Building Climate and Energy Solutions One Atom at a Time

um [Music] so [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] hello everybody i'm mike witherill director of the lawrence berkeley national laboratory on behalf of berkeley lab and our event partners at cq roll call and the university of california office of national laboratories thank you for participating in today's briefing building climate and energy solutions one atom at a time over the next hour leaders from congress the department of energy berkeley lab academia and other non-profits will discuss the critical role that basic science and the d office of science in particular holds in meeting ambitious climate and clean energy targets basic science serves as the foundation for transformative technologies that will help address the climate and energy challenges that we're already experiencing in our everyday lives we need not look far to see the devastating impacts of extreme weather events or the toll that disappearing water resources have on communities or the cost of rising energy demand addressing these challenges will require sustained investment in the full ecosystem from fundamental science to the development of applied technologies to deployment at scale berkeley lab one of ten doe office of science national labs serves as an example of the scope of research that is both possible and necessary our scientists conduct unclassified research across a wide range of disciplines advancing fundamental knowledge and developing science solutions such efforts can be seen in office of science funded facilities and projects across the nation from understanding the impacts of climate change on communities and critical environments to engineering solutions for carbon capture and sequestration the office of science through a deep bench of world-leading scientists multi-disciplinary teams and one-of-a-kind facilities is poised to accelerate the delivery of workable solutions since its founding in 1931 berkeley lab has been managed by the university of california i'm pleased to introduce now the university of california president dr michael drake to share a few words on the importance of basic research and the university's strong commitment to science dr drake is the 21st president of the university of california overseeing a system of ten campuses five medical centers three doe laboratories and more than 280 000 students and 230 000 faculty and staff president dre good morning on behalf of the university of california i am pleased to welcome you to today's discussion on the climate and energy solutions of the future you see the u.s department of energy and the national laboratories have a long and rich history of collaboration for more than three quarters of a century our partnership has brought cutting edge scientific and technological expertise to bear on the most urgent challenges of our time our research has resulted in innovations that enhance our national security and improve the public health the environment and our quality of life this work has always been rooted in basic science the foundation on which the ideas and technologies of the future are built today you will hear from a distinguished group of policy makers and scientific leaders about how basic science is driving energy and climate breakthroughs it has never been more important to invest in our country's most creative and innovative minds many of whom have a home at uc and our national labs our scientists engineers technologists and administrators are the key to building a more sustainable and equitable future for us all working together i know we can stay on the forefront of scientific innovation that makes the world a better place thank you for your leadership your vision and your attention to these issues the future of science is being built here and i know the best is yet to come thank you all and as we say here you see fiat lux let there be light thank you president drake for those inspiring words we're now joined by ranking member of the house science space and science house science space and technology committee frank lucas ranking member frank lucas is a fifth generation oklahoman whose family has lived and farmed in the state for over a hundred years he has a background in agricultural economics it was first elected to the u.s house in 1994 and he has long been a champion of the american farmer and an advocate for advancing scientific innovation since first being elected to congress so rank member lucas thank you for joining this discussion of the important role of basic science speaking for the whole community of dove scientists we really appreciate your work and that of your teams and making certain that the du office of science and its national labs are central to the committee's work to advance science in support of our collective well-being and security so i'd like to start by just hearing your perspective on the role of basic science and addressing national challenges first off doctor thank you for being able to join you today in this program i consider it a real privilege and an honor i also have a great privilege of being the ranking member on the house science space and technology committee while many people think of the legislative process here in the nation's capital as being a little complicated a little clumsy perhaps even some might question the level of productivity i would stress to you that of my committee assignments science base and technology is it's a fun committee it's a committee where we have a long strong history of working together both sides of the aisle in support of basic research without fail the basic research has generated the breakthrough through technologies that have revolutionary lies life in america i know that as a farmer because i'm one of those folks who is a consumer of substantial amounts of energy i'm also one of those people who when i'm not in the nation's capital work to make sure that we use all those technological advances to raise the food and fiber we need the committee's jurisdiction whether it's the national science foundation or the national labs there are amazing things going on and i spend a lot of time with my constituents trying to explain that i know the focus of our event today is about climate change solutions and energy production and that's critical to to everyone in this great nation and in the science committee we have worked to try and drive resources try to provide substantial consistent steady additions to resources to create those technological breakthroughs that will take us to the next generation as i remind my neighbors back home and i live in an oil and gas country perhaps ultimately fusion power is the answer to the world's problems we have to spend the money on the basic research to create those breakthroughs that technolo that the industry will turn into practical practical delivery of resources and until then we have to work to make sure that we have sufficient energies resources to get to that point whether it's things like carbon capture emissions from coal or natural gas batteries that store energy from intermittent sources we have lots of electric windmills in oklahoma solar panels are becoming more and more of a thing or utilizing advanced nuclear reactors to provide cleaner more affordable power until that point it's the kind of work that private industry generally cannot afford to produce because they have to respond to the stockholders they have to respond to the board of directors they have to have return in a in a fashion and in a time frame that will continue to enable them to acquire the resources that are necessary the federal government as has been demonstrated at this lab and labs and scientific investment all across the country since the 1930s the federal government is the entity