Biophysical Society Bulletin | October 2019

Public Affairs

Applications Are Open for the Biophysical Society 2020–2021 Congressional Fellowship Interested in using your science skills to inform science policy? Does spending a year working on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, helping develop policy sound exciting? The Biophysical Society’s Congressional Fellowship program is your opportunity to participate directly in the process of law-making that impacts how research is funded and regulated. This year-long opportu- nity provides fellows a chance to use their science knowledge to inform the public policy process. Fellows will gain firsthand knowledge and experience on how Congress works, and participate in the esteemed AAAS Science and Technology Fellows program that provides ongoing training and networking opportunities during the fellowship year and beyond. Visit the website for more details about the program or contact Leann Fox at lfox@biophysics.org or (240) 290-5606. The application deadline is December 20, 2019.

Around theWorld In Advance of Brexit, UK Announces Fast-Track Visa to Recruit Scientists New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is making moves to attract top scientists to live and work in the United Kingdom (UK) following its departure from the European Union (EU) by announcing new fast-track visas. Immigration is a major concern for the scientific community post-Brexit, leaving sci- entists and technicians from EU countries worrying they will no longer get automatic rights to live and work in the UK and will need to navigate Britain’s current visa process, which is slow and expensive. While Johnson announced the fast-track visa in early August, few details about the process have been revealed. The official statement from the prime minister’s office mentions that several strategies are open for negotiation with the nation’s leading research centers, including increasing the number of UK research institutes and universities that could endorse candidates for visas, removing the need to have employment before arriving, and getting rid of the cap on the number of Tier 1 “Exceptional Talent Visas,” opening the door for more scientists.

Academia to FBI onMonitoring Chinese Scientists: “Tread Carefully” In August, 22 higher education associations and rights groups released a statement in response to a reported push by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Institutes of Health, and other government officials to monitor certain Chinese scholars working at US universities. While the statement goes on to acknowledge that the concern about Chinese espionage likely has some validity, it believes that calls to monitor individuals solely based on their country of origin violate norms of due process and should raise alarms in a democracy. The groups express concern that the govern- ment’s approach could “cast suspicion on potentially hundreds of thousands of students and scholars,” noting that as of last year there were about 340,000 Chinese students attending US schools. If the FBI’s inquiries are “not conducted with care,” the groups fear ongoing research by these students and other scholars could be hurt and international researchers could be discouraged from coming to the country. The sentiments echo those of the Chinese-American scientists who published a letter in Science in March arguing that racial profiling by the government stands to cause more damage to US science than any lost data or intellectual property.

October 2019

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