A vision for U.S. science success

White House science advisor Arati Prabhakar expressed confidence in U.S. science and technology capacities during a talk on Wednesday about major issues the country must tackle.

“Let me start with the purpose of science and technology and innovation, which is to open possibilities so that we can achieve our great aspirations,” said Prabhakar, who is the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and a co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). 

“The aspirations that we have as a country today are as great as they have ever been,” she added.

Much of Prabhakar’s talk focused on three major issues in science and technology development: cancer prevention, climate change, and AI. In the process, she also emphasized the necessity for the U.S. to sustain its global leadership in research across domains of science and technology, which she called “one of America’s long-time strengths.”

“Ever since the end of the Second World War, we said we’re going in on basic research, we’re going to build our universities’ capacity to do it, we have an unparalleled basic research capacity, and we should always have that,” said Prabhakar.

“We have gotten better, I think, in recent years at commercializing technology from our basic research,” Prabhakar added, noting, “Capital moves when you can see profit and growth.” The Biden administration, she said, has invested in a variety of new ways for the public and private sector to work together to massively accelerate the movement of technology into the market.

Wednesday’s talk drew a capacity audience of nearly 300 people in MIT’s Wong Auditorium and was hosted by the Manufacturing@MIT Working Group. The event included introductory remarks by Suzanne Berger, an Institute Professor and a longtime expert on the innovation economy, and Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science and an astrophysicist and leader in gravitational-wave detection.

Introducing Mavalvala, Berger said the 2015 announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves “was the day I felt proudest and most elated to be a member of the MIT community,” and noted that U.S. government support helped make the research possible. Mavalvala, in turn, said MIT was “especially honored” to hear Prabhakar discuss leading-edge research and acknowledge the role of universities in strengthening the country’s science and technology sectors.

Prabhakar has extensive experience in both government and the private sector. She has been OSTP director and co-chair of PCAST since October of 2022. She served as director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 2012 to 2017 and director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1993 to 1997.

She has also held executive positions at Raychem and Interval Research, and spent a decade at the investment firm U.S. Venture Partners. An engineer by training, Prabhakar earned a BS in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University in 1979, an MA in electrical engineering from Caltech in 1980, and a PhD in applied physics from Caltech in 1984.

Among other remarks about medicine, Prabhakar touted the Biden administration’s “Cancer Moonshot” program, which aims to cut the cancer death rate in half over the next 25 years through multiple approaches, from better health care provision and cancer detection to limiting public exposure to carcinogens. We should be striving, Prabhakar said, for “a future in which people take good health for granted and can get on with their lives.”

On AI, she heralded both the promise and concerns about technology, saying, “I think it’s time for active steps to get on a path to where it actually allows people to do more and earn more.”

When it comes to climate change, Prabhakar said, “We all understand that the climate is going to change. But it’s in our hands how severe those changes get. And it’s possible that we can build a better future.” She noted the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law in 2021 and the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act as important steps forward in this fight.

“Together those are making the single biggest investment anyone anywhere on the planet has ever made in the clean energy transition,” she said. “I used to feel hopeless about our ability to do that, and it gives me tremendous hope.”

After her talk, Prabhakar was joined onstage for a group discussion with the three co-presidents of the MIT Energy and Climate Club: Laurentiu Anton, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and computer science; Rosie Keller, an MBA candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management; and Thomas Lee, a doctoral candidate in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Asked about the seemingly sagging public confidence in science today, Prabhakar offered a few thoughts.

“The first thing I would say is, don’t take it personally,” Prabhakar said, noting that any dip in public regard for science is less severe than the diminished public confidence in other institutions.

Adding some levity, she observed that in polling about which occupations are regarded as being desirable for a marriage partner to have, “scientist” still ranks highly.

“Scientists still do really well on that front, we’ve got that going for us,” she quipped.

More seriously, Prabhakar observed, rather than “preaching” at the public, scientists should recognize that “part of the job for us is to continue to be clear about what we know are the facts, and to present them clearly but humbly, and to be clear that we’re going to continue working to learn more.” At the same time, she continued, scientists can always reinforce that “oh, by the way, facts are helpful things that can actually help you make better choices about how the future turns out. I think that would be better in my view.”

Prabhakar said that her White House work had been guided, in part, by one of the overarching themes that President Biden has often reinforced.

“He thinks about America as a nation that can be described in a single word, and that word is ‘possibilities,’” she said. “And that idea, that is such a big idea, it lights me up. I think of what we do in the world of science and technology and innovation as really part and parcel of creating those possibilities.”

Ultimately, Prabhakar said, at all times and all points in American history, scientists and technologists must continue “to prove once more that when people come together and do this work … we do it in a way that builds opportunity and expands opportunity for everyone in our country. I think this is the great privilege we all have in the work we do, and it’s also our responsibility.”