i want to welcome our distinguished guests and visitors here to the first of two search and science education subcommittee hearings dedicated to the development of legislation to reauthorize programs that the national science foundation today will hear from the distinguished director of the national science foundation and the chair of the national science board next week we will hear from a diverse panel of outside witnesses who will weigh in on some of the broader issues we hope to address through this legislation including support for young investigators and s f important role in science technology engineering and mathematics stem education the industry's role in supporting basic research and the future of interdisciplinary research as part of our hearing today i hope will look at the issue of young investigators in fiscal year two thousand and six new investigators achieved an eighteen percent funding success rate compared to returning investigator success rate of thirty percent and an overall agency rate of twenty five percent i know that n s f is making it a priority to narrow this gap and that it supports outstanding young investigators through the very prestigious career grants program however i also believe that more can be done to nurture and support new researchers and that we need to be creative in figuring out ways to keep bright young researchers in the pipeline for this reason the committee is considering creating a new pilot program of c grants to new investigators to give them an opportunity to strengthen their proposals before resubmitting them through their merit review process and other topics particular interest to us this today is industry's role in funding basic research are leaders in high tech industry that understand that their future depends in large part on the scientific advances made by researchers and university labs across the country unfortunately however many in industry fail to see or ignore the potential for university industry partnerships to further their own success and competitiveness n s f can play a significant role in changing attitudes and fostering partnerships by providing incentives to both university researchers and private sector officials to bridge this divide and encourage participation in research this committee is also quite concerned about the slow growth and in some cases shrinking budget of them education programs at n s f chairman gordon has introduced legislation to strengthen and broaden existing k through twelve stem education programs at n s f in particular noice teacher to scholarship program the math and science partnership and the stem talent expansion program today i'd like to spend time discussing stems our n s f role in stem education including technological training at two year college through the advanced technological education program and i might energex also that i'm very grateful for dr cor america visiting my district last week and meeting with a number of educational leaders throughout the spectrum dr merit it was a pleasure to have you there and i'm glad you managed to get home in spite of the travel difficulties they also hope that we will explore the concept of interdisciplinary research the front tiers of twenty first century science are very much dominated by what most would consider to be interdisciplinary research research conducted by teams of scientists t integrate information data methods perspectives and theories from two or more bodies with specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or solve problems beyond the scope of a single discipline without compromising the strength of the individual discipline or the ability of the lone scientist to make great advances on their own topics within his or her own field we need to also make sure that interdisciplinary proposals get a fair hearing and s f has shown a great leadership on this issue but i believe there are ways to better define this process and look forward to ongoing discussions with the agency and the community on ways to go about this i should add that many of these issues we that we must deal with in the context of n s f reauthorization are issues that the greater community is also grappling with however because n s f funds twenty percent of basic research at u s colleges and universities across all science and engineering disciplines and because n s f continues to be at the forefront of the ever evolving scientific enterprise there are issues of particular importance to me to the subcommittee and to the n addition to some of these broad issues we'll take a look today at some specific budget and administrative issues at the foundation some of which are longstanding issues sense of concern and others of which have been brought to the attention of the committee more recently i want to note this committee supports the administration's proposal to double funding for basic science research over a ten year period and the authorization levels that we will propose are aligned with the administration's plans however i also want to suggest that we can't afford to keep playing this game of increasing funding for one set of disciplines while decreasing our flatlining funding of others we will continue to advocate for increased funding for basic and applied research across the board but we need help from the entire scientific community in justifying such increases to the rest of our colleagues in congress and to the american taxpayer as well we must also recognize these are tight budget times we can't simply throw money at science because we want to we need to maintain diligence in ensuring that research we find is of top quality that federally funded researchers are held to the highest standards of ethical conduct of research and that we are thoughtful in setting priorities for research funding finally i want to be clear that the process for developing n s f reauthorization bill is to be open transparent and responsive to all concerned parties both within and outside the government i welcome your suggestions and it could encourage you to be in touch with me with your thoughts or ideas and that's the brought you not just our witnesses today but others in the they're here in the audience or in the scientific community we welcome their feedback and their suggestions d dr behring thank you for being here with us today i look forward to hearing your testimony to receiving your input and guidance as we develop this n s f reauthorization legislation and thank you both for your leadership on the foundation and the board and i now yield to my colleague ranking member ehlers for his opening remarks thank you mr chairman and thank you gentlemen for being here representing one of the finest institutions in the federal government and perhaps the finest you will find this to be a friendly committee i'm sure  certainly more friendly than much of the rest of the the congress not that anyone dislikes you but the they all say they like you but don't provide money for you we will continue to try to do what we can to not only like you but provide money for you i am pleased to participate in the research and science education subcommittees first hearing of this congress to address the reauthorization of the national science foundation the goals of reauthorization are to improve the functioning of an agency achieved from hearing from expert witnesses like those before us today and the n s f consumers will testify at the end of the month and their second hearing in finding areas for strengthening and improvement i believe we must remain cognizant of the uniqueness of the national science foundation what goes for other agencies may not necessarily apply i know the committee is interested in exploring some of the relationships the national science foundation has established with industry and i am keenly interested in the in encouraging these relationships while maintaining the quality of fundamental research as