Robbie Barbero: I'm going to talk a little bit about what
the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is, and what we do, what kind of tools
we have at our disposal.
And then I'll talk about two distinct frameworks that are put on the table as ways that we
think about science and science policy, and ways that you might be able to, as a collective,
consider or organize microbiota research.
Oh, and I also want to say, after Dr. Relmen's talk, I think maybe I had a misuse of terminology
here.
So I apologize, should say human microbiota research.
All right, so the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is one of a handful
of policy counsels in the White House.
And we have three main missions.
The first is to make sure that the president and his senior staff are properly informed
about the science and technology components of all matters that come across their desks.
The second is to ensure that the policies, broadly, of the executive branch are informed
by sound science.
And then the third is to ensure that the scientific and technical work of the executive branch
is properly coordinated so as to provide the greatest benefit to society.
We have a handful of tools that we use in order to achieve those missions.
The first is that we can help to put out statements of national policy, which can come in a variety
of different forms: executive orders, presidential policy directives, agenda-setting documents
that go to the executive branch agencies.
The second is that we help the president coordinate his budget.
So we work closely with all of the agency leadership, and with the Office of Management
and Budget to make sure that the budget is in line with the president's stated priorities.
We can work with Congress, and we sometimes work with Congress on legislation.
We also help to contribute to presidential events and speeches.
So when the president is out there talking about science, which he really likes to do
because he is a very strong believer in the importance of science, you know, those are
opportunities for us to contribute.
And then finally -- and this is something that I will put on the table today -- is an
ability to convene.
So we have -- we do have the ability to bring together partnerships that might be difficult
to establish in other settings, whether they're public-private partnerships, public, you know,
public partnerships, whatever.
And so one of the questions that we are asked to think about is if you could call anyone,
who would you call and what would you ask for?
Okay, so something that the president is very excited about is what are the grand challenges
for the 21st century?
We all are familiar with the concept of grand challenges; the mission of getting a man to
the moon that President Kennedy called for in the 1960s is a great example.
The Human Genome Project is another one.
More recently, we've seen other decentralized non-government-organized types of grand challenges,
such as the establishment of Wikipedia, you know, putting all of the world's knowledge
online where anybody can access it.
It's important to think a little bit about what the attributes of a grand challenge are.
So this is how we define what a grand challenge is.
It should have some type of significant identifiable impact in an area of national and global priority.
It should be ambitious yet achievable, and compelling, motivating, and able to capture
the public's imagination.
And it's very important that it has this Goldie Locks level of specificity.
So you should be able to clearly define what it is that you are trying to accomplish in
the grand challenge.
And then, of course, because I come from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and
because I am a scientist, you know, we think that the grand challenges that we are interested
in should be able to harness innovation and science and technology.
So this is a newly-launched web page that we have from the -- on the White House website.
And it talks about the president's call to the public to identify and support the 21st
century grand challenges.
I apologize for the difficulty in reading the text here.
Hopefully, you all can read the link there, and I'm happy to provide it afterwards.
But at the bottom, you'll notice that there are four images.
And these are some examples of grand challenges that federal agencies are actually promoting
and supporting right now.
So the one on the left is NIH, DARPA, and NSF's Brain Initiative, which Dr. Collins
mentioned earlier today, and which the president launched with Dr. Collins at his side in April.
The next is DOE has two grand challenges.
EV Everywhere, which is aiming to make the electric vehicles as affordable as today's
gasoline-powered vehicles within 10 years.
And they have a sun-shot grand challenge, which is trying to do the same with photovoltaic
power, making it cost competitive with coal-powered energy.
And then there's NASA's asteroid challenge, and the USAID has a whole suite of grand challenges
around global development.
So one question that I would pose to this group to think about over the next few days
is can you identify and articulate a grand challenge for human microbiota research?
And there are implications across many administration, and I would say probably national and social
priorities: food safety, nutrition and health, and agriculture are some that come to mind.
And someone earlier had talked about -- I think it was the previous speaker encouraging
our children to eat dirt, which is not what I'm doing with this picture.
But I thought it was a great picture from the New York Times Magazine article that was
out earlier this year.
Okay, so another separate framework for thinking about opportunities in microbiota research
are platform technologies.
