Congressional Biotech Commission Highlights Workforce Investment Needs
Last month, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB), chaired by Senator Todd Young (R-IN), published a report raising the alarm around the United States' ceded ground in biotechnology to competitors like China. Among its many policy prescriptions, the report calls for bringing 'the full weight of American innovation" to maintain U.S. leadership in the biotechnology industry.
Based on two years of research, the 195-page document offers a sobering conclusion: China is quickly leapfrogging the U.S. in biotechnology dominance, having made the emerging technology a priority for the next twenty years. The United States must act in the next three years to remain competitive.
Central to the agenda is a charge to build the biotechnology workforce of the future through expanded 'bioliteracy' and training programs. Much like AI literacy has become a zeitgeist in education and national security circles, the Commission argues that biotechnology ought to be front and center for workforce leaders.
The report emphasizes the importance of these goals for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the nation's grant-making wellspring for research and STEM education.
However, President Trump has halted NSF funding and proposed gutting the agency by halving its budget.
The move follows a wave of DOGE-led cancellations of over 1,000 scientific studies and student fellowships, mass layoffs, a halt in research proposal reviews, the dissolution of the agency's internal infrastructure, and the abrupt resignation of NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan—himself a Senate-confirmed Trump appointee.
Research from New America's Future of Work and Innovation Economy initiative has studied the role of the NSF and national science policy for emerging technology workforce training, including around the ability of community colleges to meet labor market needs in emerging biotech tech hubs.
For example, Forsyth Tech Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is leveraging NSF funding to prepare students for skilled technical workforce jobs in biotechnology and regenerative medicine. These jobs will not serve the health of North Carolinians but bolster the state's economic development and contributions to national security ambitions.
Last year, the college was the site of the announcement of the U.S. National Science Foundation's historic Regional Innovation Engines program. This key CHIPS and Science Act investment represents the broadest attempt to support place-based research-driven economic development since the Morrill Act at the height of the Civil War. Each of the NSF Engines aims to grow industries around emerging technology areas.
As a key partner in North Carolina's Piedmont Triad Regenerative Medicine Engine, Forsyth Tech has added a new non-degree credential focused on bioprinting. This credential offers hands-on training in industry-grade equipment essential to the Commission's biotechnology aspirations.
NSF funding has enabled the community college to purchase cutting-edge equipment that would be otherwise cost-prohibitive and create hands-on learning environments that mirror real-world biotech workplaces. This includes:
In one case, a Forsyth Tech student used the lab's mass spectrometer to isolate a compound from a botanical native to Madagascar, known for its healing properties. The same lab infrastructure that helps students learn also supports startups and small biotech firms, offering access to high-end tools they could not otherwise afford.
Unlike voucher-based training programs housed at other federal agencies, NSF funding enables colleges to contribute more ambitious and strategic forms of tech-based economic development.
Several NSF programs like Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT), which NSF created following the CHIPS Act and was a best practice called out in Young's report, were designed to scale hands-on work-based learning opportunities in emerging technology areas just like these. Across the country, MiraCosta College in California leveraged NSF ExLENT funding to expand internship and pre-apprenticeship programs in biomanufacturing.
Speaking at a Community College Congressional Caucus briefing hosted on Capitol Hill by New America and the Association of Community College Trustees earlier this year, Forsyth Tech President Janet Spriggs said that this progress would not be possible without NSF funding, commending Senators Thom Tillis, Ted Budd, and Representative Virginia Foxx for their support. The return on this investment is clear in North Carolina, where biotech is a major economic driver, and that could be the case all across the country if NSF funding is sustained and increased.
Spriggs said these policymakers recognize that NSF funding is not just an educational investment—it is a strategic commitment to economic development and the health and safety of the nation. The NSCEB's report confirms that view.
In a world where scientific talent is urgently needed, community colleges prove that workforce opportunity, innovation, and public good can thrive at the same intersection. NSF investments empower these institutions to deliver on that promise. Continued federal support—and bipartisan advocacy—are vital to ensuring that this work continues and expands. After all, the next life-saving breakthrough might begin in a community college lab.
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