Research universities rely on government agencies for funding, but the latest word on those agencies’ science policies doesn’t reach campuses instantly. That’s why a few universities have created senior leadership roles dedicated to communicating between Capitol Hill and campus research laboratories. “You can’t really have a loud bell go off and have everybody change their behavior across the country” in response to new policy directions, says Keith Yamamoto, who three years ago became the University of California at San Francisco’s first vice chancellor for science policy and strategy.
His job faces both outward and inward, he says. “The outward-facing is to make our voice heard in Washington and other circles where science policy is set and shaped.” The inward-facing part “is to be able to help craft policies on the campus that best move us toward our mission and goals.”
The university, which has professional schools in dentistry, medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, is one of the top recipients of federal research dollars each year. Part of Yamamoto’s job is to foster university experiments intended to identify better approaches to training, patient care, community outreach, and research. When those pilot projects succeed, he says, he can convey that news back to lawmakers and suggest that such practices be adopted across the country.
Yamamoto took on his role after serving as the university’s vice chancellor for research. He works closely with the current vice chancellor for research and brings his own strong background as a research scientist to his post.
He credits his Ph.D. supervisor at Princeton University, Bruce Alberts, with sparking his interest in science policy. Alberts started a program that brought high-school students from Trenton, N.J., to campus to interest them in biological research, and then got National Science Foundation support to continue and expand the effort, Yamamoto remembers. “And, of course, he’s been a key driver for doing science right all his career.”
The need for a job like Yamamoto’s comes in part from the “crippling blow” federal support for biomedical research experienced over 12 years beginning in 2003, he says. Overall federal support for academic research fell from $40.1 billion in the 2012 fiscal year to $38.8 billion in 2016, though it increased to $40.3 billion a year later, according to data collected by the National Science Foundation.
The downward trend preceded the current administration, but, Yamamoto says, “there’s justified concern about this administration and its enunciated lack of support for evidence-based reasonings and decisions and for science in general.” In spite of that tone at the top, he finds that the university’s proposals get “strong bipartisan support for biomedical research.” He says he travels to Washington about every other week and also visits state legislators in Sacramento a few times a year.
The University of Pittsburgh is another institution that recently created a senior role focused on science policy. In October, Michael Holland became vice chancellor for science policy and research strategies at the university, which has a strong focus on biomedical research.
Holland worked on the oversight side of scientific research under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. He moved from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to the U.S. Department of Energy, and then followed Steven E. Koonin, the agency’s undersecretary for science, to New York University. There, Koonin and Holland started the Center for Urban Science & Progress.
Like Yamamoto, Holland is on the lookout for research programs and business models that his university can pilot and use as examples to guide national policy. Part of Holland’s role is to help faculty members craft these proposals in a way that attracts the interest of their intended audience. “Somebody like me who has both sat in an academic unit and sat in the policy shops, I can help with that translation,” says Holland.
He notes that three of his former colleagues in Washington have assumed similar duties at universities. They are Amy Carroll, director of research development at Brown University; Rachel Levinson, executive director of national research initiatives at Arizona State University; and David Trinkle, director of research development at the University of California at Berkeley.
While it’s hard to predict whether universities will hire more people in comparable roles, Yamamoto says that he has seen an “impressive level of interest in policy” from trainees, students, and postdocs. “One of the things I talk about to students when they asked me how best to get involved in policy work, is tell them that there’s numerous routes but that the simplest one, interestingly enough, is to do good science,” says Yamamoto. Becoming well regarded in the scientific community, he says, “gives you credibility to talk about science policy, to understand well what kind of things will form the best policies.”
Holland sees the creation of roles explicitly focused on science policy as evidence that universities are “responding to competitive pressures. You have to run a little faster to stay ahead.”
“The old expectation that the research agencies would just throw money over the fence at universities is not exactly palatable in government,” Holland says. In response, universities strive toward “doing research that is relevant, doing research that has impact. The universities have to do a much better job of being able to articulate and think through where those opportunities are, and how to seize them.”
Julia Piper, an editorial associate, compiles Gazette. Email her ideas for for Hiring Trends.
