Good overview from on the likely candidates to replace Lander at OSTP.
It's awesome that there are so many very qualified candidates to pick from.
But I want to make the case for a minute for Arati Prabhakar.
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Prabhakar is the former head of both DARPA and NIST and is highly respected across the science and technology community.
To get a sense of her priorities, I recommend this fun conversation with
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New Idea Machines Podcast!
Talking to Actuate founder and former DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar about
- Using solutions R&D to tackle big societal problems,
- Gaps in the innovation ecosystem
- DARPA, and more!
ideamachinespodcast.com/arati-prabhakar
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Prabhakar might be a particularly good candidate for three reasons:
1) As we're trying to get the new ARPA-H off the ground, it would be helpful to have someone with a deep understanding of the DARPA ‘special sauce’. We’ve launched other ARPAs before, but not to the same effect.
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2) While at DARPA she helped accelerate the development of rapid vaccine technology platforms which is… very relevant to the important pandemic preparedness work we need OSTP to keep pushing for!
washingtonpost.com/national-secur
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3) For Biden’s focus on a Moonshot to defeat cancer, having someone well-rooted in solutions R&D that can delve into the “realm of the barely feasible” seems like a big plus.
See more on her framework here:
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