On Wednesday 11
June the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee
will hear from the former Chief
Science and Technology Advisor to President Biden and a former
director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
as part of its ongoing inquiry into Financing and Scaling UK Science and Technology:
Innovation, investment, industry.
The committee will hear
from:
17:00
BST
-
Dr Arati
Prabhakar, Chief
Science and Technology Advisor to President Biden (2022–25),
Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy
(2022–25), Director of DARPA (2012–17)
-
Dr Stefanie
Tompkins, Provost,
Colorado School of Mines, Director of DARPA (2021–25)
The Committee will look to the success
of the United States to help examine the gap between the UK's
basic research excellence and its ability to commercialise that
research and scale the UK's science and technology
companies.
Question topics will
include:
-
Why the US has been so successful at
producing big technology companies and
commercialising
so much of its
science
-
Government policies that have been particularly important
in allowing spinouts and startups to
scale-up
-
The White House Science and
Technology Policy structure and how policy and
R&D is
coordinated
across federal government and its
agencies
-
DARPA's approach to funding
cutting-edge
research and public
procurement
-
The US Government's interactions with
entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon
Valley and the Private
Sector
-
Challenges facing start-ups and
science and
tech
companies