May 20, 2025

Podcast

Kelvin Droegemeier Articulates a Vision for American Science

By Kelvin Droegemeier, Megan Nicholson

Kelvin Droegemeier, a longtime leader in science policy, joins host Megan Nicholson for this installment of Science Policy IRL. Droegemeier began his career as a research meteorologist and went on to serve in many different leadership roles in state and federal government. He directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2019–2021, served on the National Science Board from 2004–2016, and served on the Oklahoma Governor’s Science and Technology Council from 2011–2019. He is currently a professor and Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Science and Policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

On this episode, Droegemeier shares what it’s like to work on science policy at the state and federal levels, discusses what he sees as the pressing science policy issues of our time, and reflects on his leadership roles in academia and government.

SpotifyApple PodcastsStitcherGoogle PodcastsOvercast

Resources

Transcript

Megan Nicholson: Welcome to The Ongoing Transformation, a podcast from Issues in Science and Technology. Issues is a quarterly journal published by the National Academy of Sciences and by Arizona State University.

I’m Megan Nicholson, senior editor at Issues. In this installment of Science Policy IRL, I’m excited to talk to Kelvin Droegemeier, a leader in science policy. Kelvin began his career as a research meteorologist and went on to serve in many different roles in state and federal government, including directing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy or OSTP from 2019 to 2021. He’s currently a professor and special advisor to the chancellor for science and policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

On this episode, Kelvin shares what it’s like to work on science policy at the state and federal levels, discusses what he sees as the pressing science policy issues of our time and reflects on his career experiences in leadership roles at OSTP, on the National Science Board, in academia and on the Oklahoma Governor’s Science and Technology Council.

I define [science policy] as any policy that will ensure that America is the world leader in scientific research, education, workforce development, things like that.

Dr. Droegemeier, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. We always start these Science Policy IRL episodes with the same question, which is how do you define science policy?

Droegemeier: That’s really a great question. Basically, I define it as any policy that will ensure that America is the world leader in scientific research, education, workforce development, things like that. That really everything ought to point toward that particular focal point, like rays of light coming through a lens. That is the singular goal in my view of what science policy is about.

Nicholson: And so what does doing science policy look like for you day-to-day in your current role at the university?

Droegemeier: Really right now I’m working mostly on national science policy in a variety of different areas. Number one, I’m working on a new model for indirect costs, which is an interesting concept for research grants funded by basically any organization, but especially the federal government. There are two components to a grant. One is the direct cost that it funds the things you think of—the people’s salary, graduate students, some equipment travel publication costs—things that you can easily identify associated with a given project regardless of what the discipline is or whatever.

But then there’s also the cost that, say, for example, a university needs to pay to support that research, building maintenance, the HR payroll office, graduate college, janitorial services, electricity, those sorts of things. You don’t direct charge to a grant because it’d be very difficult to do that. How much electricity did this one person use in a building of 50 people? How in the world do you do that? There are efforts underway now by the federal government to place limits, frankly, on the indirect costs that universities in particular can recover for research. And that’s a very important issue because it potentially has the ability to substantially limit the research that we can support, and it’s to the tune of actually several billion dollars per year.

[Indirect cost is] a very important issue because it potentially has the ability to substantially limit the research that we can support, and it’s to the tune of actually several billion dollars per year.

So one of the things we’re trying to do is, as a community, as a research community, work with the administration, work with Congress to address some of the challenges that exist with the current model and come up with a model that really is acceptable to everyone. It keeps the research enterprise whole, and it does exactly what I said to begin with, keeps America at the forefront in the leadership role of science and technology. And also allows us to be flexible in the types of research that we fund. So that’s one of the things I’m really working on a lot these days.

Other things involve reducing the administrative workload for researchers primarily in our universities. Surveys have shown over the past 20 plus years, three different surveys, that faculty in our universities, when they work on research grants that are funded by the federal government, they spend about 42 to 44% of their time on administrative activities unrelated to the research they’re funded to do. I don’t know what the right number is, but 42 to 44% strikes me as really, really high. And when I was at the White House as the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, I worked on this. We made some progress, but not nearly enough. And so the National Academies has leaned into this with a fast-track six-month study that I’m a part of to actually look at coming up with policy mechanisms, policy recommendations to actually reduce that burden and that administrative workload.

And then also things like research security, which is another big thing I worked on at the White House, to have a balance between the openness that is so important for our research enterprise, and then also protecting our research assets from maligned foreign influence and others that would seek to gain at our expense frankly, through illicit means. So those are some of the things that I’m working on plus my day job of being a professor as well.

Nicholson: You’re a busy guy. And I think you get right into this bigger theme about the connection between, or the relationship between government and universities. I think you’ve done a lot of work in to illuminate the components of that relationship, which I think can sometimes be a black box to, especially outsiders, but even people who are inside of science policy. So I’m wondering if you can speak a little bit more about that relationship between government and universities.

Droegemeier: Yeah, that’s really a great question because it takes us back to the days of what you might call the modern research era in this country. Following World War II, a gentleman named Vannevar Bush, who was President Roosevelt’s de facto science advisor, wrote a very powerful document called Science, the Endless Frontier. It’s a relatively short document but brilliantly done. And basically he laid out the framework that basically has guided our way in the past 80 years for the research that we do in this country. And it had three fundamental pillars. One is that the government has the major responsibility to fund curiosity-driven, what we call sometimes fundamental or basic research. That’s the first one.

The second is to develop the next generation of researchers, which is what universities do. And the third one is really to make sure that everything is out in the open to the extent it doesn’t have to be classified. And so what happened after World War II and this model that Vannevar Bush came up with, it basically developed a government-university partnership that has a mutual benefit. So when the government funds research at universities, the government gets a benefit because it’s developing new knowledge and things like that for the public good, for national security, economic progress and things like that. So it’s got a public good dimension to it.

Universities already subsidize research funded by the federal government to the tune of $7+ billion.

The universities also have a benefit as well. Their faculty get to do research. We create disseminate new knowledge. We also train graduate and undergraduate students, baccalaureate as well as advanced degrees. That’s the next generation workforce for the government, for private companies, for all the sectors of our research enterprise. So that has been an enduring partnership. The word you used is correct over the last 80 years.

And there are some real challenges to that partnership right now. One of which is the cap on the facilities administrative, so-called indirect costs that I talked about earlier, which would dramatically shift the funding to universities in ways that really universities aren’t able to pay. In fact, universities already subsidize research funded by the federal government to the tune of $7+ billion. And so there’s really no more room for subsidy. We’re already doing that, whereas private industry get the full cost of research paid. And private foundations operate very differently. And the point is that we don’t want to see universities become like a company or a company like a university. We have the four sectors of our research enterprise that rose up after World War II. So we have academia, nonprofits, we have the government, and we have the private sector. And they all have very different missions, very complementary, and this is uniquely American. It’s what has made us the world leader.

So to your point, this government university partnership is extraordinarily important and it’s not as strong now as it once was. So one of the goals that I have in working with policy and a lot of other folks who do the kinds of things I do is to reinvigorate or re-strengthen and reestablish that trusted relationship, the mutuality of benefit and interest that we in the university community and that the government has in doing the things that will keep us at the forefront of leadership in the world.

Nicholson: I think we’ll talk more about your tenure as director of the White House Office of Science and Tech Policy in a bit. But you have had roles on both sides of that partnership. So you were director of OSTP and you were vice president of research at the University of Oklahoma. So you’ve seen what it looks like from those two different angles, and I’m wondering if you’d be willing to share a couple of stories or anecdotes that made you see the theory of the Vannevar Bush model in practice in those different positions.

Droegemeier: Right, absolutely. So as you say, I spent my whole career in academia going up through the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor, full professor and so on, working on and leading major centers funded by the National Science Foundation. I was on the National Science Board for 12 years. So that got me really heavily involved with science policy, not only at the National Science Foundation, but the National Science Board, which is what I was on. It has a dual role of working… It’s part of NSF, but also to be an independent policy advising body to the president and Congress. So I became involved in national science policy primarily through the National Science Board, but I got an appreciation as a faculty member, as a professor for research for policy in universities.