that is key to funding that basic research that will make the ground-breaking discoveries and based on what we've seen in my lifetime and for that matter the lifetime of my parents i have great expectations if we will provide the resources to the scientific community to enable them to continue the wondrous things that they've done and i'd also be remiss if i didn't know that i'm extremely fond of my full committee chairman lady bernice johnson from texas we have a relationship on the committee that is reminiscent of the traditional i won't say the old days but the traditional committee days where both sides work together for the common good moving forward we might have disagreements but ultimately we want to do the right thing for the american people and that is making sure that the necessary investments are made in basic research so i'm a lucky fella to get to be ranking member on the science space and technology committee well thank you and let me say uh representing the office of science that we are very lucky to have both you and chairwoman eddie bernice johnson working together in this way uh we've been been the we've received the benefits of that bipartisan uh uh work uh in the nation's interest and so rank member lucas uh speaking that please share some of your joint policy goals impacting the dua office of science that are getting that sort of bipartisan support in your committee oh absolutely doctor i'm very proud of a piece of legislation that was a part of the last large funding package at the end of 2020 the energy act of 2020 the first comprehensive update of our nation's energy policy than more than a decade and that act focuses of course on advancing fundamental research and development activities in the support of things like a grid modernization a critical mineral security a high risk high reward next generation energy technologies it's signed into law now in all the mayhem and the noise of recent times in congress occasionally the good things are overlooked but that we passed in a bipartisan way it became a part of the final funding package it wasn't a freestanding bill but the act was signed into law so we're not working under that looking at 2021 we've done i'm very proud of our department of energy science for the future act which basically doubles down on funding and provides a strategy for does long term basic research and development work we have on the committee a jurisdiction over the civilian side of the o the oe's energy programs the proposal invests 50 billion dollars over five years in the department of energy office of science it prioritizes basic research and science office of science missions including the national labs provides a road map for does research and development work supports research on materials and chemical science bioscience climate science fusion energy scientific community high energy and nuclear physics the bottom line is this is a piece of legislation much like the energy act of 2020 that was thoroughly vetted in regular order lots of hearings lots of discussions bills introduced in a bipartisan way amendments offered and debated sorted out it's the way you're supposed to legislate i would also like to think not only does this enable us to have a chance to make this become law because it's necessary but it may be a little bit of an example to all my colleagues on the various committees do it the old-fashioned way do it the thorough way and you'll have a product you can actually be proud of and the american people will benefit from thank you and let me say another benefit of that uh work you've done together uh for we're in the situation here of recruiting some of the best young scientists and engineers to work on national problems and and when frankly they have other opportunities in their career and it's uh it really means a lot to them to have this sort of support uh from the from the house science committee in other parts of congress that it really understand how important it is and it makes it my job easier in convincing these young people to work on these problems oh doctor we've had lots of hearings about the effect of the cove a year and a half on the research community not just the undergraduates but the postdoc students other research projects we have to try to overcome that because we literally have a generation that is you and i would both agree the most amazingly bright minds most talented people who have lost basically a year and a half we've got to make sure they don't lose their opportunity to continue the proper course so ebj and i as i affectionately call my chairwoman we're on the same page we're moving together forward i'm just very fortunate and i would also note to some of my colleagues who are concerned about how we spend our money and what these technologies develop if we really want to help the world address global industrial activity i'm a farmer by trade at home the weather patterns are changing it is just what's happening the technologies that we will incentivize the research dollars that will ultimately evolve into practical uh things we'll be able to produce and export those technologies we will enable the rest of the world to clean up the planet so to speak uh so i'm proud of that i'm just proud of that well thank you and what i'm looking forward to is bringing a couple of these early career scientists to visit you and share women in your offices in real time and be able to talk about the great things they've been able to do because of your support and i look forward to being able to do that again absolutely doctor okay thank you so uh so ranking member lucas thanks so much for joining us today this has really been those are inspiring words for all of us who work at the office of science thank you so and now uh speaking of the office of science we were turning to one of the people who take a critical role in leading us and so please join me in welcoming dr harriet kung to the virtual stage for keynote remarks so dr kong is the deputy director for science programs in the office of science of the us department of energy where she serves as the senior career official providing scientific and magnet management direction and oversight for the sc research programs and remind you those are advanced scientific computing research basic energy sciences biological and environmental research fusion energy sciences high energy physics and nuclear physics before joining the department in 2002 as a program manager in materials sciences and engineering division dr kung was a technical staff member and a project leader at our partner laboratory los alamos national laboratory her research focused primarily on nanoscale materials and high temperature superconductivity so thank you harriet i'm excited to now welcome a distinguished so please go ahead and give us your remarks thank you so much mike it's a great honor and pleasure to join you today to discuss the critical role that basic research plays in building the foundation for developing solutions to climate and clean energy challenges but first please let me thank cq roll call university of california office of national laboratories and lawrence berkeley national laboratory for organizing this event and also our heartfelt thanks to representative luca lucas ranking member for the work that you have done in support of our nation's federal scientific r d enterprise the department of energy office science and the department energy national laboratories connect america's scientific ecosystems through long-term investments in fundamental research scientific workforce world-class scientific user facilities and public-private partnerships that foster innovations over the decades the investment made by the office signs have led to scientific discoveries that were the basis of over a hundred nobel prizes