challenges for the successful commercial deployment of clean energy technologies.

Subscribe to What Could Go Right? wherever you get your podcasts.

On this installment of Science Policy IRL, Lisa Margonelli goes behind the scenes of Congressional policymaking with Brent Blevins. Blevins is a senior congressional staffer and staff director of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, which is part of the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. 

Blevins talks about his unusual path into science policy (he didn’t study science, and he wasn’t a AAAS fellow!) and what staffers in the House and Senate do in the science policy world. He also talks about the incredible experience of getting to set policy for things like sending humans to Mars while also having a staff job that can end with any two-year election cycle.

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Caregiving is a nearly universal human experience, but it’s not often thought of as an issue with implications for our nation’s science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) enterprise. A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Supporting Family Caregivers in STEMM: A Call to Action, seeks to change that. In some academic STEMM environments, devoting time to care for family members is still seen as a taboo subject because it clashes with the idealized notion of scientists who focus exclusively on their work. The lack of legal and institutional support for caregivers drives many people to leave STEMM fields altogether. What can be done to change this inequity?

On this episode, Issues editor Sara Frueh talks to Elena Fuentes-Afflick, chair of the report committee and a professor of pediatrics and vice dean for the School of Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital at the University of California San Francisco. Fuentes-Afflick talks about the pressures of balancing caregiving with a STEMM career; how complex and poorly implemented policies are hurting workers and the economy; and steps that the government, universities, and others could take to make a difference.

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In this installment of Science Policy IRL, Kei Koizumi takes us inside the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP. As the principal deputy director for policy at OSTP, Koizumi occupies an unusual position at the very heart of science policy in the United States. OSTP provides science and technology advice to the president and executive office, works with federal agencies and legislators to create S&T policy, and helps strengthen and advance American science and technology. Koizumi talks to Issues editor Lisa Margonelli about what he does at OSTP, how he got there, and the exciting developments in S&T policy that get him out of bed every day. 

Are you involved in science and technology policy? From science for policy to policy for science, from the merely curious to full-on policy wonks, we would love to hear from all of you! Please visit our survey page to share your thoughts and provide a better understanding of who science policy professionals are, what they do, and why—along with a sense of how science policy is changing and what its future looks like.

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When tackling the problem of misinformation, people often think first of content and its accuracy. But countering misinformation by fact-checking every erroneous or misleading claim traps organizations in an endless game of whack-a-mole. A more effective approach may be to start by considering connections and communities. That is particularly important for public health, where different people are vulnerable in different ways. 

On this episode, Issues editor Monya Baker talks with global health professionals Tina Purnat and Elisabeth Wilhelm about how public health workers, civil society organizations, and others can understand and meet communities’ information needs. Purnat led the World Health Organization’s team that strategized responses to misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. She is also a coeditor of the book Managing Infodemics in the 21st Century. Wilhelm has worked in health communications at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and USAID. 

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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. 

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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)

Douglas Duncan is an astronomer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. He is also an eclipse fanatic. Since 1970, he has been to 11 total solar eclipses. When April 8, 2024, comes around, he’ll experience his twelfth with his 600 best friends as he leads a three-day eclipse viewing extravaganza in Texas. “It looks like the end of the world,” he says, and a total eclipse can be a source of intense fascination. He uses the emotional experience of the eclipse as a gateway to learning more about science. 

On this episode, Lisa Margonelli talks to Duncan about how he has used this sense of experiential wonder, particularly in planetariums, as a way to invite the public into the joy of science. In previous generations, planetariums were seen as “old fashioned” and isolated from the work of modern astronomers. But Duncan pioneered a career track that combined public teaching at a planetarium with a faculty position at the University of Colorado. Now many planetariums have become places where academic astronomers can share their knowledge with the public. 

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Visit Doug Duncan’s website to learn more about his work. 

Read about his work at NASA. 

Want to photograph the solar eclipse? Duncan has made an app for that called Solar Snap. 

Learn more about using eclipses to engage the public. 

See the itinerary for Duncan’s “Totality Over Texas” trip, which will be attended by 600 people. The trip offers three days of eclipse-related activities. 

The Science Policy IRL series pulls back the curtain on who does what in science policy and how they shaped their career path. In previous episodes we’ve looked at the cosmology of science policy through the eyes of people who work at federal agencies and the National Academies, but this time we are exploring think tanks. 

Walter Valdivia describes how a chance encounter while he was getting a PhD in public policy at Arizona State University led him into science policy. Since then he’s worked at think tanks including Brookings and the Mercatus Center and is now at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, which does research for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this episode, we’ll talk to Walter about what think tanks do in the policy world and how policy sometimes creates inherent paradoxes. 

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Visit the Institute for Defense Analysis’ Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) to learn more about Walter’s current work. 

Check out the book, Between Politics and Science by David Guston, to see what inspired Walter’s career in science policy. Here is the first chapter.

Visit the Center for Nanotechnology in Society’s website. 

Read Walter and David Guston’s paper, “Responsible innovation: A primer for policymakers.”

Read “Is Patent Protection Industrial Policy?” to learn more about policy paradoxes. 

Check out The Honest Broker by Roger Pielke, Jr. to learn more about the role of impartial expertise. 

Interested in learning more about Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs)? Read this primer.