Although a lot of people thought it was impossible, we were able to pull it off and we created a whole new discipline. That opportunity funded uniquely by the federal government to do something—a private company wasn’t going to fund that, right?

I was also the Governor’s Cabinet Secretary of Science Technology. So I saw it also at the state level. And as a vice president for research, I really got to work with all disciplines and not certainly become an expert in any of them other than my own. But I got to appreciate the value of all these different disciplines and the role that they play in research, but also in helping shape the scientific research enterprise. So eventually, I went to the White House and served, as you say, as the director of the Office of Science Technology Policy. Throughout that whole period of time, I always took a national perspective of where we as America are in the international context.

And so thinking about Vannevar Bush’s treaties and reading that document and being so inspired by it, I just had a heart to serve the country, to serve my fellow scientists and engineers and researchers across all disciplines to make sure that they had opportunities to succeed. Early in my career, I helped co-found an NSF science technology center, which at that time, the center’s program basically said, give us an idea. This was at the National Science Foundation. Submit an idea that is probably impossible to do, but if you could pull it off, it would be transformative for society. And the idea we came up with was using computer models to predict the weather. Not the day-to-day weather like we have it now, but individual thunderstorms, maybe hours in advance of their occurrence, which if you could do that, just think of the impact on transportation, aviation, agriculture, whatever.

It’s just enormous. Well, turned out, although a lot of people thought it was impossible, we were able to pull it off and we created a whole new discipline. That opportunity funded uniquely by the federal government to do something—a private company wasn’t going to fund that, right? But it turned out that once we were able to demonstrate it, we worked with airlines and started a private company out of it, which was the kind of thing NSF wanted to see happening. They planted the seed, they watered it, the plant started to grow, and then we got private sector and other funding to nurture the plant and help build a garden out of it, basically. So that’s one thing.

On the other end of the spectrum, when I was at the White House at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, I worked on a number of things, but one of I think the most exciting achievements to me was a thing called National Security Presidential Memorandum 33. Well, what in the world does that mean? Well, it’s basically a memorandum that guides our nation in policies on research security. To make sure that we can empower our researchers to know who they’re working with, who is trustworthy, to make sure that their ideas don’t get stolen and so on. But on the other hand, make sure that they have an open environment nationally and internationally in which to collaborate. So those are two very, very different sorts of things that absolutely relate right back to your point of Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier, where we came from. Because without that structure that we’ve had for the last 80 years, neither of those things would have been possible.

Nicholson: I want to dive in more to your career path, but before we move on, I did want to ask you about the unique position that you created when you’re at OSTP for an assistant director of academic engagement. Can you talk a little bit about where that idea came from and why you felt that was necessary at that time to create that?

One of the key parts of the whole research ecosystem is the academic enterprise.

Droegemeier: Oh, that’s a great question, and absolutely. OSTP has a role that basically we say that it’s using science to guide the development of policy and then developing policy for science. So it’s science for policy, policy for science. And so there’s a lot of different work streams that go on there. There’s a huge, like 90 to 100 different things. We’re working on national security and the economy and space weather, and you name it. We do that at OSTP. But what was interesting to me as an academic coming in, I said, “One of the key parts of the whole research ecosystem is the academic enterprise.”

And I really felt like there’s a lot of intergovernmental activities that the National Science and Technology Council, which is where a lot of the policy gets developed, is an intergovernmental body. It basically is government. And I looked around and I said, gee, where’s the academic voice in this? Where’s the research community’s voice in the academic enterprise? So I felt like having a stronger connection from OSTP to that enterprise was really important and necessary. So I’ve created the position assistant director for academic engagement to basically, not be an advocate, at OSTP, it wasn’t my job to advocate for the academic enterprise. It was to bring them to the table to inform things like open access policy, which was something we worked on very, very important issues. So that position really, I think helped folks in the academic enterprise realize that they were important, they mattered, and they had a strong tie to OSTP. And I’m not in any way suggesting my predecessors didn’t do that or have that tie, but this was a very visible position that was very obvious that, okay, this matters. And of course, in the pandemic, that was extraordinarily important because universities were on the front lines of research of actually helping do testing and that sort of thing. So it turned out that was a really good decision to make. And in fact, I think they’ll probably end up recreating that hopefully in the current administration.

