Sara BrennerOFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CHASEZUntil January of this year, Sara Brenner was an associate professor and assistant vice president for nanohealth initiatives at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany, New York. But she gave it up temporarily to spend a sabbatical in President Donald Trump’s administration. The physician-scientist is working as a senior policy advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)—an office that remains without a director and has experienced considerable shrinkage in staff numbers since Barack Obama’s administration.
Brenner spoke with The Scientist about the transition from academia to the policy realm, what she’s working on, and her response to critics of the administration.
The Scientist: What do you do at OSTP?
Sara Brenner: One of my major roles . . . is being able to respond to different questions and issues that come across OSTP [in my areas of expertise]. . . . One of the other main roles that I serve is in helping to coordinate federal agency efforts around life science and biomedical science. That’s primarily done through the NSTC, the National Science and Technology Counsel. Through the NSTC we interact with, and I interact specifically, with a lot of the life science agencies, and basic science agencies like NSF.
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