Institute for Progress (IFP) — May 2023 Update
Hello!
Hope you’ve all been enjoying the end of spring — it’s certainly been a wild time here in Washington, DC with the debt ceiling debacle. Two important takeaways relevant to IFP’s work:
Good news: Project Next Gen survived the debt ceiling clawbacks! (See our previous Washington Post op-ed on the program.)
Bad news: Permitting reform did not make it in the final deal (no, administrative tweaks to NEPA and yet another study on transmission do not count!).
Co-founder Alec Stapp will be talking about industrial policy in a Twitter Spaces event at noon today with Adam Ozimek, Arpit Gupta, and Matt Clancy — check it out here!
And now for the regular IFP updates:
Published Work
Through a partnership with Brookings and the Good Science Project, IFP supported “Building a Better NIH,” a series of short papers outlining the growth potential for our nation's premier health R&D funder:
“The NIH is arguably the most important institution shaping the rate and direction of scientific research, in an area – health – that has enormous implications for human well-being. Even very small improvements in the productivity of how NIH funding is spent could translate into massive improvements in social welfare. These short proposals are meant to open a conversation about practical, tractable reforms that could be considered in the coming years.”
Along with Amy Nice and Divyansh Kaushik, Senior Immigration Fellow Jeremy Neufeld outlined the argument for waiving in-person interviews for low-risk visa applicants, even after COVID-19:
“Interview waivers have positively contributed to effective visa processing. Recent data show a decline in global wait times for various applicant types… Moreover, interview waivers have had a minimal impact on overstay rates… Waivers are not granted at the expense of national security or public safety. Robust screening and vetting protocols persist even when interviews are waived.”
Biosecurity Fellow Arielle D’Souza proposed nine legislative ideas to improve our biosecurity response:
“These recommendations focus on broadening the scope of key agencies and initiatives, such as the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), as well as increasing transparency in the decision-making processes of the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise.”
Interviews & Events
Co-founder Caleb Watney and Director of Science Policy Heidi Williams were interviewed by Cardiff Garcia on the New Bazaar podcast to discuss the economics of innovation and how to design public institutions
Media
The Washington Post covered the “Building a Better NIH” series, which IFP cosponsored:
“The ‘Building a Better NIH’ project was first conceived a year ago, after longtime NIH director Francis Collins retired and President Biden pushed for the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a new agency inside NIH… leaders at the Institute for Progress and the Good Science Project worried about what they saw as a fundamental slowdown in NIH’s work.”
And Healthcare Finance News quoted Heidi on the series:
"‘Even small improvements in the productivity of how NIH funding is spent could translate into massive improvements in social welfare. These short proposals are meant to open a conversation about practical, tractable reforms that could be considered in the coming years,’ said contributor Heidi Williams of Stanford University and the Institute for Progress.”
Quartz quoted Senior Fellow Nikki Teran on the White House’s pandemic preparedness plan:
“The White House’s proposed budget for 2023 allocated $40 billion to the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) over five years to invest in pandemic preparedness, including with the goal of developing a vaccine within 100 days of the identification of a new biological threat—something the vaccine prototypes would be key to implementing. ‘That budget [...] would do a lot towards preventing pandemics. It could do a lot towards the creation of prototype vaccines and better [personal protective equipment],’ Nikki Teran, a biosecurity policy researcher at the Institute for Progress, a scientific advancement think tank, told Quartz.”
Heatmap referenced IFP’s work on NEPA in an explainer on the permitting reform debate:
“Some environmentalists say that NEPA is an important tool to waylay fossil-fuel development. (It’s how activists delayed the Dakota Access Pipeline for a year or so.) But others say that NEPA is now mostly slowing down the green transition, and that it has given ‘corporate interests and rich NIMBYs’ a veto over rapid climate action.”
Axios cited IFP research highlighting the need for more high-skilled immigrants in the U.S. to compete with China:
“A report last year from the Institute for Progress found 82% of ‘companies in the defense industrial base report that it is difficult to find qualified STEM workers’ and 50% of workers who hold advanced STEM degrees and work in the defense industrial base were born abroad.”
Axios also wrote about the importance of high-skilled immigrants for the success of the regional innovation hubs that were passed by Congress in the CHIPS and Science Act, citing IFP research:
“Even if Congress does not pass immigration reforms this year, critical agency-level actions can be taken, the Institute for Progress says. For example, USCIS could ensure the regional innovation hubs authorized under the CHIPS and Science Act can access cap-exempt H-1Bs.
Construction Physics by IFP Senior Infrastructure Fellow Brian Potter
Book Review: Healthy Buildings
“The case for increased focus on building health, especially air quality, seems very strong to me. And I agree that creating better standards is an important step. But I’m less optimistic than Allen and Macomber that we can expect voluntary standards to do much work here. I suspect improving building health will require the long, slow work of getting building jurisdictions to require or incentivize it.”
“Electricity’s transition from a luxury good to the foundation of modern life happened quickly. By 1930, electricity was available in nearly 70% of US homes, and supplied almost 80% of industrial mechanical power. By 1950, the US was tied together by an enormous network of high-voltage transmission lines. How did electrical power become ubiquitous? How was the system for distributing it, which makes modern civilization possible, built? Let’s take a look.”
Tweet for the Road