Nicholson: So let’s talk a little bit more about OSTP. I imagine directing it gives you such a unique lens on the research enterprise, which you’ve alluded to already. It would be great to know if there were things that surprised you in the role. And also, I guess another thing you’ve alluded to, how did you put your own spin on being the director of the office? It seems like there’s a degree of flexibility there for you to create the office that you think reflects your strategy, your values of the research enterprise.

Droegemeier: Yeah, exactly. No, those are great questions. So being at OSTP, I worked with it before. I’d worked, especially with John Holdren on the Science Board, we interface with OSTP. But a lot of things, you don’t really know how it works until you’re there, and it’s like, wow, okay. And I honestly did not have an appreciation, I think, for all the national security work that OSTP does. I knew it was a component of the White House. I was very familiar with OMB and the National Security Council and some of these other… OMB being the Office of Management Budget, some of these other what are called components of the White House. But when I got there, I was really quite surprised at how broad the remit of OSTP is.

I was really quite surprised at how broad the remit of OSTP is.

All the many, many things they work on. And of course, it’s not just science policy, but it’s also representing the United States at the G7, the G20, taking the lead role in making sure that certain practices and norms and principles are put forward. For example, for the ethical use of artificial intelligence, extremely important. So being strong in science technology is very, very important. But a lot of times people don’t realize, and I don’t think I did, that OSTP plays a key role in ensuring that these kinds of principles are really embraced internationally.

And also, for example, with the so-called OECD or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries, I think we’ve got 34 different nations to sign on ethical principles of artificial intelligence, that leadership role comports with our values, our Western values of America. And so when we talk about our international role and being competitive, being the world leader, we have to remember that being a world leader also means making sure that our values are leading the way in things like these principles and policies that are globally impactful. This is really an extraordinary experience. The people at the White House are the cream of the crop. And I don’t say that about myself because I never took a course in policy. I just woke up one day and there I was, and I would sit there and think, “What am I doing at the White House? Somebody’s going to come and say, what’s this guy? What’s he doing here? Let’s get him out of here.”

But to your point, I really did come in there saying, “Okay, there’s a lot of really bright people here. What can I add? What value can I bring as an academic?” So one of the things I did in an organization that we talked about, the National Science Technology Council, I created something called the Joint Committee on the Research Environment. And we had four work streams, one of which was to reduce administrative workload, unnecessary workload on our researchers.

And so that’s one of the things I think that I would say that I really was able to bring in my own personality, my own passion. Because if the research environment isn’t appropriately structured and effective and welcoming and stuff, then research can’t really happen as effectively as it might otherwise. So all the other great things that people were doing were amazing to me. And then I brought in this thing that people seem to embrace and say, yeah, this is something that we really need to be doing. And it’s had an enduring impact on things like research, security, administrative workloads, but it’s very much a team approach. I don’t want to ever give the impression that, oh, Kelvin did all this. I had ideas, sure. But they were shaped and formed by my colleagues, and we came to do some of these things really very much by consensus.

Nicholson: And I imagine your awareness of those issues was formed, at least in some part by your experience on the National Science Board, which is another anomalous little entity that I would love to hear you describe for our listeners. What does the board do? How do they do it?

Droegemeier: The National Science Board is actually one of the ways that the government really gets formal advice on science policy. There are several. There is the government itself, the White House, there’s the National Science Board. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are oftentimes tasked by Congress. There’s a Congressional Research Service. There’s a whole bunch of groups. But the National Science Board is actually different and unique in the sense that… Well, the National Science Board has two roles.

