Finance
According to the White House, US President Joe Biden has appointed Indian-American scientist Arati Prabhakar to his cabinet as the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
The White House announced on Wednesday that her nomination, which would make her the current second Indian-American cabinet member alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, had been sent to the Senate for confirmation.
She will also be the President’s chief science and technology advisor, as well as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The White House credited Prabhakar with paving the way for Covid vaccines that use mRNA technology long before the pandemic.
It said that “the development of a rapid-response mRNA vaccine platform” under Prabhakar’s leadership while she was the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, (DARPA) from 2012 to 2017 made “possible the fastest safe and effective vaccine development in world history in response to Covid-19”.
Biden described her as a “brilliant and highly regarded engineer and applied physicist” who would lead the OSTP in “leveraging science, technology, and innovation to expand our possibilities, solve our toughest challenges, and make the impossible possible.”
Prabhakar will be the third Indian-American to serve in a US cabinet if she is confirmed by the Senate, as is required for all senior appointments.
The first was Nikki Haley, who was appointed as the Permanent Representative to the United Nations with cabinet rank by former President Donald Trump in 2017.
The Indian and Asian communities applauded Prabhakar’s nomination.
Neil Makhija, executive director of the Indian American Impact which promotes community members aspiring to public offices, said the group was “thrilled” by her nomination.
“We applaud the president for his historic decision, which uplifts not only the exceptionally qualified Dr Prabhakar, but all South Asians and Asian Americans who aspire to reach new heights and become leaders within public service and the scientific community.”
Member of the House of Representatives Pramila Jayapal tweeted: “I look forward to seeing all the good Arati Prabhakar will do as the White House science adviser, and as the first woman of colour and first immigrant to hold the position!”
In a tweet, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) congratulated her.
Prabhakar immigrated to the United States with her family when she was three years old and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University and a doctorate in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology.
She began her career at the Office of Technology Assessment as a Congressional Fellow.
Former President Bill Clinton appointed her as the first woman to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1993, when she was only 34 years old.
During former President Barack Obama’s tenure, she headed DARPA where she oversaw breakthroughs in fighting terrorism and human trafficking.
The White House said that teams under her leadership “prototyped a system for detecting nuclear and radiological materials before a terrorist can build a bomb” and “developed tools to find human trafficking networks in the deep and dark web”.
She established a new office at DARPA to promote novel biotechnologies, and in another project, she “enabled complex military systems to work together even when they were not originally designed to do so,” according to the report.
In between federal government assignments, she spent 15 years in Silicon Valley as an executive and venture capitalist.
Source:OCN
