Arati Prabhakar, an Indian-origin physicist, is expected to be nominated as President Joe Biden’s scientific adviser this week. Prabhakar is also anticipated to be named head of the White House Office of Science and Technology by Biden (OSTP).
According to an article published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Science, Prabhakar will succeed Eric Lander, who resigned as the President’s Science Advisor on February 7, 2022, after confessing to abusing his employees.
To become OSTP director, Prabhakar will require Senate approval, which may take months. She can, however, take over as the President’s science adviser right now. As a science adviser, she is responsible for resolving difficult science policy challenges, such as how to best position the United States to compete with China. This apart, She’ll have to put in place realistic policies for preventing theft of US-funded university research and reducing inequalities in the research community.
The primary responsibility of a Science Adviser:
The primary responsibility of the science adviser is to assist in the implementation of the US President’s science agenda. In a letter dated January 15, 2021, Biden outlined his science agenda.
According to the article, Biden asked Lander to implement a five-point plan in which he asked Lander to use lessons learned from the pandemic to improve public health, enlist research to combat climate change, ensure that the country remains a global leader in emerging high-tech fields like artificial intelligence and quantum information science, reduce inequality in the research community and turn federally funded basic research into well-paying jobs and new products.
According to the report, William Bonvillian, a former Senate science staffer and federal relations director for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes Prabhakar’s technical experience will be beneficial. He went on to say that she “understands the role of technology in the defence business and how to handle rivalry with China”, and has worked with the private sector in high-tech firms.
According to the Science article, Prabhakar’s familiarity with DARPA could aid the Biden administration in establishing the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and the National Science Foundation’s new technology division (NSF).
The NSF technology directorate and ARPA-H are anticipated to adopt DARPA’s risk-taking ethos as well. Also, Prabhakar is highly unlikely to devote much time to developing new projects because this is a mid-term appointment.
