It's my pleasure to introduce from the United States, a colleague from the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
and I'm terrible at pronunciations of the best times, but I've been given allowances,
but most is the associate director for innovation and industry services.
She's had a number of roles, both at news but also across government U.S. agencies.
For those in the audience today, for this sort of technology transfer and IP.
She was formerly a patent attorney and has registration for the technology and transfer professionals to the ITP.
As many of you know that a good badge of honour in this space,
and I am delighted that we will get a US perspective on this and the ambitions that the US government has in this space.
Over to you, Mr. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the kind introduction.
Good morning and good afternoon. I'm delighted to be with you at the Oxford Summit.
Before I start my PowerPoint presentation, I think it's important to note that we are living in really exciting times as far as research,
innovation and collaboration to address global challenges are concerned.
As you well know, during President Biden's first foreign visit in advance of the G7 summit,
US and UK issued a joint statement that specifically addressed, amongst other things, attempted collaborations.
And I thought to start with maybe some parts of that that is germane to today's conversation.
Part of the statement reads We will develop a new landmark bilateral technology partnership in 2021 22.
It will enable a new era of strategic cooperation to guarantee the safety and security of our citizens that will continue to lead the world in R&D,
wealth creation and tackling inequality. The values of liberal democracies, open societies and open markets.
And that all of these are codified in and threaded throughout the design and use of technology globally.
We will strengthen cooperation in areas such as ensuring the diversity, resilience and security of our critical supply chain,
enabling our industries and research institutions to develop and apply existing and emerging technologies such as
quantum battery technologies and reducing barriers to the accessibility and flow of data to support economic growth,
public safety and scientific and technological progress.
The statement goes on to say We will continue to strengthen.
And this is really germane to what we talking about collaboration in science and technology.
This will facilitate increased joint world class research, as well as encourage the development of rules,
norms and standards governing data sharing technology and the digital economy that reflect our values and principles.
We will cooperate on the basis of openness, transparency and reciprocity, and in hope of ensuring that our collaborative research benefits our people.
We will combine our expertise to tackle global challenges such as cancer, antimicrobial resistance, climate change and pandemic preparedness.
And it goes on, and these same concepts were emphasised again during the G7 summit.
For example, in the G7 Research Compact, which was published alongside the G7 leaders statement,
as well as welcome U.K. support and leadership for the 100 day mission to develop safe and effective vaccines that was endorsed by the G7 leaders.
The research compact commits for G7 to address the administrative,
legal and regulatory barriers that hinder our scientific cooperation to explore new mechanisms for more flexible
and agile research collaborations to investigate how open science practises help achieve increasingly robust,
reliable and impactful research outcomes through the renewed G7 Science Working Group.
And to set up a new working group to affirm the principles of and to exchange best practises for research, security and research integrity.
Besides the context for the need and desire for international collaborations, I'll start my PowerPoint presentation.
I'll take a moment to talk to you about next, only to provide a context for our talk on collaborations.
I will then speak on our international engagements in general,
as well as highlighting our existing collaborations with the UK and finally provide a summary
of some pending legislation and S.A. arena that maybe interests may be of interest to you.
So first, talking about the next mission, as you know, is a laboratory under its own agency, under the Department of Commerce,
and its mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement,
science standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
I wanted to give you next slide, please. I wanted to give you this by numbers we have.
And I think some of these numbers are significant.
We have 30, 400, about 30 400 federal employees, but we have about 30 500 associates and a lot of the associates are post-docs.
Some of them are visiting scientists, some of them are foreign nationals.
Some of them are visiting from from other U.S. institutions. We have five Nobel prises.
We have 10 collaborative institutes. We are on two campuses, one in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and one in Boulder, Colorado.
And we have about more than 400 businesses using our newest facility.
These are unique facilities that researchers used to advance the research on the extramural site.
We have the Manufacturing USA programme, which has 16 right now.
Actually, there is there are 16 manufacturing USA institutions, some of which are sponsored by Department of Defence,
no Department of Energy and one by the Department of Commerce and List.
And that's the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing of Biopharmaceuticals.
These are an industry led consortia, and they include global companies as well as small companies and some non-profits.
We have the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Centre, which is a centre in each of our states, as well as one in Puerto Rico, and they help.
They offer technical assistant assistance to small and medium sized U.S. manufacturers.
We have U.S. Mortgage Performance Excellence programme, which is in the business of organisational excellence, and it is.
It has and it awards organisations for excellence in performance across different industries.
Next like this? Now that we know about this, I just wanted to kind of give you our thinking on international science and international collaborations.
First and foremost, international science is frontier science.
