Earlier today, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved by voice vote the nominations of David Applegate to be Director of the USGS and Evelyn Wang to be Director of ARPA-E.
Both nominations now head to the full Senate for its consideration.
The FY2023 appropriations season is set to kick off this week in the House with a number of Appropriations subcommittees scheduled to take up their respective bills.
Of the bills set to be marked up this week, the defense bill is of the most interest. While the text of the bill has been published, the accompanying report, which contains the details about the measure, is not yet available. We will provide details about this, and other, appropriations measures as they become available.
President Biden is expected to nominate Arati Prabhakar to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Alondra Nelson has been running OSTP on an interim basis since Eric Lander’s resignation earlier this year. She has served in prior Democratic administrations, as the director of the National Institute of Science and Technology under Bill Clinton and as the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Barack Obama.
Earlier today, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra formally unveiled the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA) as an independent agency within the NIH. Along with that announced, Adam H. Russell was named as the Acting Deputy Director of the new organization.
The creation of ARPA-H, modeled on its counterparts at the Department of Defense (DARPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), has been a priority of the Biden Administration.
Read more about today’s announcements here.
Yesterday, NOAA made available its Congressional justification document for its FY2023 budget request. The document, available here, calls for: