U.S. Reps. Rich McCormick (R-GA 7) and Ro Khanna (D-CA 17) joined this week to introduce the Biotechnology Workforce Alignment Act, a bipartisan package that aims to ensure the American workforce can keep up with its biotechnology research and manufacturing demands. There has long been federal efforts regarding investment in biotech R&D but there has yet to be a coordinated national workforce strategy. Already, a number of fields are seeing workforce challenges and shortages, including biomanufacturing, synthetic biology, computational biology, omics sciences, and regulatory science.
"America leads the world in biotechnology, and we need to keep it that way. Right now, we're making historic investments in biotech research and biomanufacturing. Still, we're leaving talent on the table because we don't have a coordinated strategy to build the workforce that industry actually needs,” said McCormick. “This legislation fixes that. By aligning federal research priorities with real workforce development and getting a clear-eyed assessment of our gaps, we can ensure America stays ahead of our adversaries and continues to lead the world in the industries of tomorrow. This is exactly the kind of commonsense, results-driven governing that Americans deserve.”
Please subscribe or log in to view the rest of this story.
