In our opening keynote for our 2024 Symposium: The Future of Science Policy, from his perspectives as a social scientist, a policy researcher, and a US government science policy official, Kei Koizumi talks about his and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s work to: ensure emerging technologies are guided by democratic values and offer learning and work opportunities to people in every community in America; harness the power of science to improve health outcomes for all people in America, guided by principles of health equity; and tackle the climate crisis through wise application of scientific information and cutting-edge technology toward a net-zero emissions world.

The keynote is followed by a Q & A with Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of The Institute for Science & Policy. 

Watch a video of the keynote on our YouTube channel.

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Symposium 2024: The Future of U.S. Science Policy

KEI KOIZUMI: Good evening, Colorado.  Great to see all of you. So I'm Kei Koizumi, and I will say first that I'm from Columbus, Ohio. So I always get this special thrill out of coming here and seeing mountains, because I did not grow up with mountains. My parents are from Japan, and when they ended up in Columbus, Ohio, they thought, “Where are the mountains?” 

My mother was a professor of medicine at Ohio State. She came to Colorado, as doctors often do, for continuing medical education at Vail Resort. And she grew to love Colorado because it's like, “Oh, finally, mountains! The mountains I never get to see in Ohio.” So she kept coming back to Vail, Aspen and Rocky Mountain National Park. I had the chance to learn how to ski first in West Virginia, but then mostly in Colorado. So I loved coming here this morning and seeing the mountains again.  

I'm a social scientist, a science policy researcher, a science policy practitioner, and a science policy official. And now I have the chance to work at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. We have a couple of missions at OSTP. One is to make sure that the president, vice president and other White House officials have the best available scientific and technical information that they need to make informed decisions about everything, whether it's healthcare, the environment, national security or the economy.  

The second [mission] is to try to integrate and lead government-wide science and technology policy. The United States does not have a Department of Science. We don't have a ministry of research as other nations do. Instead, we have 24 different federal departments and agencies that support science and technologies. So to try to integrate it all. For areas where government-wide policy makes sense, it's my office that tries to integrate and lead on government-wide science and technology policy. A third mission that we have is to harness the power of science, technology, and innovation to make progress on this administration's priorities, but really on our shared global and national challenges.  

Those include tackling the climate crisis, making sure that we provide economic opportunities for everyone in America; to improve health outcomes for everyone; to grapple with and seize the benefits of emerging technologies like AI while managing its risks. So those are some of the missions that we have at OSTP. Today I want to tell you a little bit about my journey in science policy. I'm going to deviate a little from the future of science policy because I've been grappling with what I should say about that. 

Instead, I'm going to start off talking about the recent past. Then, together, we're going to arrive at the future of science policy. It's a shared endeavor. I'm not going to give you the answer to this question. For that, you will have to stay tuned to yourselves and also to tomorrow. Because tomorrow we will be able to discover together what the future of science policy might be. I'm going to tell you a few of my science policy aphorisms – a top ten list – and explain them. So let me start with science policy. Is science for policy and also policy for science? 

At OSTP, our mission is to provide scientific advice and information. That is science for policy. It's making sure that scientific information is at the table. Often at the White House, these are literal tables in rooms where you have a scientist, a general, a budget official, a politician, an environmental activist – all sorts of people representing different disciplines and forms of knowledge. So science for policy means that when we are talking about health, security, cyber security, the economy, education, et cetera, that we have a scientific and technical voice at the table.  

That's an important part of why we are here today talking about science policy. Because we know that scientific research and its findings can tell us a lot about public health, AI,  climate, and everything else that we are challenged with as a society. Policy for science is government-wide policy for the conditions of the scientific enterprise. So it means government funding for research and development. The U. S. government invests about $200 billion per year in research and development. So that policy is very important, and it funds a lot of research all across the country, including that of many august Colorado institutions. Also, policy for science sets the conditions under which research is conducted in the United States, whether it is protecting human subjects or ensuring we have ethical standards. 

We have standards for research and scientific integrity, and policies to ensure that research results are disseminated to the people who need to know and want to know.  I've been fortunate enough in being able to do both: the scientific advice and also the policy for science. I've been able to do both because science policy is a team sport with all kinds of players. In my office, I'm fortunate enough as a social scientist and as a policy wonk to be surrounded by scientists of all disciplines, including astronomers, physicists, environmental scientists, an oceanographer, behavioral scientists and biomedical scientists. We also have lawyers, communicators, journalists and other people from all walks of life who help us to do science policy well.  So the team at OSTP is, I think, effective. Because it brings everyone in. Not just people trained in the sciences and engineering, but people trained in all sorts of other disciplines. 

