Weiss participates in NSF advocacy day
Following an early morning flight to Washington, D.C., on May 7, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics Sharon Weiss braved the rainy weather to head to Capitol Hill and meet with staff members in the offices of Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Bob Corker, Rep. Jim Cooper and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann as well as the Democratic staff on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittee on Research.
The occassion was the Coalition for National Science Funding’s (CNSF) advocacy day and Capitol Hill reception.
During these meetings, Weiss explained why maintaining robust funding for the NSF is so important and the immediate impacts that across-the-board spending cuts are having at Vanderbilt. Specifically, Weiss described how these cuts are limiting the number of graduate students that can be supported through federal grants and how this has the potential to limit the number of individuals with expertise in the STEM fields.