As scientists, I believe we are obligated to utilize our knowledge to serve our fellow humans. Not only is the public largely responsible for funding our pursuits, we also have a responsibility to use our specialized skills for the betterment of society. For me, this service is manifested through being active in the science policy arena.
Science policy exists at the intersection of scientific research and government action. It asks two questions. First, how can scientific knowledge be used to inform policy, both in legislation and in execution? This encompasses a wide range of policy areas, including agriculture, environmental policy, climate change, nuclear weapons, infrastructure, genetic engineering, and privacy. Second, how does policy shape the way in which we conduct science? Policy plays a pivotal role in research funding, the diversity of our scientific workspace, the public’s access to research findings, and educating the next generation of scientists.
I have been involved in the science policy space since 2017. During grad school, I was an active member of the Science Policy Group at Berkeley, of which I served as President for a year, and the National Science Policy Network. Keep scrolling to read about some of the exciting things I’ve worked on!
Kathy Shield and I with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who recognized us for our efforts to eliminate the graduate student tax from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Photo courtesy of the Office of Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
Fighting against the graduate student tax.
Advocating for graduate students against the “grad tax” was my proudest and most impactful science policy experience yet.
In November 2017, the House of Representatives proposed sweeping legislation to overhaul the US tax system. Included in their proposal was a clause that would eliminate the deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses. In other words, graduate students who have their tuition paid externally (for example, by TA or RA positions) would be expected to pay taxes on the value of this tuition. Annual tuition can be as high as $50,000, or more than a typical graduate student’s salary, so this extra taxable income would be a significant burden on most students.
I wrote an analysis of this legislation in which I calculated its financial impact on various students. I determined that a Berkeley student could see their tax bill go up by 30-60%, while a student at a private institution like MIT could see their taxes go up by a staggering 240%. Then, Kathy Shield—a Ph.D. student in Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley—and I made a spreadsheet calculator where students could determine their individual tax burden if the bill were passed into law.
The analysis and calculator quickly went viral. Dozens of news outlets covered these tools, including the ones listed above (see a full list here), and Kathy and I were bombarded with interviews. We don’t know exactly how many people accessed our tools, but it was at least in the tens of thousands. It was fun! But what’s more, we saw a national movement arise as grad students around the country realized what was at stake. Students organized, holding phone banks to call their representatives, coordinating rallies to draw support and attention to the issue, and writing op-eds in local and national outlets.
Eventually, our efforts were successful! The grad tax was removed from the final legislation, and grad students around the country could rest easy.
The UC Berkeley CASE contingent at Rep. Eric Swalwell’s office. From left to right: me, Eric Lee, Erin Sullivan, and QinQin Yu.
Advocating for federal funding of science.
In March 2019, I got the experience to travel to Washington, D.C. to learn about federal policymaking and speak to legislators to advocate for continued federal funding of scientific research.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hosts an annual workshop called Catalyzing Advocacy in Science & Engineering (CASE), where STEM students gain an introduction to science policy. I attended this in 2019, along with three other UC Berkeley PhD students—Eric Lee, Erin Sullivan, and QinQin Yu—and 200 students from around the country. We learned about the process of how science is budgeted and funded, and we heard firsthand perspectives about the operations of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Congressional offices and committees, and federal agencies (NIH, NASA, NSF, etc.).
On the last day, we met with the staffs of several members of Congress to talk about our own research and advocate for federal research funding of DOE, NSF, NIH, and other agencies. We attended meetings with the offices of Senators Harris, Feinstein, and Baldwin, Speaker Pelosi, Leader McCarthy, and Representatives DeSaulnier, Lee, Lipinski, Pascrell, and Swalwell. We actually got to meet Representatives Pascrell and DeSaulnier! In the process of preparing for these meetings, we each made a “one-pager” summarizing our research and the importance of maintaining funding for it. The idea was that staffers could read it while we spoke to them, or they could refer to it after our meeting. Making the one-pagers was difficult—scientists are not trained in brevity—but we managed to pull them together! Check out my one-pager on dark matter and particle physics here.
Bringing together scientists of different expertise.
From October 2019 - March 2020, I helped organize a series of forums and policy discussions designed to bring together natural scientists and social scientists on pertinent issues.
In October 2019, the Science Policy Group at Berkeley was awarded a microgrant by Research!America to address the question of “Science Meets Science.” In other words, how can we simultaneously engage natural scientists and social scientists? We chose three topics that rely on STEM, social science, and public policy: Wildfires, Genetically Modified Organisms, and Artificial Intelligence.
I helped with all three, but I was one of the lead organizers—with Erin Sullivan and Sarah Hartman—of the GMO module. We targeted our events around the use of GMOs for agriculture, such as corn, soybeans, rice, and maize. The scientific consensus is that they are safe, and indeed can offer advantages like disease-resistance or nutritional benefit, but GM crops are controversial in many communities. We brought together two GMO experts for our forum: David Zilberman, Professor of Agricultural & Resource Economics, and Sarah Hake, Professor of Plant & Microbial Biology and Center Director of the USDA Plant Gene Expression Center. Both our speakers agreed that GM crops are beneficial to society, particularly in low-income developing nations, but they approached the question from different perspectives. We also led a roundtable in which we brainstormed the many ways that GMOs intersect aspects of public policy: climate, food security, nutrition, health, intellectual property, and economics, just to name a few.
It was an exciting series, and I got to consider different perspectives from the ones I am usually exposed to! A recording of the GMO forum is available in the embedded video above, and the recordings of the other forums can be found here and here.
Writings and Presentations
Below, I have listed several pieces I have written (or co-written) and presentations I have given in the area of science policy.
Velan, Woods-Robinson, Case, Warner, Poppiti, Abramowitz. The Federal Science Project: A Scientist in Every Classroom. Journal of Science Policy & Governance, August 2021. [link]
Developing a Pitch to Policymakers. ReclaimingSTEM Workshop, October 2020. [link]
Jackson, Velan, Livingston, Lee, Huynh, Eckert. Regulation of Facial Recognition Systems at the Municipal Level. May 2020. [link]
Hartman, Horner, Jackson, Kovak, Velan. Streamlining USDA Regulation of Gene Editing to Benefit US Agriculture. Journal of Science Policy & Governance, September 2020. [link]
Saintsing, Stoudt, Velan. CRISPR Consensus? Berkeley Science Review, January 2020. [link]
Lee, Sullivan, Velan, Yu. Bridging the culture gap between science and policy. Berkeley Science Review, July 2019. [link]
Lee, Sullivan, Velan, Yu. Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering: Lessons Learned. Berkeley, CA, May 2019. [link]
Sullivan, Jackson, Broberg, O’Dair, Velan. California Lawmakers Should Take Action to Mitigate the Effects of the 2019 PG&E Bankruptcy. May 2019. [link]
Election Quality Control. Berkeley Science Review, April 2019. [link]
Engaging in Public Policy as a Scientist. Grounds for Science - Berkeley, CA, April 2019. [link]
Research One-Pager for Policymakers. Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering Workshop - Washington, D.C., March 2019. [link]
The Mathematics of Gerrymandering. Graduate Student Seminar - Berkeley, CA, March 2018. [link]
How Does the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” Affect Ph.D. Students? November 2017. [link]