Together I hope we are able to provide good scientific advice and effective science policy. President Biden and Vice President Harris are also part of the team, and I'm very fortunate to be able to say that.  President Biden, in his first week in office, vowed to “end the politics and follow the science.” He immediately addressed the foundational issue of scientific integrity through a commitment to make evidence-based policies guided by the best available science and data. It's the PM [presidential memorandum] on evidence based policy and scientific integrity, which I contributed to.   

It came out in the first week of the administration. It's a broad team, and often it takes in people from different walks of life. So at these metaphorical and literal tables, I have had the chance to work with people from the military, from the intelligence agencies, from humanities and social sciences and arts backgrounds. 

Together we are able to bring our disciplines and knowledge sets to the table, have it out, have discussions, and then go forward with what I think is a better science policy than we would have arrived with if we only had physicists or biologists. Instead, we have the opportunity to do a whole lot more. I think you should bring to science policy a core knowledge or skill. And look for opportunities to add to it.  As I said, I started in policy for science. My original job at OSTP was as assistant director for federal R&D. So what did I do? I basically focused on the federal government funding of R&D. $200 billion dollars a year: where it comes from, where it goes, what kind of work it does, and how to steer it toward directions that are beneficial for society.  So that is my core knowledge. Even to this day, I'm still known as like the federal R&D budget guy, right?  

So that is the core that I worked hard to develop.  But I've deliberately tried to expand my skills into science for policy. When I got to OSTP at the White House in 2009, I realized, yes, I'm entering as the federal R&D budget guy. But I have the opportunity to expand into scientific advice and information. 

I tried to look for ways to gain experience in providing science advice. It was through interacting with physical scientists, astronomers, biological scientists, environmental sciences, et cetera, that I brought to the table my expertise in the social sciences. Especially what we call the science of science policy.  

But along the way, I've tried to gain fluency in AI, computer science, and climate change science. And I’ve worked with lots of smart people to learn about how to give advice to non-scientists about scientific matters. Sometimes it's been tested by fire. So I’ll give you an example. In March of 2021, I was the acting director of my White House office, and the Mars rover landed on the surface of Mars.  

President Biden was going to give a video congratulations call to the team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory who were responsible for this Mars rover landing successfully.  So I was tasked with briefing the president on the Mars rover. It's like, “Do I look like a planetary scientist?" But I had to do it. So I used the skills that I learned:  Call the people who know. Fortunately, I was able to draw on my experience of visiting JPL and seeing the rover in the hangar before it was sent to Mars.    

Of course, I crammed for this test. And so early March 2021 was my first time in the Oval Office.  And I got to brief President Biden on the Mars rover and why it was so important and such a big deal. I will say that he only asked one or two questions, which was good for me. So the briefing went shorter than expected. It was not yet time for the call with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists. So we were hanging around the Oval Office, as one does. And I had the chance to walk with the president over to the corner of the Oval Office where  a moon rock is placed. I said, “President Biden, this is a moon rock. And I will say the Mars rock is going to look really great next to it. But it's going to take a while.  You won't be president then. But we're eventually going to get a Mars rock, thanks to the work of this Opportunity Rover that's out there.” 

So that was scientific advice. I had cultivated my skills of providing scientific advice on topics that I was not expert in because it came in handy. It went so well that I got asked to do it again a few weeks later, when the helicopter successfully made its flight. So then I had to go to the same people and say, “Well, explain to me why this helicopter is working.” And I had a chance to brief the President before he did another event congratulating the helicopter team on what they had just done.  So yes, bring to science policy a core knowledge or skill that is your calling card, and then look for opportunities to add to it. Because you never know when you might need those additional skills.  

You should bring all of yourself to the work of science policy.  Science policy is personal to me. I mean, it had better be, because I've been doing it for a long time: 30 plus years. I tell my students and early career science policy people that you should bring all of yourself to your work and to your career. Here's what it means to me.  

On December 1st, World AIDS Day, I had the chance to be with President and Dr. Biden on the South Lawn of the White House where they had spread out the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt for the first time. Panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt were laid out. This was a quilt that I'd first seen in 1987, when it was outside the fence of the White House. That difference of a few feet struck me, having the president looking at it. Way back when, in the mid 1980s, I was part of ACT Up, the AIDS activism group. 

At that time, we were advocating, pleading and protesting for the government to pay attention to HIV/AIDS and invest some research money in it.  I didn't know it at the time, but that was science policy. That was science policy. Looking back on it, I did not think that I would make it to 2024, knowing what HIV/AIDS was back in 1984. But I did.  