current researchers kno potential applications are important but should not dictate reserved research designed exclusively chairman baird and i share concerns and several areas of anisette including maintaining the integrity and capacity of the peer review process managing increasingly interdisciplinary research portfolios and educating our future workforce in all stem related jobs not just those historically identified as science  engineering careers finally i look forward to hearing about and assess preparations for future funding increases that this committee has worked tirelessly to authorize and ultimately see supported through the appropriations process and i certainly also share the chairman's concern about the young scientists and certainly encouraged them so that they can get their feet in the door to begin their tenure track before they lose their position for lack of funding of their research i think dr matt and dr appearing for being here today and i look forward to your testimony if there are other members who wish to submit additional opening statements your statements will be added to the record at this time i'd like to introduce our two witnesses dr arden by mantis director of the national science foundation he became the director in two thousand and four after having served more than two years as director of the national institute of standards and technology dr steven bering is to chair the national science board he has served on the board since two thousand and two was elected chairman in two thousand and six before retiring in two thousand he served for seventeen years as president of party university in indiana as our witnesses both know well spoken testimony is limited to five minutes each after which members of the committee will have five minutes each to ask questions and we will start with dr ben and again thank you gentlemen both for being here chairman  member ehlers members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today you've raised a number of important issues and are your invitation letter and i commend you both for taking an active role in promoting a discussion of these questions before i address some of your specific questions i want to let you know how much i appreciate your strong statements of support for fiscal year two thousand and eight budget request as you know the request will provide an eight point seven percent increase over the continuing resolution funding at this level keep an eye on the course for the president's american competitiveness initiative to drive innovation and sharpen america's competitive edge let me move on to the specific issues you've raised the first is in regard  search to nurture young investigators we take this responsibility very seriously and address it in a variety of ways our signature faculty early career development program called career is our most prestigious award in support of the early career development of young investigators excess all applicants must effectively integrate research and education within the context of their organizations mission n s f provides four hundred new career awards scientists and engineers called p case this presidential award is the nation's highest honor bestowed on scientists and engineers beginning their careers n s f also engages in a variety of outreach efforts to support and nurture young investigators half days program provides workshops to assist investigators in understanding the process of submitting proposals to n s f over the past five years we have sponsored forty workshops and that have attracted nearly six thousand participants additional outreach efforts pair n s f program officers with researchers whose proposals have been declined in an effort to improve proposals for subsequent resubmission the effectiveness of these efforts as shown by the fact that the share of grants to new investigators has remained stable of at about twenty eight percent over the past decade although the overall success rate has declined from around thirty percent to twenty one percent and that same period the proportion of gra grantees receiving an award within seven years of their last degree has also remain stable at about seventy four percent let me quickly move on to the matter of an appropriate balance between interdisciplinary and disciplinary research part for interdisciplinary research is a priority for the n s f because it presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation finding the proper balance for results from discussions with the national science board and through feedback from our many stakeholders f centers and the priority areas outlined in our budget also serve as a catalyst for generating interdisciplinary proposals we continually make a strong effort to communicate our interest in supporting interdisciplinary research the flexibility of n a s a s merit review process allows program officers to use multiple approaches to meet the challenge of reviewing interdisciplinary proposals in some cases may reviews are used to provide deep expertise various aspects of proposals panel reviews are often used to integrate reviews from different disciplinary perspectives and or provide a broader interdisciplinary overview recognizing interdisciplinary proposals poses little difficulty especially when they are submitted in response to a specific solicitation fast lane or electronic grant application process also gives us an opportunity to select multiple programs to consider their proposal in fiscal year two thousand and four the national science board initiated the task force on transformative research and a planning document generated by this task force is currently under review a key concern of this effort is stimulating interdisciplinary that is transformative research while maintaining the balance with disciplinary research ultimately this issue can only be addressed through continuous feedback between n s f and the scientific community maintaining this balance is central to our role as stewards of the us scientific and engineering enterprise let me move on to the matter of how n s f focuses attention to research issues of national importance i meet the research challenges that rise to gnash significance n s f relies on input from many sources reports from the national academies r and d guidance as presented by the o s t p o m b priorities memo and the national science board presidential priorities such as the american competitiveness initiative congressional interest and our extensive interaction with the research community n s f research priorities are evaluated by kit on a continuous basis by our advisory committees committees of visitors scientific conferences strategic plans and so forth by funding collaborative grants and cooperative agreements n s f can foster partnerships with academia and industry potentially expediting the transition of basic research to products n s f center programs and gage directly encouraging industry and university partnerships perhaps an s s most effective partnership with industry is our support of undergraduate and graduate students who enter the private sector armed with the latest understanding of advances in science and engineering fields mr chairman the issues you have raised in this hearing are profound importance not only tennessee but to the nation they are not easy matters nor do they lend themselves to simplistic or formulaic solutions but i look forward to working with you on these issues would be pleased as for any questions you might have thank you dr mant and i'm painfully aware that for something as complicated as as an s f and related board five minutes introductory statement is not nearly enough but please rest assured we'll give you plenty of time through the q and a to elaborate on some of the very very salient points you made  foundation this is my first time to testify before you is chairman of the national science board position to which i was elected in may or six and i am indeed honored to be with you congress established the national science board in hundred fifty and gave a dual responsibilities to guide the activities of an established the policies for the national science foundation and to serve as an independent advisory body to the president and the congress on national policy issues related to science and engineering research and education on behalf of the entire board in the widespread and diverse research and education communities that we all serve i thank the members of the subcommittee for your long term support of a broad portfolio of investments in science technology engineering and mathematics research and education your continuing bipartisan commitment to excellence and us science and engineering research and education has ensured that the u s remains a leader in global innovation and discovery my complete written testimony has already been submitted to you for the record let me now briefly address the questions chairman baird raised in a slide of march seven first what can n s f do to nurture young investigators and to improve their funding rates there's a major and ongoing concern for the board in our december all three report to congress that responded to section twenty two of the last an authorization act we identified the need of an additional one billion dollars over the five year period of zero two to zero seven to fund more grants generally and two hundred million to fund an expansion of the matter how excellent the academic records are less likely to be employed by a top tier institution and more likely to start their careers and primarily teaching situations expanding research in these institutions therefore opens doors for new ph d s to build careers and research we also support the expansion of the n s f career faculty early career and similar programs coupled with general expansion of funding for basic research also called for by the american competitiveness initiative and the national academies report rising above the gathering storm the n s a of authorization to include a welcome authority to double the budget over a five year period to nearly ten billion dollars seven the actual zero seven budget of approximately six billion represents a significant gap with the o two authorization the american competitiveness initiative again calls for doubling of the us budget over a ten year period we would respectfully suggest that the time to implement these admirable authorizations and initiatives has never been more urgent than now the second series of questions regarding n s f funding for in the discipline our research focused on the appropriate balance between funding for interdisciplinary and disciplinary research best mechanisms for soliciting and funding in the disciplinary research impose rules and the sufficiency of publicizing in the disciplinary research funding opportunities at and this is another area to which n s f and the board have given considerable attention and resources nonetheless there remain substantial issues assure that in the disciplinary research is not disadvantaged in the highly competitive and has merit review system or in the academic sector by structural impediments and i have an s f has taken a number of steps over a long period of time to ensure that the level of investment the mechanisms of support address structural roadblocks the funding into disciplinary research for example and as of supports nearly one hundred centers in part to provide gr opportunities for courage in the disciplinary research the most recent board guidance to n s f on balance between settlers and individual investigator awards establishes a six to eight percent of the r and r a budget as an appropriate level to support centers with respect to publicizing opportunities for the disciplinary research i should point out that most research proposal submitted to us unsolicited and that is a good thing for the health of us research to a great extent listen abel's the research community to self identify and establish a balance between disciplinary and interdisciplinary work on the basis of opportunities for discovery and the quality of the research proposal submitted however it is also important to ensure that researchers are knowledgeable about all anis funding opportunities and the process for obtaining that funding and further that the review process  fair and results in the best use of scarce funding to fund cutting edge research you also ask about the analysts ever role in research driven by national needs and fostering university industry partnerships and the broadly and narrowly defined of always shape the portfolio of our investments the board established criteria and two of the merit reviews system and part to enhance partnerships potential benefits to society and contributions to innovation for the n s f has long participated in interagency r and d priorities most recently including the national nanotechnology initiative climate change science program networking and information technology r and d and homeland security moreover n s f center programs often explicitly require partnering with industry in addition and as a fund small business innovation research and cross agency and cross sectoral research programs in such areas as earthquake science and engineering and research in the polar regions borders also recently published a report recommending a new national hurricane research initiative that cuts across fields of science suggests a cold lead role for n s f a no or that includes a number of additional agencies as major players your final question concerns and as priorities in case sixteen science technology engineering and mathematics so called stem education and how the current budget reflects those priorities especially n s s role in undergraduate education the board has been especially concerned with this major area of and as else responsibility education and science technology engineering and math education is a core mission of and even while u s student performance of mathematics and science is declining relatively  as assessed internationally changing workforce requirements mean that new workers will need ever more sophisticated skills in stem disciplines following a request from congress the board of stylist a new advisory commission on twenty first century education and science technology engineering and mathematics in march of zero six comprising a wide range of eminent experts representing the broad scope of interests and us stem education we have charged that commission to examine and advise us on the role of and both pre college and undergraduate education as part of its over these more over the border six practice shortly do we see the report of a true cation and human resources committee on engineering education reform primarily at the undergraduate level we expect that following our board meeting next week when we will receive advice from our stem education commission and over the next few months with the work of the board's education and human resources committee evaluating assessments of and as of education programs we will develop new guidance to the foundation on its priorities for education programs at the undergraduate and pre college levels following our board meeting next week we would welcome the opportunity to meet with individual members of your committee and others in the congress and the administration to discuss the board's national action plan for addressing our nation's stem education the federal investment in the nation science and technology is a necessity for our future prosperity and security to quote a recent editorial by microsoft founder bill gates in the washington post is the united states is to remain a have just returned this past week from the european union's congress and i am absolutely impressed and astounded at the progress of those twenty seven nations we must sustain the advantages