Biophysical Society Bulletin | December 2021

Public Affairs

BPS Congressional FellowMax Olender Joins Senate Committee Staff The Biophysical Society (BPS) is excited to share the news about 2021–2022 Congressional Fellow Max Olender . Olender began his fellowship in August with an intensive orientation program and interviewing with U.S. Congressional offices interested in hosting a AAAS Science and Technology Fellow. Olender was extended and accepted an offer to serve on the Subcommittee on Children and Families of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). He will serve under the lead- ership of Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) and work in conjunction with his personal office staff. Committee work is highly compet- itive, supporting all Democratic members on the issues of jurisdiction to the committee. Olender is the first BPS Congressional Fellow to serve his tenure on a committee.

Pandemic Preparedness Back-Burnered asWhite House Struggles with Agenda As Congress struggles to enact the White House’s domestic agenda, pandemic preparedness seems to have taken a back burner. Senate HELP Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-NC) had hoped to have a draft of their legislative priorities by late summer this year, but aides say the effort might be delayed as long as until early 2022 and the House Energy & Commerce Committee has not publicly announced plans to work on pandemic preparedness legislation. Murray has commented that discussions with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on policy details are ongoing even if legislative progress has been slow. Public health stakeholders have called on lawmakers not to squander the bipartisan momentum and miss out on an op- portunity for long-term investment in public health. Senate Spending Bills Bolster Science The Senate has made public its vision for the 2022 appro- priations bills, and while science funding remains a priority for fiscal year 2022 (FY22) which began on October 1, it is currently being funded at FY21 levels under a continuing resolution (CR) slated to expire on December 10. As of the time of writing, it is expected that we will face at least one more CR as Congress works through the differences in the twelve separate spending bills. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s largest research funder, would see a 12% budget increase in 2022, for a total of $48 billion. Nearly

half of the $5 billion increase, or $2.4 billion, would go to the Biden administration’s proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Like the House bill, the Senate measure contains a 6% increase for NIH’s base budget. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive an increase of $1 billion, to $9.5 billion, but that 12% hike is $148 million shy of what the House has proposed. Senate appropri- ators endorsed NSF’s plan for a new technology directorate alongside its six existing research directorates. Appropriators toned down a geographic mandate that would require NSF to earmark 20% of its overall budget for a program to help states ranked in the bottom half of grant recipients. Instead, the spending bill tells NSF that some 20% of its planned $200 million investment in 10 new research centers to promote re- gional innovation should go to institutions in states served by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Around theWorld Brazilian Government Redirects Research Funds In January, Brazil’s research community was looking out on a picture-perfect landscape: the main funding agency, the Min- istry of Science, Technology and Innovation, put out its first “Universal Call” for research applications since 2018, gener- ating more than 8,000 research proposals. Things looked to

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