have also enabled countless new technologies businesses large and small and entirely new industries a strong foundation of fundamental science provides a platform for a vibrant innovation ecosystem the office science is committed to investing and sustaining the innovation life cycle bring the science push and the market pole together through our support of over 25 000 researchers annually at universities and national laboratories across the nation will sustain an incredible brain trust to advance our scientific knowledge our funding supports the high risk high reward fundamental research for energy that the private sector is unlikely to invest in as representative lucas just noted but however these fundamental research could lead to transformative technologies for the future the officer science also hosts a vitally important array of large-scale scientific facilities which are used by more than 30 000 researchers every year the user facilities serve as an important gateway for the private sectors to tap into doe resources and develop commercial technology as well that support our energy and environmental missions another unique feature of our program is science at scale office science has a long history of combining the talent and capabilities of the national laboratories research universities and industry to bring together multi-disciplinary teams to tackle fundamental science energy and national security grand challenges the most recent example i would like to mention is the launching of the national virtual biotechnology laboratory nvbl a virtual network comprising all 17 of doe laboratories in the fight against covet the multi-disciplinary teams work together to address critical needs such as normal manufacturing to mitigate supply chain shortages from masks to ventilators improving capabilities for effective viral detection and expediting discovery of therapeutic drugs to complement vaccine development in fact in the late breaking news of the science supported effort through mbbl and the advanced photon source at argonne natural lab contributed to the highly effective antiviral drug just announced today by pfizer earlier now more than ever we're also poised to play a key role in advancing the fundamental science that will pave the way for tackling the climate crisis the science of climate change itself cut across trans traditional disciplines of fundamental science and we provide an environment where collaboration can thrive along the theme of this event i especially resonate with the title building climate energy solution one atom at a time being a material scientist i have witnessed exciting progress in the past decades or so that led to the atomic precision in material synthesis and causation the ability to build energy materials one atom at a time with design functionalities conveys tremendous competitive advantage to finding innovate solutions to our energy and climate challenges however these advances do not happen by accident but have grown out of decades of sustained federal research support looking to the future bold new investments for diverse teams to continue to pursue fundamental research that are critically needed in order for us to stay ahead of international competition maintaining u.s competitiveness and creating american jobs of the future in key energy sectors in particular scientific breakthroughs in energy technology innovation are still very much necessary to decarbonize the us economy and mitigate the worst effects of climate change officer science supported base research forms a foundation for future energy technologies the current imperative and the systems that meet our energy security economic and environmental challenges requires continued robust investments in diverse areas of fundamental research to advance all energy systems from a renewables such as solar and wind energy storage advanced nuclear hydrogen fusion carbon capture storage and utilization to next generation low carbon or no carbon fuels and many many more of these areas also by coupling climate energy research initiatives with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence atomically precise materials manufacturing and biotechnologies we will be able to further accelerate scientific discovery and in turn provide transformative breakthroughs for example advancing supercomputing capabilities will enhance climate understanding and predictability through improved modeling and stimulation harnessing artificial intelligence will expand data analysis streamline r d and accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries new quantum and nanotechnologies could be used to create energy efficient materials and chemical processes novel biotechnologies will increase the sustainability of human-made systems and the robustness of natural system and last but not least advanced manufacturing techniques have the potential to enable precise sustainable scalable processes to completely change the manufacturing paradigm achieving net zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050 will require breakthroughs in foundational sites in all the above areas that can in turn lead to novel technology solutions while we'll continue to see future energy technologies the office signs also supports research aligned with the os energy earthshots initiative to scale up energy technology within the decade such as hydrogen fuel and long duration storage together with the other doe offices we find science-based solutions to tackle roadblocks as we scale up current generation of energy technologies through pilots and demonstration projects in addition to robust investment in fundamental research we also need to maintain the health of the research infrastructure the deal is national research fracture it spans the united states with investment in many different communities from coast to coast at the local and regional level our national labs are important institutions that create jobs and drive innovations they collectively employ over 50 000 people and host over 45 000 visiting scientists and users of its scientific user facilities each year the office science also supports researchers at more than 300 universities in all 50 states puerto rico and the district of columbia dc the doe national labs are important community partners promoting equity and sustainable solutions for their cities and regions the eu labs don't simply employ scientists but attract entrepreneurs like academic programs small businesses other key players in the innovation ecosystems our community connections play an important role in our effort to implement the administration's environmental justices initiative to deliver direct benefits of our investments to disadvantaged communities and inform equitable research development and deployment goals through doe programs the office sciences also committed to building a diverse scientific workforce to sustain our successful long-term scientific research programs this commitment extends from our workforce development efforts to the stewardship of our national laboratories and small business innovation programs in the fiscal year 2022 officer science proposes a new initiative reaching a new energy sciences workforce or renew to leverage our national labs and research infrastructure to provide undergraduate and graduate training opportunities for students and academic institutions not currently well represented in the u.s snt ecosystem it is critical that we continue to recruit gray minds and to also plan and build world-leading science resources we need to competitively recruit and retain the best and the brightest and invest time and resources in cultivating talent in order to play a leading role on the international stage sustained investment further ensured that the deal remains a reliable and trusted public partner with the private sector bringing the scientific innovation to fruition and in full circle all of these efforts require sustainable resources fundamental science has traditionally received strong bipartisan support in congress as representative lucas just noted the doe and federal lawmakers work well together and we look forward to continuing a healthy dialogue to align our goals and strategies as scientists it's also important to articulate our vision for what is needed to excel in scientific leadership we must also listen to lawmakers as representatives of the american public and respond to national needs let me close by reiterating the commitment of the oil officer science to continue our foundational support of base research to pave the way for innovation to be the nation's ambitious climate and clean energy goals our world leading scientists at universities and laboratories across the nation are working across disciplines and using our unique scientific facilities to deliver results let's continue to work together to develop transformative solutions one atom at a time for a brighter future for humankind and society thank you for the opportunity to share our exciting vision with you today back to you mike okay thank you thank you very much dr kong for those remarks i'm excited now to welcome a remarkable panel of lead leading scientists and researchers i'd like to start by with dr cynthia friend she's the president of the kavli foundation which funds basic research in the fields of astrophysics nanoscience neuroscience and theoretical physics prior to joining kavli she was a member of the harvard university faculty where she held numerous leadership positions and she currently serves as vice chair of the department of energy's basic energy sciences advisory committee then we have dr joe handlesman who's a professor and the director of the wisconsin institute for discovery at the university of wisconsin-madison she previously served as a science advisor to president barack obama as the associate director for science at the white house office of science and technology policy where she served for three years then we turned to dr jesus velasquez who's an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at the university of california davis where he leads a team that studies materials that have applications in nano electronics energy conversion and environmental remediation finally turn to dr kathy yellick who is the newly appointed vice chancellor for research at uc berkeley next door to us dr yellick a computer scientist has been a preeminent scholar teacher and leader at uc berkeley and here at berkeley lab for the past 30 years so welcome welcome to the panel so and thanks very much for joining us today uh i'd like to start our discussion just with as sort of an introduction if you could each say a word about uh what got you excited about starting a career in basic science and i think i'd uh like to start that with dr friend great thank you mike well i just had always had a natural curiosity about how things work and a deep interest in solving problems and that's what excited me about basic science i had also some great professors and teachers along the way who stimulated my interest in science for teaching me how to think logically and then finally big science projects like some of the things that we've heard about today some of the large-scale facilities that were very visible in my formative years were also an inspiration great and now i'll turn to joe handlesman who i will also say serves as the co-chair of my advisory board so hello hi mike and thank you i i started my career in science when i first looked through a microscope when i was 12 years old i took a course in science that i was petrified of thinking i would never survive it and i couldn't do science because i was a girl and then i looked through a microscope and i saw paramecia which are these one-celled little organisms that swim around and do very interesting things despite not having brains and i never wanted to get away from a microscope again i became a microbiologist and i have the very microscope that i bought when i was 12 years old uh sitting right next to me in my office yeah great so dr lasquez is could you give us a quick start of your story well i'm originally from puerto rico and actually it was through uh and come originally from a socio-economic challenge background and actually every time at least once a year puerto rico faces the challenges of hurricanes and it actually was through that experience of of of having to of having access to electricity as well as clean water being a commodity every year that inspired me to figure out ways and how to help my community uh then fast forward through just amazing training from amazing scientists teachers and mentors that that helped me connect the dots and now develop a program dedicated uh to to materials to move forward these technologies at uc davis wonderful so thank you uh and finally uh kathy ellick can you tell us your story thanks very much mike so i grew up in the midwest and had great teachers in math and science in the public school systems there and that led me to the mit where i did my undergraduate and graduate work but when i got to mit i really had no interest in computer science i took one course because people said it would be useful and i found that i just loved solving the problems that come up in computation that is the algorithm is trying to figure out how to make a computer do what you want it to do and over my career i've become even more interested in how you use computers to solve other scientific problems okay great so coming to the present maybe i'm going to ask a couple of you to talk a bit about the role the dua office of science has played in your research and so cynthia would you like to start that yes actually does play multiple roles in my work as a scientist and in particular of course as a funder of the research that we do which focuses on increasing the sustainability of chemical production using nanomaterials and it's relevant to today's topic because improvement of catalytic processes has the potential to dramatically change energy usage and to decrease it by up to 40 according to an eu report in 2016. so direct funding of our research but also the development and funding of advanced facilities that were referred to another a number of times today an example being the advanced light source at lbnl has also been really important in the progress of our work to characterize and understand at a very uh an atomic level how these materials work and then more recently my involvement in vsac has informed my broader understanding of the role of basic energy sciences in many critical fields basic energy sciences at the department of energy is one of the largest funders of physical science in the united states and this past year i led a study of u.s

competitiveness in international landscape and research areas critical to basic energy sciences and what we found was rather alarming we found that the united states is being surpassed in many of these critical areas by other countries and that corresponds to a decade of increased investment in science by other countries in asia and europe and people are interested in this report is publicly available on the bes website and then most recently that come to my current role as president of the kavli foundation the foundation has partnered with the doe office of science on a joint program to enhance communication between researchers doing basic science and also the public because communication of the importance of basic science to the public who needs to support this uh because that we all owe our support to the united states public that's really important to make it clear how basic science plays a critical role in uh the future of innovation so so thank you and actually uh thank you particularly for your role in that vsac report if people want to know more about what the what basic energy sciences is doing in the department that's a good place to start uh and so now i'd like to turn to jesus would you like to talk a bit about how do you off science is affecting your research today yeah certainly uh well you know it's i think through first and foremost through training actually i've been exposed to doi national laboratories all the way back when i was a graduate student at buffalo uh and having that opportunity to be introduced to the world of utilizing uh uh just amazing facilities uh like synchrotron-based techniques to characterize these materials and trying to understand them fundamentally uh has been a game changer for for myself and and and i know generations of students but then now fast forwarding to now having the fortune of being at uc davis with my own program dedicated to designing uh uh inorganic solids adam by atom uh and like the rubik's cubes we have the power of chemistry to to manipulate uh our functionality of these materials uh and doe national labs not only through the experimental work play a in really important role for us to try to understand uh fundamental science that translates to improvement in performance but also on the educational part on the training that my undergraduate graduate students at postdocs have the great fortune of being exposed to through these interactions and collaborations with the oe national labs thank you so i'd like to turn the attention to the climate crisis we're in and actually ask the question to a couple of you how does investing in fundamental science provide a clear path for tackling the climate crisis at scale and i thought joe handlesman would you like to lead us off with that thanks mike uh well i think basic science has always been the source of innovation and the practical advances that we've made so uh basic energy sciences is definitely the investment that we need to understand the world around us to manage carbon and emissions i think two areas that are of particular uh importance that have been of interest to doe for several years are first of all understanding carbon storage in soil this has many implications one soil is the largest terrestrial sink for carbon it holds about three times more carbon than the entire atmosphere so it's a very significant source of carbon but it also can be a sink of carbon a place to store it soil carbon is also what gives soil its stability and our soil is being eroded at incredibly high rates across the world we've lost 133 billion tons of carbon from soil just since the beginning of modern agriculture so the soil can act as a repository for carbon that we want to store in ways that we're just not exploring sufficiently and the basic science of energy storage carbon storage in soil i think will be a key to that i think we also need computational work for models in agriculture in order to understand soil one very simple example is that when the usda reports soil erosion they only report two kinds of erosion that happen at the surface of the the soil and they completely ignore what's called gully erosion which are these uh fairly deep guts in the land that takes soil away it probably represents half of our soil erosion and yet it's not accounted for in most of our estimates of soil erosion and that's the kind of thing where a combination of remote sensing land-based measurements and really powerful computational tools and artificial intelligence could really come together to solve that problem great thank you i'm also going to ask on this issue of what fundamental science is doing to address climate crisis i asked cynthia friend to weigh in on that too yes well generally speaking basic or curiosity driven science is really important for future innovation in general and specifically in tackling the climate crisis because it it yields new and unexpected uh discoveries that ultimately can be developed into new technologies and in fact the most important discoveries really disrupt how we think about nature and that can lead to revolutionary new technologies and uh in future tackling the the climate crisis um and i'll elaborate on this in a subsequent uh question really requires new innovative approaches that will emerge from basic science but in many different fields because there's more than one aspect of the problem we have to tackle uh one thing i'd like to emphasize though is that to really achieve transformative transformational changes in technology we need to accelerate the time between making a basic science discovery and then applying it in fact this is another one of the recommendations of the vsac report i refer to i'm giving quite a few advertisements for that i think but just in a very general sense and i'll get to this more specific subsequently basic science is very important in fact the reason i recently joined the college foundation which is a california-based philanthropy is that it has the mission of supporting basic science for the benef benefit of humanity and that really reflects my view on the importance of basic science research which is really the source of future innovation and it's one of the uh important pillars for tackling the climate crisis thank you so so now specific i'd like to address the ask you some the question what should the federal government be doing to ensure that basic science is helping to meet the nation's climate and clean energy goals and really to accelerate those solutions that we need and joe hendelson i'll start with you well i think one of the uh the big aspects is keeping fundamental science funded because my experience has been that the applications follow when the basic science discoveries are made that happens naturally both in universities and in national labs and in industry and it's been uh the department of energy has been remarkably forward-thinking i think meant much more than many other agencies in the federal government in the breadth of science that it supports that will lead to energy and climate solutions for example the soil science that talked about before there were some really innovative uh programs pursuing those goals long before some of the other agencies that you might expect would be pursuing soil goals uh we were doing that and so the department of energy has always been on the cutting edge of many fields related to climate um and and um emissions and everything related to that and so i think keeping that basic science focus is really critical there's been a lot of attention paid to these translational programs trying to fund more and more in the area of turning the basic science discoveries into innovation for industry and personally i don't think that's needed as much as the very fundamental investment in science because those discoveries that have implications for uh practical solutions they will be converted by somebody the funding will be there but what what limits what we can convert is how much basic science is done thank you so uh kathy ellick i'd like you also to address what you think the federal government should be doing thanks very much mike and i think at berkeley we sometimes refer to climate as one of those wicked hard problems that really requires that we bring all the tools in the toolbox together and it's so we don't really know what the final set of solutions are going to be i think it's pretty clear that there's not a single silver bullet here but there's not just a one technology that's going to sort of save us from climate change so we need to explore a really broad spectrum of approaches and um but we also need to allow for that amazing and often surprising breakthroughs that come from fundamental science