we have gained through continued wise adequate federal support for our science and engineering research and education and the prize the national science foundation is a key asset to our nation having proven itself effective in stimulating discovery and innovation for now over half a century working in partnership with the research and higher education community yes the board is committed to working with you to assure that limited federal funding get together to discuss that the stem education study come up with and dr elders and i and other members of committee or interest and i'm sure we'll find a time to do that as it's of critical importance how so see a president our audience a number of the eighty's for the very science  directorates we met with last week good to see all of you folks thanks for being here and for your work and also staff from the science board as well we appreciate the work of the staff at this point will open up our first round of questions that you would recommend recognize themselves for five minutes the issue of staff that i just raise one of my first questions would be as we talk about the idea of possibly doubling the budget which i hope will do over the next several years that will carry with it some administrative needs including workforce infrastructure and travel if we just expand the number of research grants but we don't expand the infrastructure necessary to manage those grants seems to me will be in some trouble i open up to either of you to address that issue and any thoughts you have about how it needs to be addressed yes thank you and thank you for calling attention to an item that is absolutely critical to the quality of our work many of the opportunities that the foundation faces right american review process is depended entirely on our program officers and program directors at the present time they are chronically overworked i worry that  they may not be picking up the transformative research opportunities for a lack of time to really dig into some of the good proposals that they're they're getting that has to be rectified but in addition of that we need to maintain our investments  productivity enhancing tools both electronic and otherwise that take some of the workload for our staff travel is important because you can't do post war oversight unless you can get out and visit the investigators either at meetings where they congregate or at their home research laboratories all these taken together plus  issues of cyber security modernizing our information technology within the foundation fall under our agency operations and award management budget line and i would urge reauthorization that that be included as a major priority and i would also very much welcome your advocacy to be sure that we give full funding this year weight request i appreciate that i think you know it oftentimes when the appropriations season comes around and we look for offsets we tend to say well we'll go after the administrative line but ministre the personnel and necessary to make the system work and not only just personnel but as you say the travel the equipment the resources and it's just not responsible realistic to say we're going to plus up one side and not give the resources sustain that so we will make that already thank secondly i i'm intrigued by the process and it's a discussion that would probably extend well beyond today but the process by which the board in the fall they shouldn't determine where the resources will go and  what percentage of the dollars what total amount of dollars will go to one directorate versus another one enterprise within a directorate versus another let me throw out a thought that occurred to me the other day i might understand wh think when you look at say the big super colliders and giant telescopes a tremendous amount of money is going to those and i they're expensive installations but as i look at that some of the greatest national challenges we're going to face in the next several decades i would say if see if you one would be the war on terror and the comp national security issue a second would be clearly energy third would be rising health care costs etc as i look at those a portion of those will be addressed  the the traditional physical biological and other sciences but behavior human behavior is going to have a great deal to do in fact if we wanted to truly address our energy crisis in the most immediate way possible it would not be through cellulosic ethanol or for god sakes nuclear fusion which is a little ways off to say the least it would be by everybody driving less and carpooling and using mass transit and if we did that we could cut energy consumption by ten percent or raise that to ask do we need some grand challenges in the social sciences or grand social challenges to which we would apply the social sciences in addition to the other sciences and how might that be considered by the foundation of the board in the coming years  you mr chairman for that question there's no question but the the human component in all of our research is increasing because of the increasing complexity of the research you mentioned interdisciplinary in many of our interdisciplinary programs of social sciences or social scientists or folk art and grand challenges are important because the cost of doing research in the social sciences is going up because of increasing complexity and size of databases and the kind of research that they need to do  trying to analyze those type of data with advanced cyber infrastructure so i fully agree that we we do have to give appropriate emphasis to the social sciences we have to integrate them with all of our other major programs and the grand challenge idea is a good one thank you my time is expired i of language that would be very helpful i think the most important need i've already discussed as far as our agency operation the word management account i think that deserves special notice in the  a very minor elemental we do have the watermen award which honors the first director of the foundation and each year we try to select one from many disciplines and many outstanding candidates i continu get a request from the actual committee we have that goes through the screening process and has a very difficult time that this may be the time to increase it to three so i would put that before the committee is there's a component of the  the answer is yes thank you could you be a little more specific well i've got a large number of notes that i would like to present for the record but  clearly under the major research instrumentation section which is section three part d we have just increased the ceiling to four million dollars and we've also increased the funding in that in the zero eight require us to two hundred  fourteen million dollars we don't know yet what the skill will be of that distribution and who we may be disadvantaging and in the lower cost instrumentation across our constituency and rather than to raise the ceiling so high that one or two awards would lead to greatly disadvantage a larger number of applicants more important  i think the thing that section five is is a good a good section as far as interdisciplinary research we've already addressed that there's already or is more that we can do but invariably it deals with the the nature of the science question that needs to be addressed and how the community responds to the so as a bottom up organization we really can't define all the opportunities for interdisciplinary but we certainly encourage it we've been at this now for twenty five years and finally the universities are getting religion and they've begun to reduce the other silos a little bit so in unsolicited proposals we're seeing an increasing fraction and now it's up to anywhere from forty to perhaps fifty percent there are multiple p i m many of those are interdisciplinary but they're unsolicited and i could go on there's there's