It enables cutting-edge research that no nation could achieve alone, and I think we can definitely see that during the pandemic.
It strengthens scientific and diplomatic relations. It leverages resources, including funding, expertise and facilities.
It's it trains the net.
It's a pipeline basically for essential workforce as it trains a robust essential workforce capable of solving global global problems.
And international students and scholars contribute significantly to the US research and development enterprises.
Next countries. So what are tenants when we do international collaborations at next,
we need to balance engagement in mutually beneficial international research and
support of the next mission with protecting the integrity of a research enterprise.
We need to make sure that we can collaborate, but that we can minimise threat of whether it's intellectual property theft,
whether it's hostile attacks or on our system.
So there need this is a balancing act and I would say not necessarily an easy one.
We also provide global leadership in measurement, science and standards.
We have a lot of collaborations around measurements and metrology around the world.
It enhances measurement and standards infrastructure that enables global market access for U.S. products.
It promotes harmonised standards and transparent regulatory regimes across the globe.
And it supports the administration priorities and U.S. foreign policy objectives, some of which helped us frame this conversation.
Next, let's. This works at a global, at a regional and bilateral capacities.
We focus will be globally, we focus on infrastructure needed to look for key emerging technologies,
international recognition measurement capabilities and international standards development.
These activities tend to be facilitated through much more multilateral fora like the TV of the media for measurement,
science research or the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation or international standards bodies like ISO or ITC.
We sometimes work regionally, so the regional collaboration is focussed on measurements and standards challenges unique
to the region and supports international recognition of measurement capabilities.
For example, this is very active in the Americas.
Currently, we hold the presidency of the system that Americano, the role of CEO of SIM, which is the Regional Metrology Organisation for the Americas.
We are also an associate member of the Asia Pacific Metrology Programme and have provided
assistance and training opportunities for developing it in mice not only in SIM,
but also in Asia Pacific in regions. In addition, and I think some of these bilateral efforts with the UK were highlighted,
we work with wood under bilateral cooperation, POC cooperative agreements or and we'll use.
This would include the next relationship, for example, with UK yes, and tends to focus on research topics of mutual interest and benefit.
This is typically driven by the scientific staff or or to fulfil administration priorities.
This also includes Emily, who's like the US Brazil Commercial Dialogue List,
led by Department of Commerce with nice living standards and metrology activities.
Birds, which is the Israel US Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation activities via these science and technology engagements.
I want to be clear that they are typically led by our State Department and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Eric Holder leads,
and this has bilateral engagements with National Metrology Institutes, universities and research centres around the world.
Next slide, please. In my introductory remarks about this, I mentioned that we have about the equal number,
if not more visiting scientists, than we have federal employees,
and we significantly benefit from the engagement of our partners and international experts who work on our campuses and in the laboratories.
They come from institutions both inside and outside the US, and they lend their expertise to this research programmes.
Again, for these projects to happen, they must we must benefit from the foreign participation or the visitors participation.
So things, for example, like the expertise of the visitor, the contributions that they can make to these programmes are all considered.
Given that we have to keep the integrity of our agency and that's very important to us, these agreements are reviewed at many different levels.
The laboratory management obviously reviews it for the scientific expertise.
Then we have an export control review.
We have a review by a senior bureau officials and our Office of International, Academic and International Affairs,
and also are vetted by the Security Office to make sure that having the the visitor on our
campus is productive and and we can ensure the integrity of the agency and the science next.
Like please. I just wanted to provide an example of some of the things that that we do that have international impact and have widespread impact.
Initially developed with a focus on critical infrastructure of the NYSC,
cybersecurity framework continues to be a useful tool for managing cybersecurity risks in the five
years since it was first produced with the active engagement of both private and public sectors.
This original framework and an updated version, which I believe was released in April of 2018,
are having a broad positive impact both in the U.S. and around the world,
and translations of the framework are available in Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, Bulgarian and Polish.
And there are adaptations in many countries, including Italy, Israel,
Uruguay and others are referencing the framework in various ways, including Brazil, Canada and Switzerland.
These adaptations and translations are available to all of you on our website, and we are continuing the efforts within ISO and IEC,
including recent work with international partners on technical specification, and that's technical specification.
Twenty seven one 10 that was published recently in February of 2021,
and this technical specification focuses on developing cybersecurity framework and leverages the contents of the version 1.1 of the framework.
Also, the World Bank is considering recommending that anyone receiving more funds for
Internet of Things related issues adopt or use the framework in some capacity,
so that gives us some semblance of standard cybersecurity activity.
Next slide, please. Now on to an engagement that we're very proud of and is specifically related to the UK.
