March 28, 2015

CRUMBLING CAPS? The stringent GOP budget discipline imposed in 2011 appears to be weakening in the face of pressure to increase defense spending, White House veto threats, and pressure from interest groups. Following passage of budget resolutions in both the House and Senate, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), right, "laid out a vision for a new round of sequester replacement talks similar to the negotiations that led to the 2013 bipartisan budget agreement," CQ reported. Earlier, the Senate narrowly approved -- with support from five Republicans -- a non-binding budget amendment that opened the door just a crack to tax hikes to pay for budget increases. Both House and Senate approved defense spending higher than proposed by the White House, but only through the off-budget overseas contingency operations (war) account.

PENTAGON S&T WORKFORCE - SMALLER, OLDER: The United States has seen its technological edge erode as other nations caught up while the U.S. was preoccupied with counter-insurgency. Of equal concern to Alan Shaffer, the Pentagon's principal deputy assistant secretary for research and engineering, is that "the DoD has lost 10,000 scientists and engineers since 2011." Also, beginning in 2013, the average age of DoD S&Es started to climb. See his and other R&D officials testimony.

NOT STANDING STILL: Various ways the Pentagon is striving to stay ahead include: The Army's Open Campus initiative, which has netted 60 agreements with small businesses, industry and academia and brought 200 researchers into Army labs. An open house last Dec, 9 and 10 "attracted over 500 college/university faculty and graduate students, science entrepreneurs, small business, contractors . . ." DARPA's priorities include: Assuring dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum;  Improving position, navigation and timing (PNT) without GPS; Maintaining air superiority in contested environments; Leading the world in advanced hypersonics; Asserting a robust capability in space; Enhancing maritime agility; Exerting control on the ground; Augmenting defense against terrorism. DARPA's Biological Technologies Office "has enabled a new level of momentum" in areas such as synthetic biology. 

ON THE HOT SEAT: The Department of Energy's steep budget boost for the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programs came in for criticism from Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) said "EERE’s activities demonstrate that it is heavily invested in forcing the Administration’s preferred technology on the American people." The Solar Energy Technologies Program, he said, "essentially puts promoting energy companies over research and development."

OTHER HEARINGS: See coverage by the American Institute of Physics of testimony on the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

REID RETIRING, ENDORSES SCHUMER: Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada backed New York's Chuck Schumer as his successor. Dick Durbin of Illinois, second-ranking Democrat, also supports Schumer. But Mark Warner of Virginia may run as well.

THE PENTAGON'S LOSS OF SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS

Source: Department of Defense congressional testimony.

Federal R&D Funding by Character of Work and Facilities and Equipment, FY2014-FY2016

Source: Congressional Research Service, Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2016

MENTORS HONORED: Among the engineers tapped to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) are, clockwise from top left: John Slaughter of the University of Southern California, Elizabeth Parry of North Carolina State University, Lorraine Fleming of Howard University, and Gary May of Georgia Tech. See the full list.

CAREER GRANT RECIPIENTS: The National Science Foundation's Engineering Directorate this week made 146 Early Career Development (CAREER) awards, altogether worth approximately $73 million. "The creative work of these scholar-teachers will open new frontiers of knowledge in a wide range of engineering fields and address pressing questions of great societal importance in manufacturing, health, energy, environment, infrastructure and education," an NSF press release said. Each award provides a minimum of $500,000 over five years, a 25-percent increase over the previous award limit. See a list of the winners, Among recipients are 12 ASEE members. Among CAREER grantee benefits is the chance to collaborate with colleagues supported through German Research Foundation (DFG) grants.

'FAILED TOP-DOWN ECONOMICS': That's how the White House characterizes the GOP budget  in a 47-page comparison with its own blueprint.

'FRONTIERS' GRANTS: Two pairs of researchers will receive  $30,000 Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grants:  Danielle Tullman-Ercek (University of California, Berkeley) and David Mascarenas (Los Alamos National Laboratory) for their proposal, “Structural Materials Capable of Precisely Timed, Self-Degradation: A Synthetic/Chemical Biology Approach”; and  Andrea Alu (University of Texas at Austin) and Luke Sweatlock (Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems) for their proposal, “Pushing the Limits of Thermal Management and Radio-Communications Using Time-Modulated Metasurfaces.”

122 ENGINEERING SCHOOLS TACKLE GRAND CHALLENGES: Each pledges "to graduate a minimum of 20 students per year who have been specially prepared to lead the way in solving such large-scale problems, with the goal of training more than 20,000 formally recognized 'Grand Challenge Engineers' over the next decade." The White House hails the initiative, spotlighting Michaela Rikard, a biomedical engineering student at North Carolina State University.

AN ENGINEER AT THE FED: University of Delaware President Patrick Harker will become president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, starting July 1. At Delaware, he has taught both business administration and civil and environmental engineering.

PPC PRESENTATIONS: Watch videos from the deans' Public Policy Colloquium.