much more in here i would certainly appreciate having that for the record doctor appearing in a comment you wish to make we addressed that issue and others and my written testimony starting on page fourteen and we also addressed it in a previous hearing on march the twentieth let me comment specifically on you know section six a new investigators and we are struggling with how we can get transformative research front and center in our endeavors and i think this  one of which is to increase the length of the school year as you compare ourselves with asia and europe it's astounding how much more time their student spends in class and formal instruction than ours do and some of the requirements they have for science and language which we do not have so i would highlight those two items as extremely helpful activism and i may bring up one other section that i think is critically important in that section twelve on cost sharing let me first emphasize that we accept cost sharing in fact we encourage it we just don't require it the reason we don't require it is that there are many institutions and many investigators that can't get a cashier especially among minority serving institutions and some escort states for example to put it in as a requirement disadvantages  from even being able to submit a proposal and i think that's wrong i think we should continue to encourage car share but we should not mandate it thank you both well dr dialogue major dialogue that we're having agreement on the facts it's very difficult to have a intelligent conversation if you can't agree on the facts of course we're all and privileged to have our own interpretations that we shouldn't have our own facts to yours i think one of them is climate change and global warming and to whom should we turn your organizations are certainly among those to whom should we turn as an honest broker so that we can have some agreed upon facts for this discussion when dr bartlett it's it's good that you brought up that question because i just came from dartmouth university where we had all the arctic nations come together and discuss that for about three days the the trends are not looking good in fact they may not be linear in fact i suspect they're not linear they can become out of catalytic over time so you just can't take what's happened in the past and project it very very comfortably into the future i think it's it's a global problem that will require global approaches to research and global approaches to the mitigation to whom do we tired for some agreement on what the facts are that we can have an intelligent conversation another area that's very important is the energy area and peak oil and if in fact we have reached as many people believe we have the maximum capability the earth for producing oil conventional sources then we in the united states particularly in the world in general faces a very uncertain future well i would i would recommend you turn to the national science foundation first of all we don't federer any of our staff or any of our grantees and taking an open stance on any issue in fact we have requirements in our grant manual that requires open sharing and an open publication and an open discussion of issues so that goes on all the time and certainly we would welcome any questions you have on any of those issues and certainly working with the national science bar that's an ideal place to raise some of those issues as an example of one of the areas that you mentioned the cellulosic ethanol there's now a lot of hype about  a speech was given by hyman rickover fifty years ago the fifteenth day of this may to a group of physicians at st paul minnesota and then that he noted that the time would come when we needed it we would have to change from fossil fuels to renewables and that that would then be a a tension between food and energy and we've seen that tension in corn ethanol we produce relatively trifling amounts of ethanol from corn but we've doubled the price of corn and tortillas have gone up so that poor mexicans can hardly afford to buy them and our dairy industry is dying because of the increased price of corn so now we're trying to cellulosic ethanol but hyman rickover also noted this first of all i work with reco over in the pentagon and i some years back and i had an opportunity to see how his mind works so it doesn't surprise me a bit that he was twenty years or thirty years ahead of his ethanol is an opportunity for the future there's a lot of research going on at the present time to determine how to break those as well as for that matter and to do it economically challenge is water this nation is going to be challenge for water supply and you can't produce ethanol without water and so the idea that you can go into the optimistic unless you can figure out how to pump water to the production facilities so i my feeling is that michigan is probably in a very good position as compared with say south dakota chairman thank you mr ehlers i want to commend the board i spent my career i'm a new member of congress and i spent my career in the research and development area and i've always been impressed with the national science foundation the sorts of projects that are funded how efficient they work and so on and so i think it's a very good operation i'm proud to be on the committee overseeing that operation i have a couple of questions on my first question is a structural issue what specifically is being done that observation to award in the mit review process toward new researchers as opposed to researchers with a track record of publications and in that process how can we make sure that we're being fair to the more seasoned researchers well as i mentioned in my opening remarks we take a look at what i would call market share which is a surrogate for competition competitiveness and when we see that  researchers are or are garnering about twenty percent of the wards of the awards that's good in itself but it's been stable over time when the success rate has gone down which means that we're now in a more competitive  time than we were maybe six or seven years ago but at the same time we've been able to sustain that market share for for younger investigators the one thing that i've tried to do is to  put more emphasis on soliciting grants because it's usually unsolicited grants where young investigators get their start build their research teams have a bright idea perhaps an extension of their dissertation but perhaps not and i can report that when i came into the other foundation the percentage of research grants that were unsolicited was a seventy one percent which means that twenty nine percent were solicit today the end soliciting grants are up to eighty percent and the solicited grants are at twenty percent which indicates we're skewing the opportunity for these types of grant proposals from  from young investigators the other thing that you know every young investigator has to go through a learning curve you know they when they first come to university they've got to set up a research group they've got to equip a laboratory then they've got to figure out what the first graduate student is going to work on and then usually the first two or three proposals  so they need feedback and they need encouragement and they need mentoring and getting up that learning curve and our program officers are absolutely masters at providing that type of guidance and that type of  american competitive initiative proposes doubling the research budgets but the education budget is getting much smaller increase and we continue to see the latest any e results problems that high school students are having forty percent scoring below basic math level but we're not seeing the increases or thing decreases in the funding for education and n s f now how is n s f going to accomplish the goal of reversing these trends and educating more bringing up the education level science