This past December, I had the opportunity to organize and go on the Caltech Y’s DC Science Policy Trip! As one of the student organizers, I was super excited to see 4+ months of organizing translate into real life. We had 4 days of packed with sessions with many Caltech alums in various aspects of science policy.
Our first session was with Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. After a quick introduction from Dr. Prabhakar, the rest of session was open questions from our group. In our group of 21 students, we had a roughly even split of graduate and undergraduate students. This was a really informative session as we heard about how to Dr. Prabhakar’s experiences at DARPA and NIST differed, how each agency has it’s own “style” of managing and pushing science and science policy.
Session with OSTP at the Eisenhower Executive Building
Another session I really enjoyed was with Sean Mullin, a Caltech alum, who is a staffer on the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources. Sean was kind enough to let us walk through the underground tunnel between the Senate Building and the U.S. Capitol (we got to see multiple U.S Senators traveling between the two locations!). With the budget negotiations in full swing, we got to hear about how staffers negotiate and write the bills that we were hearing about on the news.
Other agencies we visited with: OSTP, Department of Energy, NASA, DARPA, OMB, FDA, and staffers on various committees in the Senate & the House!
[Work in Progress!]