Infusing science into public policymaking

Tina Bahadori ’84, SM ’88, studied the chemistry of turbulent diffusion flames and wrote a thesis connected Les Liaisons Dangereuses arsenic a treble large successful chemic engineering and humanities. Then she earned MIT master’s degrees successful chemic engineering and exertion and policy. So, it’s nary astonishment that she present works astatine the analyzable intersection of subject and politics. “You privation to marque definite that subject enters the conversation—every large decision, each large argumentation action,” says Bahadori, enforcement manager for the Division connected Engineering and Physical Sciences astatine the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. “My occupation is to integrate, to find those pockets wherever conversations are happening … and infuse the subject into that conversation.”  

Bahadori, who besides has a doctorate successful biology subject and engineering from Harvard’s School of Public Health, has managed public- and private-sector programs related to energy, the environment, technology, and chemic management. Most recently, arsenic manager of the National Center for Environmental Assessment astatine the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of R&D, she led the plan of respective innovative probe and hazard appraisal programs. 

Bahadori’s part astatine the National Academies focuses connected 13 divers areas, including space, energy, computing, aeronautics, nationalist security, and infrastructure. She helps assemble the world’s apical experts to bring subject and probe to the attraction of US policymakers and assistance signifier that probe with an oculus to policy.

Being a grad pupil astatine MIT alongside dozens of planetary peers from biology and toxicology labs taught her the value of being capable to pass crossed disciplines and deliberation astir innovations, applications, and implications simultaneously. You don’t plan thing and see its interaction later, she says. For example, erstwhile advising NASA connected shaping abstraction research, it’s captious to program wherever to administer resources, however to bid the adjacent procreation of scientists, and however to adhd much diverseness to the pipeline.

The private, nonprofit National Academies apply that attack to supply independent, nonsubjective investigation and proposal to the nation. The situation is to scope statement connected that proposal portion maintaining technological integrity and focusing connected semipermanent goals. 

“You request to see, with each argumentation choice, person you gotten person to wherever you privation to be? And if you didn’t, what other is missing?” Bahadori says. “What’s the space you didn’t look astatine that you request to bring in?”