Some UK US collaborations were highlighted with NIH, with NSF and with the newest advance with advanced manufacturing as a topic witnessed.
This is another engagement that is between UKRI and this,
and the aim is to collaborate in technology transfer areas and facilitate innovation and commercialisation best practises.
It was formalised on November 20 of last year and it's a five year EMU and it's it aims to support
activity around staff exchanges amongst technology transfer staff to do joint research and
share best practises on technology transfer and knowledge exchange to collaborate to improve
connexions between manufacturing programme and research funded by the U.S. and U.K. governments,
and also to cooperate and collaborate on efforts concerning the mapping and analysis of regional innovation and economic development.
Basically, the regional liquid systems. What we hope to also do is to advance U.S.-U.K.
Ongoing transatlantic engagement on the role of technology based innovation in economic
resilience and society societal benefits that cooperation will bring about to enhance the U.S.,
UK scientific cooperation in general and specifically in priority areas such as A.I.,
advanced manufacturing and quantum information science, and to support Nissan UK our partners in delivering on their shared mission.
The effort was announced in the context of a virtual meeting held by 10 U.
That was alluded to and 10 U includes leading tech transfer offices both in the US, UK and Belgium.
And they include universities such as Cambridge, Columbia, Edinburgh, Imperial College of London,
Live in Manchester and the Oxford, Stanford and University College of London.
I hope I got everybody. Next slide, please.
I thought you might be interested in some of the pending legislation that's
that's before our Congress and will affect the Ascendis S.A. space in the US.
The first one is you. You might have heard of the Endless Frontier Act.
Endless Frontier Act is now part of U.S., which was introduced in the Senate, and it passed the Senate, and it's now like the House.
This is the bill that adds a technology directorate to the National Science Foundation.
It also creates university technology centres at the regional level, and there is the.
This is germane to this because it also encourages that these regional hubs work with the manufacturing extension
programme that I just mentioned and we up manufacturing institutes under our Manufacturing USA programme.
The next one is the. House of Representative 20 Thirteen, which is securing American leadership in Science and Technology Act.
It proposes revision to the Stevenson Weidler Act. That's the act that governs technology transfer in the federal labs.
Most federal labs that are government owned, government operated, it modernises, modernises our STEM workforce.
It requires there are some agencies that have what is called small technology transfer research funds,
and it requires them to provide grants for innovative technology transfer approaches for the commercialisation of federally funded R&D.
This is an effort that was the commercialisation of federally funded R&D,
something that that is the subject of conversation and has been as to what is the return on investment for our taxpayers.
Given that the federal agencies R&D budget is appropriated for most of the agencies and most of the funds that are used by
scientists within the agencies and some of the newest return on investment package provisions were included in this bill.
The provisions on that package is there is 10 suggestions and some of them are to enable government agencies,
the government owned government operated ones to be able to see copyright, for example,
to extend the period of cousin confidentiality of information under certain agreements,
and to streamline some of the some of the practises under the Stevenson and What Stevenson Waiver Act.
The next one is the Innovation Centre's Acceleration Act,
which creates a cabinet level committee to select and find nine new innovation centres across the country.
As you see, there is a there is a theme of bringing innovation together and building not just a centre,
but centres that can that can vitalise regional economies, amongst other things.
There is the America Leads Act, which proposes to address technology and economic issues related to competition with China,
and there is a part of the act where we are that hopes to strengthen U.S. manufacturing requirements,
especially in the context of government funded inventions.
And last but not least, is the lowest return on investment legislative package,
which has now become part of the Securing American Leadership in Science and Technology Act that you just mentioned.
Next slide, please. So in summary, when we engage in international activities, we as the international activity that this supports,
needs to be related to our mission and needs to have a tangible benefit to Tunis and Department of Commerce.
This is a way to make sure every agency does their best that and offers what they are best at the diversity of international activities.
And this reflects the leadership and measurement and standards and this commitment to mutually
beneficial engagement to support the global measurement and standards infrastructure.
This is one area where truly one cannot do anything alone, and one needs to engage one's partners across the globe.
International engagement is primarily pursued through the Laboratories and Standards Coordination Office.
As I mentioned, they are there are many players in the the manufacturing institutes that are more multinational corporations.
So in that way, also the Manufacturing USA programme is engaged in international engagement and with few exceptions,
Mr. Extramural programmes engage primarily on information exchange and benchmarking activities with our international colleagues.
Next slide, please. Thank you very much for your kind attention and look forward to the questions.
Excellent. Thank you very much. And well done.
Remembering all of the 10 institutions for 10 u. I'm sure the team will be very delighted that you could remember not.