It’s part of the NSF, various people call it a governing body, an oversight body. It has various committees, but it works in tandem with the director to ensure the success of the National Science Foundation. That’s its fundamental role. But it also has a second role that a lot of folks don’t recognize, and just because it’s oftentimes not talked about, is that it’s an independent policy advising body to the president and Congress. What’s interesting about the board members and the NSF director, although they’re presidential appointees, they don’t reside under a cabinet agency. Like for example, various parts like the Office of Science resides within the Department of Energy, the cabinet department, the Secretary of Energy. NSF doesn’t. In some sense, the OSTP is the de facto representative of NSF to the White House, whereas the cabinet member for other agencies has that role as well. So it can basically undertake anything it wants. It can do things at the direction of Congress and the White House, but it can also say, “Hey, we need to study X, Y, and Z.” And we did that. When I was on the Board, we looked at things like hurricanes, and we looked at policy for cost sharing, and I chaired that effort and we changed the cost sharing policy at NSF. And so the Board can just do what it sees needs to be done to NSF or for NSF, but also more broadly for the national scientific community. So it’s a fabulous board.

Every two years, it puts out something called Science and Engineering Indicators. It’s not a policy document. It doesn’t prescribe policy or even comment about this stuff. It just basically provides the facts. Here’s the trend of degrees awarded. Here’s the trend of patents and things like that, both in the US and globally. So it’s a wonderful way that the policy developers, including Congress, can actually get data on how the US is faring relative to the world and on all kinds of different topics. So long answer to a short question, but the Science Board is quite unique in its structure and a very important part of our research enterprise.

Nicholson: You alluded to a little bit of what you worked on the Board, but I’m wondering if you wanted to tell us a bit more about your achievements during your tenure.

We have to make sure as a nation that we don’t only fund “safe science.”

Droegemeier: Yeah, I was on there for 12 years, and the Board has a lot of roles, some of which I just mentioned. One of the other roles it has is of course, approving the NSF budget, strategic planning. This is very unique in government. The inspector general at NSF actually reports to the Board and is hired and fired by the Board, does not report to the head of agency, which is quite unique. I think that’s the only place in government where that’s the case. The Board also approves and oversees major projects. So efforts that are $100, $200, $300 million, so-called major research equipment, facilities, construction, huge telescope, ships, the Antarctic program. These are major things that the Board evaluates. They use big ticket items, they evaluate their proposals, they hear reports from the NSF staff, and then they delegate to the director the authority to make the award.

So we had a lot of different studies. One study was on reducing administrative workload. Another one was on hurricane science and engineering, things that we need to be doing. Another one was on potentially transformative research. Are we really pushing the envelope and encouraging people to submit like we did back when I helped co-found that NSF science and technology center? Ideas that are so way out there, they might not work, but if they work, they’re transformative. And we’d like to think everything that NSF or any agency funds is potentially transformative, but science for the most part, typically advances in increments. But sometimes there are these major breakthroughs, and we have to make sure as a nation that we don’t only fund “safe science” for which we have already so many preliminary results. You fund it because you know it’s going to be successful. We need to fund stuff that may never be successful, but we’re going to learn a lot in the process and we’re going to take big bets on big ideas. We have lost that as a nation. And so I think Congress recognizes that when budgets get especially tight, it’s really hard to argue, well, we got to spend a huge amount of money on this one thing or these three or four things.

That’s totally understandable, but we do have to think about taking… And when I say risk, I’m talking about intellectual risk, not human risk or risk to life or property. I’m talking about the intellectual endeavor of making a big bold idea and going after it and running and chasing it and having that next breakthrough that will lead to new GPS technology or CRISPR technology for genomic editing and things like that. We lead the world in those kinds of things. We lead the world in Nobel Prizes. We have to keep our foot on the gas. We cannot let up.

We have to keep our foot on the gas. We cannot let up.

Nicholson: And when you are thinking about that formation of that big vision, those big goals, how do you see those coming together? Who are the stakeholders that you think are really part of creating that vision of that exercise?

Droegemeier: Yeah, that’s another really great question. This sounds silly to say. It’s basically everyone, industry, academia, government, nonprofits, they all have a stake in the future of the country. And from curiosity or fundamental research all the way through applied research and development and scaling up, the whole ecosystem, the four-part ecosystem plays a role in that. But there was an effort that completed its work earlier this year, it was called VAST, creating a Vision for American Science and Technology. So it was this kind of where are we going as a nation looking down the road? I was very blessed to be a part of that. Were like 80 people on there. There were former members of Congress. I mean, you talk about who are the stakeholders, it’s all of those folks.

So they brought all these perspectives of people being major CEOs of private companies or former CEOs and government people. And all these folks got together and said, “Where do we want to go as a country? Where do we want to be?” And I’ve testified many times before Congress saying, “We’ve got to look beyond the next budget cycle, the next election. We’ve got to look 20, 30, 50 years down the road because our adversaries do.” They don’t look for the next two, three years only. They look at very long term. So it’s insane to have a meteorologist say, “Let’s make a 30-year forecast.”

What I’m talking about is not knowing what technologies are going to be at the forefront. Let’s create an arc of where we as a country want to be. What are our aspirations? How should we structure ourselves so that when we do begin to understand the bits and pieces, we have this broad arc that transcends administrations, it transcends congresses, it transcends even generations because we have a country decided what we want to be when we continue growing up into the future. So VAST was one example. I think it was really an exemplar of creating this vision that was a multi-sector vision created by all the stakeholders for the future of America.

Let’s create an arc of where we as a country want to be. What are our aspirations?

Nicholson: I wonder if you think that that is the science community’s unique role in advising the government, is that long-term vision, that kind of farsighted idea of where we should be as a nation?

Droegemeier: I wouldn’t say it’s uniquely the scientific community because honestly, when I was VP for research, one of the questions I would ask new faculty when they came to the university is, “Where do you want to be 20 years from now?” And a lot of people hadn’t thought about that even for their own careers. So I think… But certainly some people do. There’s no question about it. So I think it’s uniquely the responsibility of all four sectors of the research enterprise, including early career researchers, including folks like that. I’m talking about undergrad students and grad students, giving them a seat at the table in policy development at the top place called the White House.

And so I do think that it’s an all of the above approach that is needed to do that long-term look really and challenging each other to say, we’re not talking about is it going to be AI, is it going to be quantum or what… We don’t know that. Nobody could know that, but we do know where we want to go as a country and the leadership role we want to play. That’s what I’m talking about, this broad arc that would guide our way forward.

Nicholson: Let’s talk more about that work with the early career researchers. I would love to hear more about that effort.

Droegemeier: Absolutely. When I was at the White House, one of the privileges I had was chairing this thing called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, PCAST. And it’s basically an advisory body to the president in particular, and all parts of the White House. The basically is it’s created by executive order every administration, and you bring in folks who are very well seasoned veterans in all different areas of science and technology and policy and education and so on. But as an academic, I was missing my students. I was like, gee, being at a university, these students have extraordinary energy, brilliant ideas. I get juiced when I talk to them. They’re so curious.

And so I created this thing called the Student Postdoc and Early Career Experience Committee, SPEC committee within PCAST. And it consisted of undergraduates, grad students, postdocs, and a couple of early career entrepreneurs who were beyond their degree, and they’d started private companies and things like that. And frankly, there were some people who are understandably worried that I did this or wanted to do it because, well, these people, they’re going to tweet about the president if there’s something they don’t like or whatever. None of that happened because they knew they had a seat at the big table and they knew that they were handpicked to play this role, and they were extraordinarily valuable.

And I had some brilliant ideas, and I had a lot of fun with this because one person I called in particular at a university, I said, my name, “Kelvin Droegemeier. I’m calling from the White House. Here’s what we’re doing. I’d like you to consider being a part of it.” And of course, she was very dubious. She’s like, “This is totally a spam call. I’m getting spoofed here.” And so I told her, I said, “Okay, here’s the number of the White House. Call the White House. Tell them you want to talk to me.” And there was this big pause and I said, “I’ll talk to you soon.” I hung up.

She calls back and she is just beside herself, and I had so much fun with this. I played it up as much as I could. And she ended up chairing the group. She’s a brilliant woman, finished her PhD. And I had a lot of fun with that. But honestly, these folks were extraordinary. And my whole point in talking about this is that they own the future. They are the next generation. They need to have a seat at the table in various ways. Not just the people who are mid and late career who are brilliant themselves, but in addition to that, having these other folks come in and challenge and add thoughts and value in their intellectual energy, then you’ve got a complete structure. And it was a wonderful thing, and I hope that it’s continued.