And that personal connection continues to drive what I do in science policy, and especially public health.  Health equity and improving health outcomes for everyone remains an important part of my work and the work of my office. I think about it in personal terms for AI.  AI is a tool for improving health, especially to address health disparities. It's personal to me because I realized, looking around my doctor's office, that I'm probably the only Asian that my doctor sees.  That is important because we know that certain conditions manifest themselves differently in Asians as compared to people in other groups. My mother has diabetes. But she's a little bird. I mean, I think she's like 80 pounds. 

She's skinny. So looking at her, you would not know that she has diabetes if you were going by models for the general population.  But for her and for me, I want AI models to be trained on data that includes Asian people and shows how conditions manifest in Asian people.  So that is why AI policy and improving the training data is personal to me.  

That experience drives my quest to add new policy tools like ARPAH, the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health. I'm overjoyed that President Biden made it a priority to establish this brand new health agency during his term. We proposed it, he did it, it now exists. And it is taking a new approach to addressing health outcomes and health inequities using the tools of science and technology.  

Now, science policy is a long game. My advocacy for research funding stretches back almost 40 years.  And I tell my colleagues, we are all relay runners and you hand the baton to the next team.  Most of us, we don't get to run the whole course. But I promise all of my team members: I'm going to invite you to the finish line to celebrate. I'm one of the lucky ones. I was at the White House during the Obama administration and now during the Biden administration. So I've had the chance to run multiple legs of a relay, both inside and outside of government. I can see the results from the long game. 

AIDS research funding is now several billion dollars a year. My life is transformed. I'm no longer deathly afraid of contracting  HIV or AIDS because of the scientific advances that I was advocating for. I first started working on public access policy. That is the policy by which the results of federally funded research, whether it's data or publications, are made immediately available to the public upon publication. 

I first started working on that public access policy in 2007, when it was introduced for the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. 17 years later, I'm still working on it and making sure that there is a government-wide mandate to ensure that taxpayers who paid for the research get to access these potentially life-saving research results at the time of publication.  

So now I'm about to hand the baton on to someone else. But I'm happy to have been part of multiple legs of the relay. I'm happy it's no longer just the U. S. government doing this. It's a global movement to provide open and immediate public access to publicly funded research. Europe is doing it. Japan is doing it. Foundations all across the country and the world are doing it.   

So science policy is a long game. And it often requires patience. But is also requires participation. Policy is better and longer lasting when people are involved from the beginning. People's values are a part of policy.  

 And that's why I bring the social science perspective to it. Social science is about understanding and studying people. I'm all about participatory research, community science, participatory technology assessments – tools we have to involve as many people as possible in research from the beginning. Because we want to ensure that emerging technologies, especially, are guided by democratic values. And that they offer learning and work opportunities to people in every community in America.  

Now for the AI story. At the beginning of the administration, we had the opportunity to get AI right and make sure that, as this technology emerged into broad popular use, we maximized its benefits while minimizing its risks and potential dangers.  

So as an administration, where did we start? We started first with principles and values. My office, OSTP, produced a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in 2022. That was a year or so into the administration. It took a while because we took the time to engage with communities and stakeholders, both inside and outside the United States. Talking to people takes time, but it is worth the effort. That blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights established values and principles first.  And it was the foundation on which we built policy: What we as a nation, as a federal government, are going to do regarding AI. 

So 2022 was the blueprint. In 2023, the President issued the Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence.  It has a longer title. It is the longest executive order in U. S. history. It's like 180 plus pages if you print it out.  But it establishes principles, binding policies and commitments with respect to the federal government's use of AI. It was built on the foundation that we laid out in 2022. We further built on that executive order through another memorandum on government use of AI and research into the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI. But it all started with participation.  

Participation is a lot of work and it's also very social. Science policy is a team sport. So in doing science policy, you need to have contact with a whole lot of people from many different backgrounds. You have to build a network and activate it in order to get things done.  So one of my proudest moments during my time at the White House was being  on the South Lawn of the White House when President Biden signed the Chips and Science Act into law in August 2022. It's 400 pages long. I wrote a lot of it.  

What was notable about that 95 degree day on the South Lawn of the White House – other than the fact that I was sweating through my suit and was afraid that the president and other people might pass out – were the people there. There were Congressional staff, members of Congress, leaders of science agencies, leaders of professional organizations, community organizations, Indian tribes, Alaskan Native communities, HBCU students and professors, university researchers, leaders from all across the country, community college students, graduate students, postdocs. On that one lawn was my entire LinkedIn network, pretty much. 