math  stem as in general with these underfunding these crucial areas but let me say congressman that education is clearly one of our highest priorities if not the highest and we work closely with the board on this issue you ask about national needs and whether the science science foundation is addressing national needs i can think of a more important national need at the present time th n than education and here i'm talking about to post op nobody all of the learning ladder our focus is pretty much in three areas clearly one is to produce more stem educated teachers and also to upgrade the content proficiency of existing teachers so teacher preparation and service training is critically important  second major priority is to fill up the pipeline to encourage students to better instruction so more excitement in the classrooms through more activity based learning to better integration in some ways being squeezed out of the key through twelve education sector well i think that's turning around we do have the opportunity you know wade in our math and science partnership to worth thirty million dollars worth of new grants and i think that came about as a result of the evaluation of the program to show that it was very effective and increasing both math and science proficiency so we hope that's not a different slope at the present time a positive slope instead of a negative slope there are many other programs that we've targeted because of their effectiveness some deal with undergraduate education but our g k twelve program which is a program that makes possible graduate students going into the classroom in k twelve  classes to serve as a resource base in teaching math and science working with the teachers working with the students and that's turned out to be one of our most effective programs providing that role model in the classroom e mandate from congress that we established the american competitiveness council and the sense of congress was the program should be substantially increased seven so that my full expectation is that we'll continue to push on those programs and dry and post them up in the future a budget cycles but  with nanotechnology and national and technology initiatives when what n s f is doing and also about the inner agency hydrogen in fuel cells technical task force what is going on with with that but i'll yield back right now  dr pinsky mr hall prepared to ask questions at this point yes thank you i'm sorry to be late most of us all of us i guess have other committees that require a lot of our time and i didn't know what questions had been asked spearman until i co d and the president's american competitiveness initiative initiative is for programs that the department of education in our committee has a few bailes before to speak to k twelve education and n s f particularly h r five twenty four which is a partnership for access to the laboratory science male and h r three sixty two the ten thousand teachers ten million minds math and science scholarship back yes i'd ask you to comment on the bales if you would foundation for education amounts to one tenth of one percent of the total funding that goes into education k twelve education so it's a very precious resource and that research resource needs to continue to be focused on and development because there's very little funding that is available for research and development and education to develop better methods better instructional materials better teacher training and so forth and that means that at the end of our process as we get into advanced development we'll be able to show that these programs are effective have an impact can be scaled can be transferred and are sustainable those are the principal objectives of many of our programs it requires effective partnerships with the states with the school boards and with other entities in order to have that off and carry it into implementation and that's what we spend a lot of time in our programs doing is establishing partnerships the math and science partnership programs for example in order to carry those new methods and best practices into implementation and that will continue to be our approach the one thing that would really drain our resources is if we in any bill were asked to really take on the implementation role because that's more than we could possibly handle with any foreseeable resource that we could we could be assigned so i would i would urge the committee to pay attention to some focus on education research and development in appropriate resources for research and development and in these bills here to add to that when we come forward well for our stem commission's recommendations i wouldn't be surprised if you will hear that one of the most important changes that is necessary for america is revision of our attitude and commitment at the family and community level so i've traveled around the country and the world in this regard i'm struck by the fact that we send our kids off to school and forget them there obviously we're very grateful and very excited about the increase in the research and related account budget that will allow us to go forward with a number of new initiatives the two areas that are still problematic for you indicated if we look at the increase from six to zero eight there's a fairly healthy increase in much of the each our budget but it would have been  very a gratifying if we could have gotten some attention in the continuing resolution for you or the other part that is strained at the moment is that we have all this wonderful money in our research account but we didn't get any money in our agency operation toward management and so already starting from a situation where we had an extreme overload on our program officers we've only exacerbated that's both a good and bad part of that it's an assessor policy to allow but not require cost sharing dr baring is the board consistent with that perspective that the allowance of cost sharing is supported by the board ok that's good to hear because i think it's important i fully believe industry which is coming to us through rising about the gathering storm and a host of other studies is pointing out that we need well educated workforce and scientists i think it's important they play participatory role in that process and i want to make it possible make sure we make it possible for them to do so and indeed while i wouldn't require it i would encourage as i think dr man's point is well taken that not everyone can obtain such cooperation or call funding but to the extent that someone can help bring that to the table i think there's a nice synergy possible and it should be allowed a question i have that emerges to me as i've talked to some of the discipline base sciences  in some of the universities is can we use the n s f grant process for research to facilitate the educational enterprise and the educational enterprise at two levels one educating more scientists per se but also educating more science educators and and it seems to me there there's potential for either competitive competitiveness or comp complementarity between grants and let me give the example if we award a large research grant to an individual does that possibly insulate them depending on how we structure the grant does it possibly insulate them from the activity of actually training new scientists or training science educators or are there ways we can structure grants to incentivize those who educate directly involve themselves in the education aside as i talk to one scientist who said you want to start making sure we educate enough science is tie our grants to it  he knew where his bread with watered and i'd be i welcome your thoughts about that well i'm absolutely floored that that question came up because in our criterion two for our grandfather impacts that clearly is an area of focus and we not only encourage it but we expect not only that but we also require