Nicholson: I’m wondering if you… Is there a bit of advice that you share with your students, with people you mentor over and over again that you hear yourself saying?

Droegemeier: Well, there are several things I tell them. One is to certainly not chase the money. Look inside you and see what makes you come alive and what really turns you on, excites you. And just go chase after that and the rest will take care of itself. The other thing is to dream big. Don’t limit your thinking by what you think the reality might be with future budgets or whatever. Keep your eye on the prize, really stay encouraged. This country, to be a world leader, it’s got to have talented people, and it’s got to have them from everywhere.

And when we think about where do we find that talent, I draw an analogy for having been in Oklahoma for so long to exploring for natural gas and oil and things like that. We have to go find it. We have to go explore for it. Once we find it, we extract it. Once we extract it, we refine it. Well, it’s the same for talent, right? There’s a lot, and I found this is… As part of the Science Board and other things, I go around and visit parts of the country and I find out there’s extraordinary talent in places where you would least expect to find it. And I don’t say that in a pejorative way, it’s just that sometimes, well, okay, only the big dog universities, only the R1s that have these things like that. You find it everywhere.

There are a lot of folks whose opportunity is not being seized through their socioeconomic status or for whatever reason, they’re just not able to be part of the enterprise. We need all hands on deck in this country.

And so we need to make sure that we know where that talent’s at. We go mine for it, we extract it, we bring it in, we give it opportunity, and we refine it by helping educate these folks, give them opportunity. There are a lot of folks whose opportunity is not being seized through their socioeconomic status or for whatever reason, they’re just not able to be part of the enterprise. We need all hands on deck in this country. We need to develop our own talent. Domestic talent is very important. International talent is super important too, but we have to also develop our domestic talent. We’re doing that. We’re doing a decent job, but we need to do it better. And the National Science Board calls this, the Missing Millions. You can call them various things, but there are so many folks out there that I want to help them achieve their goals and dreams. I’m from a very small town, a very farming-oriented community. Neither of my parents went to college. And so I really have a heart to help folks achieve their goals, but also to help America achieve its goals and its potential.

Nicholson: So while you were vice president of research at the University of Oklahoma, you were also appointed to the Oklahoma Governor’s Science and Technology Council, and you served as cabinet secretary for S&T. I would love to hear what you thought of the experience of advising for science at the state level and how it differed from your OSTP experience.

Droegemeier: It’s very interesting because the governance structure is similar. You have a head of an executive officer, which in that case is a governor versus the president and you have cabinet members and things like that. One of the things, just to be honest, I don’t think a lot of folks… And this is even true, I think to some extent in the White House, that a lot of folks don’t know what to do with the Science Person. The technology, yeah, okay. Quantum, AI, yeah, that’s clear. But the science part of it, sometimes I think there’s just not enough of a connection to okay research. Oh, yeah, we wouldn’t have had the iPhone, we wouldn’t have had the vaccines for the pandemic without research.

But it’s just understandably difficult for the general public to know what research really does. And that was certainly true at the cabinet level. And I worked with all the other folks in transportation, tourism, agriculture in Oklahoma and things like that. And I would talk about it, but it became more real when it became more on the technology side. Developing industries in Oklahoma, in aerospace, some of the core areas in natural resources and aerospace and health. People could grasp it a little bit more easily when I talked about more on the technology and the workforce side versus more on the science side. In that sense, the good part of that is they trust you and say, “We need a strong research enterprise. We get it. We’ve not done research ourselves. We don’t necessarily understand it, but we trust you to make sure it’s working well.”

[People] don’t look at an iPhone and think, “Oh, yeah, the fundamental physics research that went into the flat plate display, the battery technology came out of fundamental material science and chemical engineering research 30 years ago.”

