Welcome to everyone here. It’s just – it was remarkable to walk in here to this jammed and very kind of buzzing room with our first Lab Day on the Hill.
I see at least a couple of our lab directors – oh, I see more of our lab directors here. That’s right. That’s right. They’re all there now. All right. Great. And I see we got another one here in the front.
So – well, anyway, again, so we are very excited about this, and I hope all of you really get a good chance to get around to see all of the – all the exhibits. I’ll talk a little bit about – more about them as well.
And as you know, this event is being co-hosted, if you like, by Senators Durbin and Risch, who are very big supporters of our lab system. They do tend to choose favorites, which may be in Illinois and Idaho, but they are big supporters.
I also want to recognize Congressman Fattah here, sitting down here, who, the last I checked, does not have a major lab in his district but has been a tremendous supporter and may have visited 16 out of our 17 laboratories already. So it’s really – it’s really – it’s really great.
The Senators Durbin and Risch will also be able to talk about the new laboratory caucus that they putting together to focus more congressional support on the laboratory system.
I also want to start by thanking now our distinguished panelists. Norm Augustine – I’m going to assume you all know who they are, but Norm, I want to just emphasize, today issued an important report called “Restoring the Foundation,” and he had a partner here, Neal Lane, former President’s Science Adviser. If you want to stand up, or no – or you don’t. All right. He’s – Neal – actually, Neal and I and Harold Varmus, we did some damage together in the Clinton administration when we were in various science positions.
Anyway, Norm Augustine today was – with Neal, released an important report on “Restoring the Foundation,” which addresses the basic research enterprise in the United States. I’m sure Norm will say a few words about that as an American academies-sponsored activity. And I just note that of course Norm was instrumental in the “gathering storm” report a few years ago, and we hope that this report will have at least equal or equal impact, since beyond the “gathering storm,” as you know, led to some important initiatives here in the Congress.
Harold Varmus, old friend, as you well know, former NIH director, now cancer institute and – old friend. Harold has been also since his days here in D.C. in the ’90s a great champion for research crossing disciplines. This was one of his signature initiatives, I would say, at the NIH. And maybe today he will talk a little bit about how, for example, our synchrotron light sources serve the life science communities so broadly.
Then Jennifer Rumsey and Clark Gellings – I’ll mention them together, in that they come here, I think, to exemplify the kinds of collaboration that we have with the private sector. Jennifer, with Cummins – has been a major partner, and I’m sure, again, she will be mentioning things like some of the supercomputing and modeling work for vehicles. And then Clark, of course, with EPRI, talking about all the work that we have done and do with EPRI in terms of electricity sector and grids, nuclear power, a whole bunch of reasons.
So it’s really a very distinguished panel.
What we’ll do is I’ll say a few words. Hopefully Senators Durbin and Risch will say a few words – they are voting at the moment – and then we’ll open it up for a panel discussion.
Let me just say a few words about the labs and some of the things that we are doing with the labs and the lab directors. As you all know, the lab system has its origin, really during and then the aftermath of World War II, but more broadly than just what is now the Department of Energy. I want to say that in World War II – that was a period where the critical role of research, the critical role of science and engineering in addressing our highest-level national objectives in terms of economy, security, health. Now I’d say energy – really became clear, and we all know the story in terms of science – the endless frontier and the significant increase in our national funding for R&D, and we also all know that the vison that was laid out at that time has proved to be correct. I’m sure Norm and Neal’s report will go through that in quite some – in quite some detail.
In terms of addressing our economic security and health needs in multiple dimensions, at the Department of Energy, we have a set of missions that people in this room probably are quite familiar with, spanning basic research, especially in the physical sciences, but also with major roles in the life sciences, energy - particularly the development of clean energy technology, nuclear security, where we have responsibilities both for the nuclear stockpile and for nonproliferation and counterproliferation programs, and finally, environmental stewardship addressing, particularly, the remediation of the various Cold War production sites.