accountability so it's not just reporting on the good side as it was done under scientific merit it's also important that they report on how they fulfill their promise in criterion to as far as education is concerned the other thing that i would mention is that a good bit of our education and research and education is really carried out by our research director it's just not just you need an h r in fact there's a very close partnership mutually leveraging education that can be supported by the research director some bringing new cont to arrive it at the desk of other reviewers with the sole difference between them that the one place is explicit and greater emphasis on utilizing a portion of the grant to educate new scientists and to coordinate with the science at education activities of the college of education that would be looked on more favorably conceivably if everything all of that there is there is a question of whether we would give preference in criterion two for education or for industry coupling and so forth the one thing that we have to be very cautious is that we don't use other him as a trump against scientific merit because the scientific merit has to be there and it has to be solid otherwise we begin to tarnish our our gold standard of merit review but those things are all taken into account by or panels and the chances are pretty high that they would be considered we've yet to address issues of  in any detail today out of her aging and supporting researchers of diverse backgrounds and particularly ethnic diversity or economic opportunities and also gender issues create either of you commenting briefly on that and what the front in all of our research directorates and research offices they take that very seriously in fact if you look at the total investment across the foundation a broadening participation about a quarter to a third of that is funded through the research director it's in the research offices in a variety of ways and of course that only provides internal leverage to be able to do more than we're currently doing and so i'm pretty proud about  the the wide variety of programs that we have that are dedicated to broadening participation and the way we can integrate those to get more impact and more leverage to bring you care to comment on that i would certainly agree with that i'm  minded of an experience i had while i was dean of the medical school in the island of the accrediting commission came by and said why don't you appoint a woman plastic surgeon and i looked around at the thank you mr chairman first of all just a comment several years ago several of us in the republican majority were successful in getting a bill through the congress to double the n s f funding years is better than ten years so let me challenge the new majority to try to go back to the bill we passed and encourage you to do whatever you can to meet that standard the other comment we talked a bit about the young scientists versus the older scientists let's take just a broader view that years ago i know that europe was very concerned about the brain drain scientists moving to the u s i'm starting to discern a brain drain the other way because a lack of adequate funding here and increasing funding in other countries we have actually lost ground compared to other countries several other countries who are rapidly increasing their research funding i personally know scientists to move to europe recently he was tired of struggling with annual we make a great deal of peer review in the us and i think it's excellent but it's also very important to have peers and to talk to young scientists recently who has not had not at all happy  because it was not just young scientists versus older scientists but this person had a very good new approach was being recognised in the field for that applied for and i said grant and it was appalled that some of the comments by some of the so called peer reviewed it and which the comments indicated a basic misunderstanding of the science involved obviously we're not familiar with that new some even worrying about the young scientist getting it but recognizing that many times young scientists have a new idea that if someone's not been active in the research field for a few years may have passed them by so it's it's a multi faceted problem it's not just young versus old and i think you can make good a good argument for dramatically increasing the funding for young scientists but also you have to have good peer review and even though there wasn't a question there i do have opinions on those remarks first of all in our peri view process and as much as we're emphasizing frontier research we do try to include younger scientists who are pretty well pretty well recognized because they know where the frontier is and they know what's important at the frontier where the important research is being done and that has  that's been a very positive contribution in our panels and even our individual reviews but we do have we do have due process within the foundation where people who have been declined investigators who have been declined can challenge the decline and that goes through several steps of review all the way up to the deputy director so there are there are ways in which someone who feels that they haven't had an added peer review can get the attention of the foundation i hope you also recognize the reluctance of a new research well it's not very frequent but the deputy director indicate she saw only had one appeal that came up to her level as a final review step appeal step and it wasn't worthy of consideration think you know as we've sort of been talking this morning education is one of the issues that challenges our country in terms of science and technology and i think it's a lot of it is a cultural issue many of the young people don't look at science as a profession or engineering as a profession that appeals to them is there anything that they can be done within the national science foundation to sort of change that perception or attack the cultural issue that we're facing in terms of attracting young people into this profession absolutely there is congressman the the focus right now is introducing science earlier and elementary school perhaps third to fifth grade and even engineering for that matter because that's hands on and that can excite children toward science and engineering and give them some early understanding about what these fields are all about and the other thing that we can actively do is try to work at the interfaces between primary and secondary education secondary education community colleges and with institutions of higher learning at universities and colleges and this is a continuity i was talking about because oftentimes a child will have a wonderful experience and elementary school transition to a secondary school it may be a trouble school may not have had adequate  teaching talent in stem education and then it suddenly dissipates it's a turn off the same thing between high school and college so there needs to be more effective attention given to reducing the barriers and coupling preparation with expectation and entrance requirements at universities so we don't lose people from from those pathways as they move through the system and that's where a lot of our effort is focused well in in my district there's some economically disadvantaged areas and i see a lot of young people that are engaged in the process and no but i would suggest is that we find a way to to make the science more glamorous looking or engineering more appealing  because that's what it's going to take we're going to go across those barriers to get people involved to make children understand not only the practicality but also the beauty of science so that's my recommendation you're absolutely right and this is where the business community can come in because we know that even in some trouble areas where the business