I think when it comes to technology, people relate to that a little bit more easily because it’s in their everyday lives. They don’t look at an iPhone and think, “Oh, yeah, the fundamental physics research that went into the flat plate display, the battery technology came out of fundamental material science and chemical engineering research 30 years ago.” They don’t think about that. They think about what they have in their hands. So it’s totally understandable. But the point is we also need to do a better job, continue working to explain the value of research, especially fundamental research to the general public. Because without it, that lifeline to… Its sort of lifeline to private companies, the trillion-dollar companies we have now, the things they innovate on, many cases trace their way right back to fundamental research. So we need to keep it strong to keep all the downstream activities strong as well.

Nicholson: Do you think that there are particular arguments that resonate with policymakers, especially at the state level, around that value of research, basic research especially?

Droegemeier: I think connecting it to the outcomes is really the best thing. Like I said, if you could say, here, this new hybrid of corn, this new hybrid of wheat, our ability to forecast the weather, our ability to address issues of things like flash flooding or hunger, things like that we see, show them how the fundamental research led to that capability. In the pandemic, I wrote an op-ed that talked about, yes, the work that… In terms of developing the vaccine was important, but things like computer science that helped us do remote communication and that sort of thing, the modeling, the epidemiological modeling took supercomputers. There were all these things in fundamental biology and mRNA that had been done decades ago, we’re now reaping the benefit of those investments. So let’s not believe that it just is happening now.

We’re able to reach back into our repository of knowledge and use those capabilities, that knowledge, to really innovate. Now in this case, get a vaccine. There were a lot of policy decisions that were made in terms of setting aside certain policies, certain reporting, things like that. Never safety, never accountability. None of that got set aside, but certain things to streamline to where we got a vaccine in 11 months. And so that memory is fresh in my mind when we think about producing administrative workload, let’s take some of those lessons learned that we learned in a global crisis and apply them to every day. Why are we doing some of these things we don’t really need to be doing? They have no practical value. Let’s stop doing them. Let’s learn from our history. And that’s a very important thing to do. But I do think connecting the fundamental research to the outcomes and things like the pandemic, which people still obviously understand is one way to do it.

Nicholson: One last question for you, and it’s a big one. And I want to ask, what motivates you to keep doing this work? You’ve had a long career in lots of positions in leadership, but what keeps you involved?

Droegemeier: I think it’s really the joy that I get from seeing other people achieve. Whether it’s working with students, seeing an institution achieve, seeing our nation achieve, seeing us do things that are going to empower people to be successful, to empower our nation to be successful, to try to prevent bad things from happening, to get out ahead of problems. That’s what nourishes me every day. It’s what feeds me and gets me excited about getting up. This indirect cost policy I’m working on, it’s an esoteric thing, but the impact is huge. I’m doing it just because I just feel it’s so important.

If we don’t have something that works better than what we have now and is more acceptable to a lot of folks in Congress and the White House than what we have now, we’re going to really end up in a bad place.

And at the end of the day, if we don’t have something that works better than what we have now and is more acceptable to a lot of folks in Congress and the White House than what we have now, we’re going to really end up in a bad place. And I just don’t want to see that happen. So I just love people. I love working with people. I love the opportunity to support and empower and see things advance. And I guess that’s just what drives me every day. I just don’t ever get bored and every day there’s a lot of new challenges and life just never gets boring. So I think that’s what makes me tick actually.

Nicholson: Thank you so much, Dr. Droegemeier, for talking with us today and for all of the work that you’ve done for the science enterprise.

Droegemeier: Well, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.

Nicholson: If you would like to learn more about Kelvin Droegemeier’s work, check out the resources in our show notes. Is there something about science policy you’d like to know? Let us know by emailing us at podcast@issues.org or by tagging us on social media using the hashtag, #SciencePolicyIRL. Please subscribe to the Ongoing Transformation wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our podcast producer, Kimberly Quach and our audio engineer Shannon Lynch. I’m Megan Nicholson, senior editor at Issues in Science and Technology. Thank you for listening.

Your participation enriches the conversation

Respond to the ideas raised in this essay by writing to forum@issues.org. And read what others are saying in our lively Forum section.

Cite this Article

Droegemeier, Kelvin and Megan Nicholson. “Kelvin Droegemeier Articulates a Vision for American Science.” Issues in Science and Technology (May 20, 2025).