ASME Congressional Briefing Explores Advanced Biosciences for Manufacturing

Sept. 9, 2016

(Left to right) ASME Past President Bob Sims, Mary Maxon from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Steve Evans from Dow AgroSciences, Malin Young of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Anup Singh from Sandia National Laboratories, and Rina Singh from Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) at the “Advanced Biosciences for Manufacturing” Congressional briefing.

ASME recently sponsored a Congressional briefing, “Advanced Biosciences for Manufacturing: Driving Solution in Energy, Health, and the Environment,” in Washington, D.C. The briefing, which was attended by more than 100 members of Congress, Congressional staff, agency officials and thought leaders, focused on how advances in biosciences can improve the nation’s biomanufacturing competitiveness and address grand scientific challenges for energy, the environment, human health and agriculture.

The event was convened on July 28 in conjunction with the House Manufacturing Caucus as part of a series of manufacturing briefings being held throughout the year. J. Robert Sims, past president of ASME, welcomed the audience and acknowledged the co-chairs of the Manufacturing Caucus, Congressmen Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Tom Reed (R-NY), and introduced a distinguished panel of speakers from the bioscience and biotechnology industry.

The speakers at the briefing included Mary Maxon, principal deputy of the biosciences area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Steve Evans, Fellow at Dow AgroSciences; Rina Singh, policy director, Industrial Biotechnology, Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO); Malin Young, chief research officer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and Anup Singh, senior manager of biological science and technology at Sandia National Laboratories.

The panelists discussed how federal investments in the biosciences and manufacturing, particularly at Department of Energy National Labs, support the development of cross-cutting technologies and platform scientific tools that broaden and deepen the United States’ biosciences and bioengineering capabilities. They also spoke about the potential for shared resources and new technologies to drive progress across a wide range of industrial sectors that depend biosciences products like chemical manufactures and derivatives, agricultural products, and other sectors that feed into the manufacturing sector and supply chain.

Video recordings of the Congressional briefing can now be viewed online. To watch part one of the briefing, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQx0Vshvb0k. To view the second part of the session, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYlhTrXhDuM.