Earlier this month at an event in Washington, DC, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Ph.D., released a blueprint — titled “Driving Biomedical Innovation: Initiatives for Improving Products for Patients” — for spurring biomedical innovation and improving human health. Stemming from “a review of FDA’s current policies and practices, as well as months of meetings with major stakeholders,” the report “addresses concerns about the sustainability of the medical product development pipeline, which is slowing down despite record investments in research and development.” And among the major actions the blueprint focuses on implementing is the idea of harnessing the potential of data mining and machine learning while protecting patient privacy. […]

Before a packed room of leading government officials, technologists, and journalists in downtown Washington this morning, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stressed the need for a new public-private partnership framework that enables innovation and workforce development in cybersecurity in order to adequately protect our nation’s interests from cyber attacks. The event — Cybersecurity Breakfast: Protecting Our Nation’s Assets — was sponsored in part by Washington Post Live, the live journalism arm of The Washington Post Co., and held at the newspaper company’s headquarters. Napolitano described the cybersecurity challenge in her opening remarks: The risks to national and economic security from cyberspace affect us all. So we begin by saying that […]

Sometime on Halloween — yes, Halloween — the world’s population is projected to hit 7 billion. In anticipation of the numerical milestone, msnbc.com has published an article this week calling on leading experts in many different disciplines to weigh in on the challenges caused by the burgeoning world population, noting: How we respond now will determine whether we have a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future or one that is marked by inequalities, environmental decline and economic setbacks… Among the experts consulted is Google’s Vice President for Research and Special Initiatives Alfred Spector, who noted access to information and education as one of the problems facing society: In the developed world technology has transformed […]

During a webinar earlier this afternoon, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) — spanning 25 Federal agencies engaged in nanotechnology research — released its 2011 Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Research Strategy, “a comprehensive, integrated approach to produce the research data that will ensure the safe, effective, and responsible development and use of nanotechnology” in the coming years. The EHS Research Strategy, which updates a 2008 version, summarizes the current state of nano science and provides guidance to agencies as they develop their agency-specific EHS research programs. Importantly, for the first time, the research strategy includes a core area of research in predictive modeling and informatics — at the same level as nanomaterial measurement, human exposure […]

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Deputy Director Tom Kalil and Senior Advisor Kumar Garg have highlighted the role of fundamental computing research in many of the breakthrough technologies we now use on a daily basis — using as an example Siri, the powerful new tool that Apple has deployed in its latest handset, the iPhone 4S: Apple earlier this month announced that a virtual personal assistant called Siri would be the premier feature of the new iPhone 4S. People will be able to ask Siri to book a table at a nearby restaurant, make an appointment with a friend or colleague or answer a question using the information from multiple […]

Last month, the President announced plans to develop a National Bioeconomy Blueprint, describing government-wide steps “to harness biological research innovations to address national challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment.” And earlier this month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a Request for Information (RFI), seeking input on how best to develop such a blueprint, including: strategies to meet grand challenges in lean budget times; commercialization and entrepreneurship opportunities to open new markets; research and development investments in areas that will provide the foundation for the bioeconomy; enhancements of workforce training to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers for the bioeconomy jobs of the […]