"This connects to our ability to be competitive."

Click here to watch Senator Blunt Rochester's remarks.

U.S. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Science, Manufacturing, and Competitiveness, today participated in a hearing on the United States' scientific advancement and global competitiveness. Senator Blunt Rochester's questions focused on emerging technologies, like quantum computing, and how it will enable new research and workforce opportunities.

Witnesses Include:

• The Honorable Walter Copan, Vice President Emeritus for Research and Technology Transfer, Colorado School of Mines
• Dr. Drew Endy, Director of Bio-Strategy and Leadership, Hoover Institution
• Dr. Robert Atkinson, Founder and Senior Fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
• Dr. Julia Phillips, Member, Board of Trustees, Oregon State University

Senator Blunt Rochester's remarks can be found here, and a key excerpt can be found below:

Senator Blunt Rochester: "Delaware is also home to a world-class biopharmaceutical industry, and our University of Delaware's National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, also known as NIIMBL. So, I'm particularly interested in the technologies that will shape the future of biotechnology and biomanufacturing. From your perspective, what advances in sensing, measurement, or instrumentation will empower the U.S. to better compete in biological research and biomanufacturing over the next decade?"

Dr. Endy: "We have to get better at measuring biology, modeling biology, and making biology, tinkering, and testing and prototyping, measure, model, make-all of those are of paramount importance. The challenge we've got, and it's a particular challenge for a democratic society, is that everybody wants the applications of biology delivered right away, because the applications are so urgent, starting with human health and disease. Because of that, we risk underinvesting in the foundational tools that make it easier to measure biology, make sense of it, model it, represent it, and try the new thing, right? And we need a whole investment across the portfolio of tooling, right? And whoever holds those-the reason Silicon Valley sustains a technology lead is not only because of our venture capital community; it's because we have a culture of tool developers who are always developing the next generation of better tools for prototyping, testing, and making sense. If we do not have world-leading tools, we will have no chance of being world-leading."

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Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester represents Delaware in the United States Senate, where she serves on the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Environment and Public Works; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.