Those are a pretty diverse set of missions in the eyes of many. They are all firmly grounded in science and technology, and the national laboratory system is the core asset, if you like, for bringing science and technology to bear on all of those missions. That’s why we are increasingly emphasizing this as a system with tremendous capacity, and that capacity is brought to bear first on the missions of the Department of Energy, but also on other critical missions in the country.
Certainly, the labs – and I don’t mean only the so-called national security laboratories, but the laboratories are certainly a major asset for our national security much more broadly than the very specific mission of the Department of Energy. The labs providing not only research, but also, frankly, vision as to how we address the transformation of the energy system that we need to meet our economic goals and, very importantly, our environmental goals – most especially, our challenge in mitigating the risks of climate change.
The laboratories are leaders in discovery science, whether it’s Fermi Lab, or J-Lab and Brookhaven, with the heavy ion collider, or SLAC. Of course, materials sciences at many of the laboratories are a major focus area – Argonne and SLAC and Brookhaven and Oak Ridge and other places; I won’t go through them all. Again discovery science from nanotechnology down to the core structure of matter are places where our laboratories lead. They do it also by drawing upon the entire research community in the United States – the academic community, et cetera. In fact, our facilities are serving nearly 30,000 researchers per year across the country, providing them cutting-edge tools to address key science and engineering challenges across the research spectrum.
The laboratories are playing an important role in how we think about developing our strategic programs to address all of these challenges. That’s something that I think we have tried to emphasize, especially in the last year or so, and creating some structures whereby the laboratories are really helping how we think about some of the cross-cutting programs that we need to execute.
So, for an example, in our Fiscal Year 2015 budget request of the Congress, which is still waiting for its final action, but in that we put forward thrusts, such as subsurface science and engineering – a place where we’re not probably as recognized as having tremendous capacity – and yet it cuts across so many of our programs, from hydrocarbon production to geothermal to nuclear waste management to carbon sequestration, et cetera.
So the laboratories are really helping us in terms of how we think through these kinds of cross-cutting programs that address critical issues. The laboratories are also a place where we can provide enabling tools for research that are important for our mission, but are also important more broadly in the country. Classic example, again, another area that we emphasized in our 2015 budget request is the next big push in high-performance computing, moving now towards exascale. When I was in the department in the 1990s as Undersecretary, we had the big push towards 100 petaflops scale for – as one of the foundations of science-based Stockpile Stewardship.
That program, where our labs were the key performers, has been tremendous successful. I gave a talk yesterday at the Institute of Peace, as did General Klotz, head of our NNSA. And I noted that, you know, in the late ‘90s, when that program was still being formulated, there was a lot of doubt about whether we could really sustain the stockpile for a long time without testing, and that has big policy consequences. For example, things like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Today, here we are 15 years later – 22 years beyond nuclear testing, and that has worked. In fact, our lab directors would say that we understand those systems a lot better today than we did when we tested.
It’s a huge science challenge that could only be handled by tremendous integration of different disciplines, and has major policy consequences. As I said, our defense programs advanced that in the ‘90s. And frankly, the science programs – the energy programs were kind of derivative users in many ways of the push to the high-performance computing frontier.
Today, the role of high-performance computing in our nuclear security programs certainly hasn’t diminished, but in our 2015 budget, roles were reversed. Two-thirds of the initiative is now from our science and energy programs, and one-third from our nuclear security programs. So it’s really – it’s a great story, and again, this lab system has just been core to the evaluation of all of these – all of those capabilities.
Another one now that we are just beginning to advance from this perspective of cross-cutting, enabling capabilities is manufacturing, where high performance computing has increasingly penetrated into our industrial sector as a major tool. The President, of course, has put a strong emphasis on developing manufacturing – once again, our laboratories will play a critical role here, things like, for example, our pilot plant for 3D printing and these kinds of technologies.
So I hope that just gives a flavor of our interactions with the laboratories, their role in executing our missions and other important missions for the country, their success in getting us to where we are, and the future that they have, which I think you can see captured in the 14 stations that we have around here that we can all look at more carefully.
So with that, I want to welcome Senator Durbin, who, as I said earlier, is one of the organizers of this event and of a new push among his colleagues to highlight the role of the laboratories. So if I may, Senator Durbin.