Policy-fluent meteorologist is Trump’s nominee to lead OSTP

Addressing a nearly 600-day-long vacancy, President Trump announced on 1 August that he intends to nominate Kelvin Droegemeier to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

Droegemeier is an extreme-weather meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma who has contributed extensively to science policy at the national, state, and professional levels. His selection has drawn widespread praise from leading figures and organizations within the scientific community and no immediate opposition from senators, who will vote on whether to confirm him to the post.

Assuming Droegemeier secures Senate approval in the weeks ahead, the question becomes what his role will be in the administration. The OSTP director traditionally doubles as the special assistant to the president for science and technology, a title that confers greater access to the commander-in-chief. It’s unclear whether Trump plans to grant Droegemeier that designation. Given that Trump, by all accounts, does not typically engage with policy details, Droegemeier’s status as science adviser may prove less important than his place in the White House’s broader policy apparatus.

Deep connections with NSF

Droegemeier earned his bachelor’s degree in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in 1980 and went on to study atmospheric science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received his doctorate in 1985. He then returned to Oklahoma as a faculty member in the university’s school of meteorology.

As a researcher, Droegemeier was among the first to develop complex numerical simulations of severe thunderstorms, models that have spurred advances in forecasting. In 1987 he earned a five-year NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. Since then he has maintained a particularly close and enduring relationship with NSF, which has supported many of his projects.

In an interview last year, Droegemeier said the five-year NSF grant he received after graduate school required him to obtain matching funds from private industry and other sources, which catalyzed his interest in science policy. He also took a quick interest in administration, as evidenced by the several university working groups he convened early in his tenure. “Usually an assistant professor just worries about his or her own research,” says Howard Bluestein, a fellow meteorologist who taught Droegemeier in the 1970s and now works with him at Oklahoma. “He was already starting to organize people.”

With his colleague Doug Lilly, Droegemeier established the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms in 1989 through NSF’s Science and Technology Center program, which the agency had established two years earlier. Droegemeier was the center’s director from 1994 to 2006. He was also a founder of the university’s Environmental Computing Applications System and its Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, both funded by NSF.

In 2004, President George W. Bush nominated Droegemeier to serve on NSF’s governing body, the National Science Board (NSB). President Obama extended his term in 2011; Droegemeier served as the board’s vice chair from 2012 to 2016. During his time on NSB, he chaired or cochaired task forces on issues such as hurricane science and engineering, research cost sharing, and midscale research facilities.

“Through his deep and years-long connection to the National Science Foundation, we know him to be a thoughtful advocate for all aspects of science,” NSF director France Córdova said in a statement . “As a board member, he always did his homework, asking great questions and providing NSF with valuable guidance on policy and strategy.”

Droegemeier has also continued to be active in science policy at his home institution. The University of Oklahoma named him its vice president for research in 2009. Since then, he has built up the university’s infrastructure for supporting scientific research and overseen the development of its research strategy roadmap .

In 2011, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin (R) selected Droegemeier as a member of her new Science and Technology Council. In March 2017, Fallin named him the state’s secretary of science and technology, giving him responsibility over Oklahoma’s statewide science and technology strategy .

A frequent counselor to Congress

Droegemeier is also familiar with the workings of Congress, where he has appeared repeatedly as an expert witness at hearings and helped behind the scenes to shape legislation.

In 2013, as the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee was developing legislation to modernize weather research programs, Droegemeier testified that weather and climate research should be viewed as “mutually reinforcing.” He remarked, “We would do well to consider weather and climate not as two distinct elements at the extreme ends of a spectrum, but rather as inseparable parts of the Earth system.” He worked with then Representative Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), who now leads NASA, to develop weather research provisions that were incorporated into the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act enacted last year.

Droegemeier also engaged with the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee as it was working on the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act , a broad science policy bill that Congress passed in the waning days of the Obama administration. Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), one of the law’s lead sponsors, became fond of invoking Droegemeier’s remark that the committee had “made science bipartisan again” with its collaborative approach to developing the legislation.

In testimony to the committee in 2016, Droegemeier stressed the importance of federal funding for basic science and the growing significance of research that leverages multiple disciplines, highlighting how NSF-funded social science research has improved weather warnings. He also defended NSF’s grant-awarding procedures, which Republicans on the House Science Committee were seeking to modify through legislation. He urged Congress to instead focus on reducing administrative burdens on researchers, citing NSB’s 2014 report on the subject that he helped produce.

Droegemeier has also testified about the potential impacts of the Trump administration’s proposal to cap the National Institutes of Health’s indirect cost reimbursement rates at 10% of total research costs. At the request of Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), the chair of the House appropriations subcommittee for NIH, Droegemeier produced a 30-page report on the evolution of government–university cost-sharing policies for facilities and administrative spending. Cole praised the document as “exceptional” and urged other members to read it.

At a 2017 hearing Cole convened on the subject, Droegemeier warned that the proposed reimbursement change would fundamentally alter the government–university research partnership that was forged out of World War II, potentially leading to hundreds of universities having greatly diminished involvement in research.

Filling out the science roster

If he is confirmed, the day Droegemeier is sworn in will end the longest vacancy for the OSTP director position since it was created in 1976. Throughout the last year and a half, the top political appointee at OSTP has been 31-year-old Michael Kratsios. Although OSTP will likely not become as large as it was during the Obama administration, the office plays a central role in formulating agency R&D budgets and integrating scientific and technological expertise into national policy and federal activities.

Recently, OSTP has become particularly active in areas such as STEM education, quantum information science, and artificial intelligence. It produced the White House’s annual R&D budget priorities memorandum in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget. And on 30 July, OSTP helped convene the first meeting of a new interagency panel on physical sciences research to discuss high-energy physics, fusion energy, and low-dose radiation research.

Meanwhile, the administration has nearly completed making its nominations for science leadership positions across federal agencies, and the Senate has moved quickly to advance all but a handful of them. Trump has yet to announce nominees for several other leadership positions within OSTP. He also has not yet named members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, nor has he appointed replacements for eight NSB members whose terms recently expired. Appointees to those panels do not require Senate confirmation. With Droegemeier’s nomination in place, announcements on those positions could follow.

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which has jurisdiction over OSTP, will be Droegemeier’s first stop on the path to confirmation. Democratic committee leaders have not yet weighed in on the nomination, although several sent letters to Trump last year urging him to pick someone for the post. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who is a member of the committee, applauded the nomination in a joint statement with fellow Oklahoma Republican James Lankford.

Bluestein expects Droegemeier to be a strong advocate for science who prefers diplomacy over confrontation to achieve results. “He will be very diplomatic and polite. He will listen to all sides. He will seek middle ground,” Bluestein says. “And he will try to do the right thing.”

This article is adapted from a 1 August post on FYI, which reports on federal science policy with a focus on the physical sciences. Both FYI and Physics Today are published by the American Institute of Physics. Andrew Grant contributed reporting.