An optimist takes the helm at NSF

doi:10.1126/science.369.6501.236

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.369.6501.236
	An optimist takes the helm at NSF
	Jeffrey Mervis
	2020-07-17
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2020
英文摘要	The new director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, knows that dark political clouds are hanging over the agency. His boss, President Donald Trump, keeps proposing big cuts to NSF's budget. In Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike have lambasted NSF for not doing more to stop the Chinese government from harvesting the fruits of U.S.-funded research. New reports of sexual harassment, including some involving NSF grantees, seem to pop up weekly, and the national outcry over racial inequities has highlighted the chronic underrepresentation of minorities and women in science. Yet the Indian-born computer scientist was unabashedly upbeat about the future of the U.S. academic research community—where he has spent most of his career—and NSF's role in supporting it during a 2 July remote interview with Science . He was just over a week into his 6-year term and was in the process of moving to the Washington, D.C., area. “If I were advising a family member about whether or not to come here, I would tell them that the United States is still the land of opportunity and the best place to pursue science,” says Panchanathan, 59, who has spent the past 23 years at Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, most recently as executive vice president and head of research and innovation. “And I'm a living example of that.” His view of NSF's budget prospects is similarly optimistic. Asked about the president's repeated attempts to shrink NSF's budget, Panchanathan instead focused on how legislators have repeatedly come to its rescue. “The budget process involves both the administration and Congress, as I understand it,” he says. “And I am very confident that we'll have a positive reception if we continue to communicate the value of federal investments in fundamental research.” (This week, the House of Representatives's spending panel defied a 6% cut proposed by the White House for NSF in 2021 and approved a 3% increase.) Panchanathan, who likes to be called Dr. Panch to avoid the otherwise almost inevitable mangling of his name by legislators, has followed a path taken by countless Asian-born scientists of his generation. He earned undergraduate degrees from top-ranked Indian universities before heading west, in his case to Canada, for his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Ottawa. He spent 8 years as a faculty member there before ASU recruited him in 1997. In 2001 he founded the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing, which develops technology for people with disabilities. For the past decade he has helped ASU President Michael Crow aggressively promote more interdisciplinary research, partnerships with industry, and online courses to foster lifelong learning. “The thing about Panch is that he never makes enemies,” says Morris Goldberg, his doctoral adviser at the University of Ottawa and a longtime collaborator at the center. “His goal is always to bring everything to a win-win situation.” The current debate in Congress over foreign influences on federally funded research will test those skills. Senator Rob Portman (R–OH), who has proposed more stringent oversight over that research, has accused NSF and other agencies of “being asleep at the switch.” Although he declined to comment on Portman's bill, Panchanathan envisions a way to satisfy both those calling for a crackdown and those worried that tighter controls could strangle U.S. innovation. “I hold dearly to the traditional scientific values of transparency and openness,” he says. “But if there are folks who are not reciprocating in that way, we have to take appropriate measures to protect what we think is most important.” Panchanathan says he supports the conclusions of a report on foreign influences that his predecessor, France Córdova, commissioned last year from Jason, an independent group of scientists that advises the government on national security issues. It rejected the need for additional controls on fundamental research deemed sensitive and endorsed a 1985 presidential directive that relies on classifying any sensitive research. “The Jason report makes a lot of sense to me,” he says. So does a proposal by the Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer (NY), that would supersize NSF's current $8 billion budget so it could pour money into the basic research needed to seed a handful of so-called “industries of the future.” Although Panchanathan didn't embrace Schumer's plans for a new technology directorate to manage the huge investment, he dismisses the fears of many scientists that such a realignment would threaten NSF's traditional mission to support academic science. “This approach is going to make the research enterprise very robust and very vibrant,” he says. “When you engage in user-inspired research, the fundamental research questions that you ask yourself become different.” The Trump administration's efforts to restrict immigration pose a challenge that strikes particularly close to home. Panchanathan neither endorsed nor questioned those policies, which he says fall outside his purview. But he urged foreign scientists not to abandon their dreams of coming to the United States. “When you do a Ph.D., it's understood that you're a smart person,” he says. “You understand the context and why things have been done in a particular way. So you need to navigate [that system] to find the best way of getting to where you need to get to.” Panchanathan will now get a chance to test whether his advice to academics also works in a politically fraught environment.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/284321
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Jeffrey Mervis. An optimist takes the helm at NSF[J]. Science,2020.
APA	Jeffrey Mervis.(2020).An optimist takes the helm at NSF.Science.
MLA	Jeffrey Mervis."An optimist takes the helm at NSF".Science (2020).