It took all of us to get this mammoth piece of legislation signed into law by the president. That was what I was doing. I was making sure that we were bringing people together to contribute to what I think is one of the most consequential pieces of science legislation that I will ever see. It’s something that I'm proud of.  

And although President Biden probably didn't know about all of that when he signed it, he has since become really proud of it. So in every speech that I've seen him give, he talks about the importance of the Chips in Science Act. He recognizes that it was very much a social effort. There were a lot of phone and Zoom calls to make sure that we got to where we needed to go.  

In addition, science policy can and will change. Oftentimes, policy can seem kind of dry and academic. It might start from legislation, documents, words on paper. But in the best of times, it has an impact on people's lives. I first learned that at the White House in 2009. I was assigned one of President Obama's campaign commitments, which was to triple the number of graduate research fellowships that the National Science Foundation gives out each year.  

So my job was to make sure that we got from a thousand a year to 3,000 a year. We didn't get to 3,000, but we did get to 2,000. And what does that mean? Because of something I helped to do, more U. S. science and engineering students have their graduate education supported by the U.S. government each year. So I have the chance, in audiences like this one, to like ask people if they’re graduate research fellows. And a bunch of people raise their hands. To me, that's meaningful, because that is impact. And people have told me about the research that they were able to do.  

It's really meaningful. My intern this semester, Max, told me a couple weeks after he started, “I have an NSFGRF  and I think it's because of you.” It's like, oh, thank you for telling me. Because that is the kind of impact that I look for. And it's multiplied by things like the Chips and Science Act. What does it do? It makes sure that we restore U. S. manufacturing of semiconductor chips. It's personal, again, because I can see the impact. There's a factory going up outside of Columbus, Ohio, my hometown. 

 Because of legislation that I helped produce, the children of people I grew up with have the opportunity to work in a semiconductor factory that might otherwise have been built  overseas. It used to be a green field where my parents took me out horseback riding. But now there's a big Intel factory going up on there.  

Now, science policy is also about expanding your toolkit and using policy tools to achieve impact. Throughout my talk, I've told you a lot of tools. I've had to use a lot of tools. Conversations with universities, researchers, agencies, and congressional staff.  Reading, drafting, modifying legislation. Good old fashioned street activism. Budgets and appropriations and digging into thousand-page omnibus budget bills. Listening sessions, town halls, and so on. If I had you for an entire semester, I would go into detail about what my toolkit contains, and the many ways I'm able to wield science policy tools to make an impact on people's lives.   

But just to summarize, we all have the opportunity to build our science policy toolkits. I'm about to lose one of my tools, which is the White House. In a couple of weeks, I will no longer be able to invite people to the White House, show them around, and say, “Okay, we are here at the White House, so you are not leaving until we reach agreement on a path forward.” 

I may not have that tool anymore. But I'm going to keep discovering other tools as I go.  I also want to say that all of us can find our own paths to science policy. Because there is no set path.  You can have a career like mine, which is pretty much full-time science policy. You can also have a fellowship or other time-limited experience where you get to work in a policy setting for a year or two. You can have an occasional engagement with science policy, such as at an annual congressional visit day or a visit to your state legislature.  You can participate a policy group at your institution, whether it's a university, a company, or a non profit.  

Or you can infuse your work –  your research work or your education work – with science policy considerations.  I've been fortunate enough to come into contact with scientists and engineers who have taken all of these tools and found some way to infuse science policy into the work they do, whether it's full time, part time, or only occasionally.  

Now, if I had time, I would wrap this all up into more of a syllabus. But I'm not going to do that because we have an evening to get to. Maybe next year. But let me recap. 

Number one: Science policy is science for policy and policy for science. 

Number two: Science policy is a team sport requiring all kinds of players.   

Number three: You should bring all of you to the work of science policy. 

Number four: You should bring to science policy a core knowledge or skill, and then look for opportunities to add to it.  

Number five: You can find your own path to science policy because there is no set path. 

Number six: Science policy is about participation.   

Number seven: Science policy is social and involves working with lots of people.   

Number eight: Science policy is about expanding your toolkit and using policy tools to achieve some kind of impact.  

Number nine: Science policy is a long game.   

Number ten: Science policy can and should change people's lives. 

So let me return to the question of the evening and of the seminar. What is the future of science policy? I don't know. But I do know this: You are the future of science policy. And me too. Because although I'm not going to have this job much longer, I will always be part of science policy. And I hope you will always be part of science policy too. So thank you all for inviting me here.  