so if you think about the pandemic as an analogy uh you know i'm very thankful for the earlier investments and things like fundamental biology and genomics and understanding how not just sort of what dna looks like but also how it is translated and encoded and from across the the um you know these microbial species and so we don't know where some of these breakthroughs are going to come from and it's a reason that we need to have a broad set of investments in fundamental science and you know in the climate and energy space clearly we want to explore new sources of energy but also new materials for things like energy storage and carbon sequestration also to understand the biology and help us understand how microbes as dr hamelsmann talked about things like how do they improve the yield on farms but also how do we use them to clean up lakes and things like that so sort of this this broad spectrum of approaches and by the way going back to my computational interest the puzzles that still come up in those kinds of biological problems is one of the things that i'm working on today and i think that i didn't get into this field ever thinking that that was what i was going to do or that's how the tools that i and algorithms that i was developing would be used so we really need those fundamental investments across the office of science and science more broadly in order to make sure that we have the solutions that we're going to need for climate and energy so we've been hearing about the breakthroughs that are required to achieve these net zero greenhouse gas emission goals i'd like to maybe get a couple examples of what novel breakthroughs are required and maybe doctor friend you could address that thank you mike yes i i mean as already was just articulated by professor yelik a broad range of developments are required to achieve net zero greenhouse emissions there no single strategy is going to work and i want to underscore something you refer to mike and that is that workforce development which requires recruitment and retention of talent the focus on basic research is really essential in the entire range of challenges in this space and in fact across science and technology as a whole so some of the examples on my list and this is not a complete lesson but one is new materials for storing energy from intermittent sources such as wind and solar are really essential because we have to capture those energy sources so we need new materials to do that more efficiently but then we need to be able to store them so that they can really replace some of the traditional ways of producing energy we also need new ways to produce energy and so fusion was referred to a few times today and there again we need some basic uh understanding of those processes processes for producing chemicals in consumer goods need to be more made more efficient and also they need to perhaps be modified to be able to use biomass or to reuse existing materials so that you have a basically a closed loop of the resources that you use is also very important and relevant to this local on-demand production of certain chemicals that take a lot of energy to make but also to transport are important this would be especially important in agriculture where for example ammonia is important as a fertilizer if you could produce that on demand locally that would have a huge impact and efficiently of course there are many other examples including the production of efficient production of clean fuel such as hydrogen and removal of greenhouse gases through carbon capture conversion or conversion to other useful products so these are just a few examples there's very long lists and i focus on ones that i'm most familiar with we've heard about some of the others for example from professor handelsman but in all cases i think we need first of all the talent to do the work we need and we also need new experimental and computational tools to be developed to accelerate progress and basic science i think can really make a big impact in this one atom at a time but adding it to lots of atoms so uh that's i think i'd like to just ask you to say maybe one last word of um how will the sustainable investment in fundamental science help re-establish us as a golden book as a global leader in scientific discovery that we need so let me turn to joe hendelson for just uh sort of last remarks i think basic discovery has always been the hallmark of u.s science that the rest of the world has envied and it is that basic science that has made us the technological leader that we are as well uh and so i think bringing uh the the federal investment to science further up on the scale so that there's more basic science coupled with the freedom of thought and the uh university system that is so important to advancement of science and the national labs which are so important for exploring new fields in science i think will will keep us or bring us back to a level of enormous visibility and prowess i think it's also really important we haven't had time to talk about it today but to talk about how to make the workforce more equitable because it is the workforce that will drive this and we must uh educate women and minorities in the numbers needed to meet workforce demands of the future well this is a conversation that could go on a long time but uh we'll we'll move along but i think that's a good thing to end on that the most important thing the laboratories and do you have science bring to the nation are the people who work there and are are being able to attract those people into the working on these national problems so thank you very much on behalf of all yours your really excellent insights thanks very much thank you so now i'm pleased to introduce dr richard meyers who's the president and science director and faculty investigator at the hudson alpha institute for biotechnology in huntsville alabama dr meyers has had more than 40 years of experience in genetics and genomics he has a passion for genomic research and biotechnology that led him to the role as as director uh there at president and science directors at its opening in 2008 and has been there ever since so i'd like to welcome to the stage dr meyers and let him make some keynote remarks thank you mike and thank you all for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts on the crucial role that research plays in our nation's health our well-being and our future i also want to just uh thank the previous uh the panel that could not agree more with everything they said i think all of those are you'll hear some echoes of that in this so so many things that we care about the environment our health food industry education the economy really everything having to do with human endeavor depend on basic discovery driven research and the sciences this includes biology chemistry physics engineering mathematics the social sciences we wouldn't have things like this a cell phone my vaccine card our ability to feed the world without a robust system and infrastructure whose purpose is to understand how basic fundamental questions about how the world how the universe and how natural systems work that's really what basic research is there are countless examples over the centuries particularly in the last hundred years but especially even more and more in recent years that corroborate this point [Music] all of the sciences and you've heard multiple examples of this are deeply interrelated connecting in ways that are not sometimes obvious because i'm a biologist i can rattle off many curiosity driven biological research discoveries that have changed the world just a couple of those recombinant dna identification of cancer-causing gene mutations cut and paste editing of genes and living cells and organisms and many more have not only led to a greater