From episode: Empowering the BIPOC Communities in STEM: The Potential Impact of the CHIPS and Science Act
what is the chips and the science act? And can it help boost your global competitiveness in science and technology? Can you please tell our audience what is it and how can it help boost our competition, especially with China coming along, now becoming a competitor? Yeah. So it's a major legislation, as you know, was adopted by Congress last year with bipartisan support and focuses on global competition in science technology. The NSF director actually called it the most important U .S. science and engineering legislation in a generation. It's, of course, a large bill, covers on the one hand a number of technology areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum and others. And for the purposes of the discussion today, we'll be looking at the end science part of the bill, which is focused on enabling federal agencies to support research and development funding broadly, given that, of course, science and engineering drive innovation and economic development in a number of areas. So just to highlight a few aspects, there are a few areas to look at. One is fundamental science, research facilities and instrumentation, so really looking at the basic research support. And on the other hand, applied research through the NSF, the SIP directorate, so this is directorate of technology innovation and partnerships. It's meant to expand regional innovation across the country and also discusses the sort of basic and applied research of the system. And then also has a strong focus on step education and workforce development through skills and experiences for trainees as well as educators and highlights a number of training programs that can help support the future of pipeline. I think as you too, sort of your second question, how it can help boost competitiveness, I think, and we'll talk about this sort of, it focuses on funding for National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, including the Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology programs to support education in a number of areas. And a few things, of course, for a few years, sorry, the legislation that has undergone a number of iterations and changes in name was a number of programs have been authorized, but not appropriated. So of course, the real question is where the real money comes from to really support these programs and what will happen.
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