Category: Uncategorized

UW Professor Howard Chizek will present his team’s Smart Emergency Response System (SERS) to President Obama and senior White House officials on June 10th.

Chizek is participating in the Smart America Challenge hosted by the White House.  The audience will be White House staffers, cabinet members, and White House Press Corps. The UW team is one of about 4 teams presenting.  Short presentations will be about policy and impact of the projects.

On June 11, 2014, 24 teams with over 100 organizations will come together at the WashingtonDC Convention Center for a demonstration. This event is open to the public to see demonstrations and hear from speakers from the White House, various Government Agencies, and companies and universities from across America.

For more information about SERS. click here.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is currently accepting applications for its Fall 2014 Policy Internship Program. The application deadline is11:59pm, Friday, Jun 20. Students who are U.S. citizens and who will be actively enrolled during the Fall 2014 semester are eligible to apply.

More information and application instructions are available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/about/student/.

About OSTP.  The Office of Science and Technology Policy advises the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. The office serves as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the President with respect to major policies, plans and programs of the Federal Government.

About the Internship Program.  Interns are accepted for one of three annual terms (Spring, Summer, or Fall), which each last no more than 90 days. While these positions are without compensation, the assignments provide educational enrichment, practical work experience, and network opportunities with other individuals in the science and technology policy arena.

The House is not in session today, but the Senate is and is expected to advance another short-term fix to Medicare’s payment system, or the “doc fix.” The yearlong patch (HR 4302) would extend Medicare payments to physicians and prevent cuts to Medicare payment rates that were expected to take place in April without congressional intervention. Members of both bodies had hoped to clear a long-term proposal (HR 4015), but lawmakers never agreed on a way to pay for it. The current short-term patch expires tonight, so the Senate is under pressure to get the next short-term patch in place.

Later today, the Senate will likely begin debating a five-month extension to unemployment insurance. Senate Democrats plan to use a House-passed bill (HR 3979) as a vehicle for the extension to the benefits, which kick in after a person exhausts standard unemployment assistance. Under the proposal, the five-month extension would be paid for by a combination of offsets including temporarily reducing companies’ pension payments and extending US Customs and Border Protection user fees through 2024. The bill would also provide retroactive payments to those whose benefits have already been cut off. Though the measure seems to have enough support to pass the Senate, House Republicans have been cool to the proposal, in part because they consider it too difficult to implement given the now three-month lapse in benefits.

House members will return to the Capitol Tuesday and spend most of the week focused on their Budget Resolution. The FY2015 spending plan House Budget Chairman Ryan (R-WI) plans to release this week will include $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reduction to balance in 10 years. As a result, lawmakers say the new budget blueprint will recommend deeper and more accelerated cuts in spending necessary to make up for slower projected revenue growth over the next decade. That could take the form of deeper cuts to Medicaid, which would be converted to a block grant program in the House budget, or from speeding up the conversion of food stamps into a block grant program. The plan will, however, abide by the $1.014 trillion discretionary spending limit, as well as $521 billion defense and $492 billion nondefense caps, in the two-year budget agreement Ryan negotiated with Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) late last year.

Last night the U.S. Senate confirmed a new director of the National Science Foundation, Dr. France Cordova. She succeeds Subra Suresh, who stepped down from NSF one year ago to become president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

An astrophysicist, Dr. Cordova earned a Ph.D in physics from the California Institute of Technology. She went on to become the first female chief scientist at NASA before returning to the academic world. She was vice chancellor for research at UC Santa Barbara, chancellor of UC Riverside, and later president of Purdue University.  A more in-depth biography can be found on the NSF website here.

Also in NSF leadership news, NSF named Northwestern University Professor Fay Lomax Cook to lead the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate on Thursday. Dr. Cook will begin her appointment as Assistant Director in September of this year. More information can be found here.

Congress returns today from a weeklong recess. Here are a few hearings that may be of interest later in the week.

THURSDAY, February 27^th 

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
North Pacific Perspectives on Magnuson-Stevens Act Reauthorization
Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard
10:30 AM, 253 Russell Building

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee
Promoting College Access and Success For Students With Disabilities
Full Committee Hearing
10:00 AM, 216 Hart Building

House Appropriations
Oversight Hearing on Federal Investments in Neuroscience Research
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies
10:00 AM, H-309 Capitol Bldg.

House Education and the Workforce
Exploring Efforts to Strengthen the Teaching Profession
Joint Hearing of Subcommittees on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education; and on Higher Education and Workforce Training
10:00 AM, 2175 Rayburn Building

FRIDAY, February 28^th

House Natural Resources Committee
Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act
Full Committee Hearing
9:30 AM, 1324 Longworth Building