understanding of ourselves and other organisms but have led to tremendous tremendous numbers of applications products and spawn huge industries that are having immediate impacts on the quality of life on our planet let me use my own experiences as one relevant example in the mid-1980s scientists at the department of energy i happen to be lucky enough to be at the first meeting where this was discussed were the first to propose the idea that we should determine the entire genetic makeup of a human being and from this visionary sequence visionary thinking the human genome project was born my lab at stanford university i was there for many years ucsf and then stanford university as part of the national the lawrence berkeley national laboratory's joint genome and genome institute was fortunate enough to participate in this project over its 13-year tenure it was funded by the doe and we were one of the teams that helped to develop improve and apply these ever-evolving technologies they don't sit still they move rapidly to learn how to sequence the human genome the project involved about 19 countries around the world but most of the work was done in the us and the uk when we started this project we really didn't have the goal of making products or applications or industries developing from this work although we suspected it would happen that was not the purpose it was simply to collect a huge it wasn't simple but the goal was to collect a huge amount of data to figure out how to collect those data and then figure out how these sequences from this data make us what we are we included other organisms in the early days of the project and of course do that a lot now and the endeavor paid off way beyond what i think any of us could have ever expected one huge payoff has been in technology researchers in academia industry recognized the great value of having even one individual's genome sequence and this was more than a million vote has led to a more than a million-fold improvement in terms of cost speed accuracy today literally over a million fold we can sequence a human or plant genome for as little as a thousand dollars of far cry from the billions we that were required to get the first sequence when we really didn't know how to do it when we first started it was a lot of development i'm proud to say that the joint genome institute's the oe's joint genome institute's contribution of the three human chromosome sequences is 11 of the total not only came in on schedule or ahead of schedule but at the highest accuracy rate of all the contributors the human genome project and since then has evolved improvements involved many improvements in dna sequencing machine technology and just as critical and you've heard about this in the computational tools to handle analyze interpret and disseminate the massive amount of data we're generating today because of this every day hundreds of thousands of research scientists and even more people in the industry use these data and these technologies to make new fundamental discoveries from now millions of people many many many plants animals and microbes uh both the species and many individuals from those species these discoveries have led to phenomenal increases in our knowledge of life and yet there's still so much to learn if we have the will to continue and expand these efforts living things are very complex and believe me it's going to take a long time we should expect this knowledge to grow indefinitely and probably exponentially because of the huge challenges facing the world today climate change health and disease sustainable agriculture we cannot afford not to support it when the first human genome was finished in 2003 does and the joint genome institute including our lab transition to use these technologies infrastructure and expertise to begin begin determining the genetic makeup that is the entire genome sequences of many additional organisms but mostly plants also included some microbes fungi and even some animals more than half the species of these genome sequences in the public sector were sequenced by our lab and the jgi and all of these data were made available freely uh to the public and to everyone immediately as they were produced so why why are we doing this um bioenergy being a major part of this sustainable agriculture but really sustainable anything to do with plants agriculture forestry our oceans we desperately need to diversify the types of plants we grow for food fuel and clothing and we need to move rapidly on these because of climate change and other reasons um i don't drink coffee so this doesn't bother me so much but coffee chocolate bananas many things are in great great peril because of the the fact that they're not going to be able to be grown in their usual places and that's not later that's starting to happen now sadly a huge increase to global temperature increases is the way we do modern agriculture we really need to be able to grow food more and more food and plants for uh and plants for other reasons as well a whole lot more sustainably than we do now but further we're really running out of arable land we may well be out of it now so we need to improve yields and hopefully reverse the damage that's already been done uncertainly i'm i am certain we can do this but it'll require a continued supportive uh research and that means really basic research in in the universities research institutes uh biotech summits too but we've seen this over and over industry will move in quickly when this this knowledge is generated and made available in fact for uh when you just using the human genome project again as an example 10 years ago even that long ago the patel firm did an extensive study just report on the return of the u.s investment and the fundamental research efforts in the human genome project of more than 140 fold and that was 10 years ago i'm sure it's way way way bigger than that now and you'll see more and more of that so economic uh impact is important but it really will come with these discoveries as dr handlessman just mentioned we had an agricultural revolution in the 50s and 60s uh last century in agri and much of that was based on genetics but other technologies as well that increased the yields of key crops several folds staving off what surely would have been much more famine and many other problems so these advances in our knowledge make that that that seem like the dark ages in a lot of ways we can do a lot more than we are doing now we need to keep doing this in the our complex world we need another revolution and it actually has begun let me give a couple examples disease resistance in in our agricultural plants and our forests and everywhere are are being determined by using genomics genetics uh uh the the surveillance technologies all sorts of things and obviously deep learning and uh computation so one of our faculty member josh clevenger here at hud staff institute is developing peanut strains peanuts are big crop not just in the southeast in the us but all over the world uh that will be resistant to aflatoxin one of the the organism that causes that is rampant across the globe and we have to spend a lot of money farmers spend about 158 dollars an acre in pesticides just to try to keep this down uh and that's a lot of money and a lot of time and you might not even need to use that at all if you have resistance trains that's one of many many examples of pest resistance and weed and resistance to weeds etc fertilizer only a tiny portion of the percentage of the fertilizer that's given to our plants are are taken up by the roots and most of it ends up in the water table and then in the ocean causing algae blooms and just even the fertilizer industry is very big on let's figure out how to do this better we put so much on we could put on