Q&A with Kei Koizumi and Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of the Institute for Science and Policy:  

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: I have a social scientist sitting next to me. So I want to start with what you were talking about with respect to social engagement and social interaction. You talked about a lot of blueprints you had your hands on. There is a blueprint that you had a pretty big hand in that is about engaging the social and behavioral sciences in evidence-based policymaking. To me, that's a very emerging field. It's been around for a long time, but it's not well integrated into actual decision making processes. Because humans are messy and it’s really hard. I'd be curious, having worked on that blueprint and as a social scientist, what gets you excited about how we can be better at thinking about some of those social and behavioral challenges as we try to create evidence-based policies?  

KEI: Yes, as a lapsed social scientist, questions like that make me feel happy. I’m also happy that you can find those blueprints at OSTP.gov. I'm supposed to say that. I try to think of  social behavioral sciences as seizing an opportunity. We've come out of a period, the COVID-19 pandemic, in which we have all realized that vaccines, medical treatments, et cetera, are necessary but not sufficient to fully address a pandemic. Because a pandemic is a social and societal phenomenon. A lot of the successes and failures of the pandemic response came down to people: vaccine acceptance, vaccine uptake and other treatments. We know, because of the work of my colleagues in the social and behavioral sciences, that there's a lot of research that is useful and immediately applicable to addressing that pandemic and future pandemics. We're also dealing with climate change and energy use. 

Energy use is about molecules. It's about electricity. But it's also about people because we all use energy. So the availability of clean energy technologies is not enough to really make a meaningful difference in our energy use and tackling climate change. So those are some areas wherein we’ve tried, as a social sciences community within the federal government, to figure out how to make our research more useful and relevant to these on-the-surface – not social science related –  challenges. 

So the blueprints lay out some of our strategies for doing that. We are taking advantage of a moment around evidence-based policymaking. As I said at the beginning, it was important enough for President Biden in his first week in office to issue a memorandum on evidence based policymaking. That was an opportunity to say, “Among the forms of evidence that decision makers need to consider are insights from the social and behavioral sciences. So that's kind of the political moment that we tried to seize in offering up this blueprint. Not just for the social behavioral research community saying, “Oh, here are the questions that are interesting to tackle.” But also to decision makers, program managers and people across the federal government to say, “Here is what the social behavioral sciences could offer to make sure that our responses to climate change and to health threats are fully informed and are the most effective they can be.” And most of these policies do touch people.   

KRISTAN: What are you optimistic about in the next four years?  And what are you pessimistic about in the next four years? 

KEI: I'm trying hard not to think about that question yet. As I've told my colleagues, I have a job to do. I have a lot to get done, lock down and hide in the next six weeks. But what I am optimistic about  is that I will have a chance to engage more with the nonprofit community, the foundation community, academic communities, and people in  communities all across the country.   

The Inflation Reduction Act, the most consequential climate change legislation in world history, would not have been possible without all of the work that was happening during the Obama administration, the first Trump administration and then early on the Biden administration. And a lot of that was happening outside of the federal government. So that is what I'm optimistic about.  

What am I pessimistic about? Well, I am afraid that a lot of the work that I just described is going to be halted or, worse still, reversed.  When I start to think about it, I become pessimistic. Then I try to turn it into optimism because I'm not going anywhere. I mean, I'm leaving my current office. But I'm still going to be around. And all those people who were on the South Lawn with me on that August day, we're still around. We are still going to be engaged in making sure that we’re making progress toward harnessing science and technology to tackle challenges like climate, public health, and AI. 

KRISTAN: You were talking about this being a team sport. But often there are barriers to participating in the team sport. Some folks in the audience were curious about how to encourage more community participation in science policy. There are a lot of people and communities who haven’t necessarily had a seat at the table. They're not in the know. What are some of those barriers and how do you see that being improved?   

KEI: The science table has always had barriers. Back in the Obama administration, we were not able to engage people as much as we can now. With a limited travel budget, we were only hearing from people who could fly to or who were in Washington, D.C. and could come visit us.  So coming out of the pandemic, we tried to turn that around by using Zoom and Webex. We tried to use this to our advantage. Thanks to those technologies, OSTP was able to have a formal tribal consultation for the first time.  

For the first time, we had a listening session with the Alaskan Native communities; with the Native Hawaiian community; with people in rural parts of the country; colleges and universities in the southwest or the southeast.  In addition, we were able to bring on more people from those different backgrounds as colleagues. We were able to engage people where they are... Increasing participation means using the tools that we have with a deliberate eye toward making the work of science policy as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.  

For more on this series visit our 2024 Symposium page.