Kelvin K. Droegemeier, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is on a mission to protect the security and integrity of the American research enterprise. And while he doesn’t dismiss the existence of foreign threats to US researchers, he says those threats should be kept in perspective: the overall enterprise is secure.
That was one of the messages to emerge from a meeting Droegemeier held Wednesday at Harvard Law School with senior research officials from Boston University, Harvard, Tufts, MIT, Northeastern, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. BU’s representative at a private session with Droegemeier was Gloria Waters, vice president and associate provost for research.
The broader meeting, which was open to the public yet closed to reporters, was one of a series of sessions Droegemeier has been convening at research institutions around the country to discuss the work of the National Science and Technology Council’s Joint Committee on the Research Environment. He created the committee in May 2019 to address what he considers urgent challenges, such as research environment safety and integrity, safe, inclusive, and equitable research settings, and the administrative burdens on federally funded research.