less if we knew it was being taken up and made me being taken more efficiently getting energy from plant waste and including weeds in fact the oe is funding some of this fundamental research to figure out how to do that we have got to figure out how to break down cellulose which is this polymer in all plants into mono sugars so that you can maximally get energy from that we just can't do that efficiently now it's too expensive but that's research is needed for that and then my favorite this is a little bit of a fantasy but i think that we are working on it i think it will happen someday is to understand basic science understand what makes a plant a perennial rather than just an annual and it's probably only a few genes that do that you could turn up an annual plant most of our crops are annuals right sugarcane isn't but we don't grow much here most of them are annuals if you didn't have to plow them up every year causing the erosion what soil lost et cetera and all the time and money and energy that goes into it you can save a lot even if you only have to plow them up every few years so i think it's obvious that i'm intensely passionate about the need for support of scientific research we need to support the ongoing efforts we really do and and we are us has been leaders but we're we we could decline with uh lots of competition and other countries we really really want to keep this going but we need to do even more to inspire recruit attract and recruit and support young scientists as dr handelsman said they are our future and we cannot afford to lose them due to lack of opportunity and career pathways my institute uh we put in a lot of effort nationwide and actually worldwide into reaching out to the next generation to teachers to non-scientists showing them the importance of research and that it is fun as the congressman said so to close i'm not coming at this only to advocate for my lab my institute the jgi or the doe but also for my one-year-old grandson my children and all of your children and grandchildren thank you thank you thank you dr myers for those inspiring remarks i'd now like to introduce our final speaker who's congresswoman suzanne bonamici who represents the first congressional district of oregon suzanne is honored to serve on the select committee on the climate crisis where she's working to implement the climate action plan take immediate action to reduce emissions create good-paying jobs support adjust transition and strengthen the resilience of our communities and she's also a member of this committee on science space and technology we've heard about today and leader on the subcommittee on the environment and the subcommittee on energy from this position she works to defend science address the causes and consequences of climate change and make sure that policy decisions are based on independent science and she's working to draw attention to issues that affect the coastal communities like the one she represents so with that congresswoman fleur's yours thank you thank you so much that for the kind introduction it's an honor to to join this uh important discussion today as you heard in the introduction i serve on not only the committee on science space and technology i also serve on the select committee on the climate crisis and the committee on education and labor so the discussion that dr myers was just having about the need for the workforce and sciences is really critical as well so i'm really excited to join you to participate in this important event highlighting the critical role that the department of energy's office of science plays and helping the nation to meet its climate and clean energy goals the office of science occupies a unique position within the federal research enterprise as the nation's largest sponsor of research in the physical sciences and as part of its portfolio of activities the office stewards 10 of the department's 17 national laboratories and it maintains 29 scientific user facilities that are used annually by tens of thousands of researchers from across the country and and around the world we know that these resources and investments enable transformative research across a multitude of application areas from discovering the basic building blocks of matter to the development of revolutionary clean energy technologies and everything in between these assets enable the office of science to play a critical role in the fight against climate change advancements in battery technology and renewable energy integration can be traced directly back to the office's foundational research in areas like material science and chemistry and likewise the knowledge derived from its support for research into earth and climate system yields real world methods for predicting climate shifts and developing resilient energy infrastructure the office also supports a robust portfolio of research and infrastructure infusion a technology with the potential to deliver clean abundant energy while producing essentially no greenhouse gas emissions the national laboratory complex represents the backbone of these research efforts the office of science laboratories are home to a talented scientific and engineering workforce and a wide array of state-of-the-art user facilities that help accelerate scientific progress together with their partners in the academic community as well as in industry they serve as test beds for emerging areas of strategic importance such as quantum information science and artificial intelligence both of which have major implications for climate science and their training grounds as well for the next generation of energy researchers so as a member of that house committee on science space and technology is a top priority of mine and i know chairwoman johnson shares his priority as well to ensure that our federal agencies are set up for success and that is a bipartisan effort i know we have been working diligently to further enable and equip the office of science and its national laboratories to remain vital contributors to the u.s scientific enterprise i'm proud of what the committee's been able to accomplish his congress in july the u.s house of

representatives passed the department of energy science for the future act and that was passed by a wide margin this well-vetted bipartisan measure would be the first ever comprehensive authorization for the office of science it contains explicit policy direction and a broad range of topics relevant to mitigating climate change and accelerating the development of clean energy technologies this includes uh authorization of research to advance the next generation of energy storage solar energy hydrogen critical materials fusion energy manufacturing carbon renewal and bio energy technologies among others these activities yield outcomes that feed into the many programs authorized in the energy act of 2020 another bipartisan piece of legislation that our committee worked hard to pass and which was signed into law at the end of last year the bill would also authorize the investments required to ensure the timely construction and upgrade of large scale experiments and user facilities many of which serve as essential tools for developing and perfecting the clean energy technologies of the future beyond legislation our committee has a long-standing and productive relationship with the office of science which has enabled us to work closely with the department to ensure the success of its programs and projects in addition we've had a series of hearings designed to showcase the unique contributions of the office of science and to closely examine ways in which we on the committee can better enable the office to meet its mission needs and that's a critical part of our work as

2021-11-09 01:45

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