Now, the NRC published the new -- a New Biology report in 2009.
And in that they described the recent technical -- technological advances in a bunch of fields
outside of the life sciences that are contributing to analyses in the life sciences.
But what I've highlighted here is something that I think is compelling, which is that
in many cases, the complexity of biological systems present new challenges that call for
creative solutions and additional innovation.
So -- and I think that's true.
I mean, I think that the life sciences have benefited a lot from advances that were made
in other fields, but that it is certainly true that there will be some new types of
technologies and tools that we will need to continue to understand and perform life science
research.
So what are platform technologies?
I think of them as tools, instruments, techniques that would enable wholesale new research capabilities.
So they might offer improvements in fundamental aspects such as accuracy, precision, cost
of construction or operation, user-friendliness; any of those that you see in that list there.
Some examples might be next-generation DNA sequencing, which I think a lot of the data
that we will see over the next few days will show the contributions that has made to this
field.
And graphical user interfaces are another one that, you know, even though it didn't
necessarily improve precision or accuracy, it certainly improved the user-friendliness
of computers, something that Apple benefited from greatly.
Polymerase chain reaction and photolithography are also ones -- examples up there.
So why is OSTP interested in platform technologies?
Well, first of all, I think many times we find that leaps in knowledge are preceded
by some sort of technological advance.
They offer huge leverage for the investment because they, when properly disseminated,
enable many others to approach scientific problems differently, more precisely or more
efficiently than before.
And they can have broader societal and economic impacts.
So, again, I put these three possible areas where there are implications for microbiota
research with -- and crossovers with administration priorities: food safety, nutrition and health
-- I think, obviously, would be remiss to leave disease off of that -- and agriculture.
And then a couple of questions, you know, what if we had some sort of technology to
assess the functionality of complex microbial systems?
And what if we could do real-time measurement of communities in humans?
What other things do you wish that you could do that you can't do, and what would the tool
that you would need to do that be?
So finally, and I think -- I apologize for speaking quickly, but I do think that I am
going to get you out of here at a reasonable time.
What are some of the future directions for microbiome research, and how can OSTP help?
So I put -- going to jump to the end of this slide first.
I put my name and email address up there.
Please feel free to email me.
I do read every email and will respond to it.
And I'm happy to have offline conversations about where your thoughts are.
And specifically think about what I put up front as the tools that OSTP has at its disposal;
those are ways that we can help.
So, number one, is there a grand challenge for microbiome research?
Now, there's a whole breadth of possibilities for a grand challenge.
One is that it might be posed and articulated, and the president gets excited about it and
it gets announced, like what happened in April.
Now, that doesn't always happen.
At the very least, I think if you were able to articulate a grand challenge, you would
all have a very coherent set of objectives that you could put your next set of R01 grants
together and, you know, identify your funding sources.
So it's a useful exercise in many cases, even if the president doesn't announce it in the
East Wing, which is certainly something that I cannot promise.
[laughs]
What question do you wish you could ask, and what platform technology would you need to
answer that question?
Who are the natural partners for what you're trying to achieve in the private sector, in
the public sector?
You know, we're fortunate that the NIH has been so forward-thinking in this space, but
who else in the public sector do you think would be useful to have at the table, or who
else in the private sector should be at the table?
And what types of scientific disciplines or other types of professionals should be a part
of this conversation beyond the biologists?
Engineers, physicists, mathematicians, ecologists.
And finally, you know, what can OSTP do to help?
So with that, I thank you very much for your time.
And happy to chat offline.
[applause]
Owen White: All right.
Well, you heard the man.
We should identify grand challenges in microbiome research.
I think we've accomplished one, which is to stay very, very close to being on time.
Before we take our break -- we will come back at exactly 10:30, right -- I wanted to perform
one exercise.
Part of what we wanted to do was to bring as many NIH staff people to this meeting as
possible.
So we -- the organizers are very interested in a quick show of hands of how many people
are here that work for NIH.
Too numerous to count.
Wait, she's still counting.
We okay?
Yeah?
All right.
We'll take that as a reasonable estimate.
All right.
Thanks very much.
We're going to adjourn.
Let's thank all our speakers.
[applause]
We're going to be adjourning, and please return at 10:30 sharp.