As the year wraps up and we head into the holiday season, we invite you to take a look at the NSC Alliance’s accomplishments in 2023. We engaged in a number of efforts to elevate the profile of natural history collections with policymakers, researchers, and the general public. A few highlights are presented below:
- Provided comments to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) stressing the need to recognize and promote biorepositories and biodiversity databases as critical components of the national bioeconomy. The final OSTP report identified sustaining and enhancing biological collections as a research goal for strengthening the U.S. bioeconomy.
- Collaborated with iDigBio, American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC), other partner institutions, and about 300 U.S. collections professionals, to produce a series of webinars, workshops, and community consultations to develop an enhanced vision for a Biological Collections Action Center, as called for in the 2020 National Academies’ report and the CHIPS and Science Act.
- Through our membership in the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF)— an alliance of more than 140 scientific organizations that advocate for National Science Foundation (NSF) funding—we’re continuing to work to secure robust FY 2024 funding for NSF and to ensure that Congress follows through on the promise of the CHIPS and Science Act by fully funding key science agencies at the levels authorized by the law.
- Co-hosted a webinar with AIBS, the Biodiversity Collections Network, and the U.S. Culture Collection Network on the need for a Specimen Management Plan requirement in research proposals that generate living or preserved specimens.
2023 Year in Review