Penn State’s head of research, Andrew Read, told faculty Thursday that increased scrutiny of international research and the “fast moving regulatory environment” under the Trump administration mean faculty need to take extra caution when it comes to following federal rules even as they continue to pursue international work.
“The takeaway here is not to avoid international collaboration, but to recognize that things that once seemed routine and perfectly sensible, even if they are now still routine and perfectly sensible, may require additional review, disclosure, pre-approval, and planning,” said Read, senior vice president for research.
His remarks came during a town hall Thursday focused on international research, including the university’s review process, current federal “countries of concern,” and proposed rule changes for federal funding from the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget that, he said, have the potential to reduce “America's scientific leadership and influence over time.”
“It is simply not feasible to stay at the cutting edge of science, isolated from the rest of the world,” he said.
Read urged faculty with any questions about work they’re doing that involves researchers from another country, to check with the university’s research security office.
“It is very easy for researchers to put themselves and all of Penn State, all your colleagues at risk of, minimally, a whole lot of headaches. But those can escalate into funding pauses, lost funding, inability to get future funding, and potentially very large fines,” he said, pointing to other institutions that have been in those situations.
Moving forward, Read said, researchers should “pause and evaluate the risk factors especially in especially in higher risk research areas like quantum science, artificial intelligence, and advanced technologies."
“That said, I would say even agricultural research, there's the (idea): farm security is national security. Almost nothing now isn't going to be considered through this lens, and you need to be thoughtful about when you're starting a foreign collaboration,” he said.
Read also addressed proposed rule changes from the federal Office of Management and Budget, saying that like other universities and higher education institutions, Penn State has concerns, which it outlined in a response to OMB.
In particular, Read said, the proposed changes would mean the federal government "would need to review and approve essentially all international elements of all federally funded research projects.”
That could mean slowing down even low-risk collaborations.
“We would delay the pace of scientific discovery and innovation,” he said. “This would be particularly damaging in highly competitive fields, but I would argue that slowing discovery and innovation harms patients, farmers, warfighters, businesses, anybody benefiting from university research.”
Instead, he said, the oversight should focus on “high-risk” work.
The Trump administration says the new rules are needed to increase transparency and accountability and improve the oversight of taxpayers’ money. Institutions of higher education have argued the new rules would insert politics into research in part by having political appointees review funding proposals.
