In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton picked a 34-year-old applied physicist named Arati Prabhakar to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Two decades later, former President Barack Obama chose her to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). And as soon as this week, President Joe Biden is expected to name Prabhakar as his science adviser and nominate her as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
The 63-year-old Prabhakar would succeed Eric Lander, who resigned on 7 February after admitting to bullying his staff and creating a hostile work environment during his 9 months in office. Although she will need Senate confirmation to become OSTP director—which could take months—Prabhakar can immediately take the science adviser post. That would give her a role in addressing several thorny science policy issues, including how best to position the United States to compete with China, implement workable rules for protecting U.S.-funded academic research from theft, and reduce inequality in the research community.
Prabhakar’s extensive experience in Washington, D.C., and technical savvy will be a huge plus as she tackles her twin jobs, say those who know her.
“I have found Arati to be very smart, very principled, and … with excellent leadership qualities,” says John Holdren, who led OSTP for 8 years and served as Obama’s science adviser. “She’d make an excellent OSTP director and science adviser to the president.”
Her reputation as a team player is an asset as well, adds Washington, D.C., lobbyist Bart Gordon, a one-time chair of the House science committee as a Democratic representative from Tennessee. “She has all the background you could ask for, and she’s also such a nice person,” says Gordon, now with K&L Gates. “I’m absolutely delighted with the president’s choice.”
If—or more likely when—Prabhakar is confirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman and first person of color to lead OSTP and to serve as science adviser. Born in India and raised in Texas, Prabhakar earned her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1984 and immediately went to work for the federal government. She spent 7 years as a program manager at DARPA, the military’s technology incubator, before becoming the first woman to lead NIST.
In 1997, she moved to the West Coast, where she spent more than a decade as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. In 2012, she became the second woman to lead DARPA, serving a 5-year stint in which she created a biotechnology office that pioneered work on RNA vaccines to fight the current pandemic. In 2019, she formed Actuate, a nonprofit that works with private philanthropy to conduct what she calls “solutions R&D” in areas ranging from sustainable energy and public health to the ethical use of technology. After Biden was elected, some policy wonks were betting on her being named his science adviser.
The adviser’s main job is to help carry out the president’s agenda for science, which Biden described in a 15 January 2021 letter. His five-point plan asked Lander to apply lessons from the pandemic to improve public health, enlist research to combat climate change, ensure that the country remains a global leader in emerging high-tech fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum information science, reduce inequality within the research community, and turn federally funded basic research into well-paying jobs and new products.
Congress has helped Biden achieve a few of those goals, passing legislation that creates a new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and a new technology directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF). But there have also been some setbacks.
Biden’s $2 trillion social and economic recovery plan, which includes significant investments in sustainable energy, is all but dead because it lacks support from Senator Joe Manchin (D–WV), the deciding vote in an evenly split Senate. And a massive research, manufacturing, and trade bill designed to strengthen the country’s ability to compete with China is moving at a snail’s pace through Congress, with no guarantee that legislators will ever reconcile competing versions in the Senate and House of Representatives.
In implementing Biden’s to-do list, Prabhakar won’t be able to draw on a previous connection with the president, unlike Lander. A mathematician–turned–molecular biologist, Lander had worked with Biden when the vice president headed up the Cancer Moonshot during the Obama administration, and he co-chaired the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under Obama. Lander’s training in the life sciences was also seen as an asset as the Biden administration wrestled with the COVID-19 pandemic.
But times have changed, and Prabakhar’s technology background will be an asset, says William Bonvillian, a former Senate science staffer and federal relations director for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a guest lecturer. “We’re in a huge fight with China over technology, and Arati is steeped in all aspects of that issue,” Bonvillian says. “She understands the role of technology in the defense sector and how to responsibly manage competition with China, and she’s worked with the private sector on high-tech startups.”
“We’re also involved in a war with Russia [over Ukraine],” he adds. “And DARPA’s mission is to make sure our warfighters have access to cutting-edge technologies.”
Prabhakar’s intimate knowledge of DARPA should help the Biden administration stand up the fledgling ARPA-H and the new NSF technology directorate, both of which are expected to mimic DARPA’s risk-taking culture. Last year, Prabhakar wrote a white paper describing how to apply the DARPA model across government, noting that it requires a clear mission, autonomy, and exceptional leadership.
As a midterm appointment, Prabhakar probably won’t spend much time crafting new initiatives. And if Republicans regain control of one or both chambers of Congress in this fall’s elections, the Biden White House will likely need to rely on executive orders to implement its agenda rather than on any new legislation.
But that should still give Prabhakar plenty to work on.
“OSTP has influence, not power,” one higher education lobbyist and longtime Washington, D.C., insider says about the $7-million-a-year office, which draws heavily on staff seconded from other federal agencies. “And it has as much influence as the director and her staff can muster. Arati is tough but personable, and she knows how to exercise that influence.”
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