community is not only committed but actually engaged and where they can provide released time for their scientists and engineers to work with the public schools i could make a difference also again coupling informal with formal education can be a way of exciting young minds to what science is all about and that is a very effective program in fact as i go to public schools i ask people ask the young children do they know about the national science foundation only a few hands go up but i when i mention some of the television programs that we sponsor almost all the hands go up which makes me feel very good thank you very much our chairman noted the relatively large contributions to energy that conservation could make like buying a more efficient car and carpooling has come paired to hard won contributions of additional energy from alternative sources which reminded me of a very interesting graph that on the net has satisfaction with life how good you feel about your life and on the abscissa is per capita energy use and if you can imagine that little graph in your mind's eye we're way up at the upper right this one person in twenty two using a fourth of all the energy in the world and there one hundred fifty some countries and they polled each of these countries how good they felt about their life and they put a little spot on the graph and not too surprisingly way down on the left side of the graph you have to have some meaningful amount of energy before you can feel good about your life but that curve rises very steeply there and after rising very steeply there and then approaches something of an asymptote that gets a little bit beyond where we are but there are twenty seven countries in the world who use less energy some of them less than half as much energy is what used to feel better about their station in life than then we feel and i mention this because as big as the as the challenges are in the hard science areas i think the biggest challenges for the future going to be in the soft science areas we're just going to have to get used to as a world and particularly in this country living with less energy and that's going to be a real challenge in the soft science  area i come from the hard sciences and my personal training but i recognize that in the future we're going to have really big challenges in the soft science is this a role that the national science foundation plays or do we need to look for another entity for leadership here and  dr bartlett is a role that we're playing and we pay a lot of attention to it i might indicate that we do have energy initiatives and hydrogen fuel cell technology and advanced combustion other means of conservation including renewable fuels and of course these are proposals that are sent to us by top ranked scientists who are really looking at the frontier of these fields and looking way way ahead into the future but your point of bringing in the human factors associated with energy production and energy use and also satisfaction is a very important component i think one of the reasons why we probably are energy hogs but not as well satisfied as we'd like to be  is because of differences in productivity but also the fact that we work herself to death compared with with other nations where their lifestyles are considerably different that is that is a very rich area for social science and understanding human fact i'm glad you mentioned hydrogen and fuel cells in the same breath because as you know and i suspect not everybody knows that hydrogen is not an energy source it is simply a convenient way to carry energy from one place to another and course when you burn it you get only water which is not very polluting but if we're really going to exploit the potential high just has to be with a fuel cell does it because in the fuel cell that's a great candidate for the fuel cell used which means that you have to take into account the energy used in production of hydrogen and if you're going to use energy fair amount of energy especially thermal energy or electrical energy in electrolysis of producing hydrogen you better role of technical education and particularly sciences in the role of technical education as i've talked to a number of our major employers back home yes they need top flight sciences to do the high technology engineering and research but they also need folks who can just work in a high technology environment do such things as basic math averages scatterplots the kind of things that unfortunately oftentimes our high school graduates can't do could you either of you talk briefly about the technical education aspects of n s f and what you see as the future of that i'm not going to address it no way that dr bearing can also address it because i'm coming from purdue i'm familiar with the outstanding technology program that they have oftentimes when we compare ourselves with china and india we about the large number of engineers they produce and compare it with the engineers we produce but oftentimes we don't include technicians and technician training in the equation and yet if you  look at what those people do our technicians are fulfilling jobs in the workplace very much like the engineers in other countries are are fulfilling so we ought to pay attention to that through our advance technological education program or a t v program we have developed partnerships with industry about ninety percent of our programs with community colleges work in cooperation with the private sector and the reason why those partnerships are critically important is that the private sector has the jobs they know what requirements skill requirements they're going to need not only today but in the future so those industry leaders are are the ideal people in their engineering staff to help structure the curriculum for these community colleges and in all of our evaluations we're finding that that's one of the most effective programs we have in the in the n s f not only in training top technical talent but taking away the excuse in the private sector that we have to go abroad because we can't find the technical talent we need here in the united states i'd like to see us get rid of that through more investment in r a t e program i can bring an economy we're going we haven't identified who these people really aren't they are mostly technologists rather than engineers in the sense we employ that term so the differences are not as dramatic as they appear on the surface  another problem we have anticipating what you'll hear from our stymie group is that we do not welcome working professionals into the educational system licensure problems and cultural  blocks and we need to do that there are lots of retirees for example who would be delighted to come into the educational curriculum work and i hope that we can get that done by note for example i appreciate that dr being neither dr elders nor i would be certified to be able to teach in our respective disciplines of high school level then and interestingly enough on the vocational front i know that some top flight welders folks who've worked their whole life in welding in though it inside and out couldn't teach could get a teaching certificate i think will look at that i think what this is are there other comments or questions from the panel if not then before we bring the hearing to close i want to thank our witnesses for their outstanding work and for testifying before a subcommittee this has indeed been a highly educational experience for us and our witnesses and given us a lot to consider as we proceed with developing and marking up legislation to authorize programs at the national science foundation if there is no objection the record will remain open for additional statements from the members and for answers to any follow up questions t committee may ask of the witnesses without objection so ordered the hearing is now of joined thank you again very much thanks very much