The Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Labs have continued to drive progress for humanity, particularly in 2020.
January 8, 2021
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As we think about the challenges all of us have faced over the last year from the pandemic’s impact on public health and the global economy, we should recognize that there still have been some bright lights – positive changes that we have been able to achieve through the missions of our community.
Building upon decades of discovery, the Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Labs have continued to drive progress for humanity, particularly in 2020 through discovery of COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines.
The DOE enterprise has a long history of making breakthroughs in life sciences, starting with post-Manhattan Project work in biology. Over the course of discovery in life sciences, the Department stood up the Joint Genome Institute in 1997 to unite expertise and resources in DNA sequencing, informatics, and technology development that were pioneered at the genome centers at Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos National Labs.
The significant economies of scale achieved in doing so enabled the DOE enterprise to be the first to publish the sequence analysis of several portions of the Human Genome. Those efforts significantly contributed to the overall Human Genome Project (HGP), which mapped the complete human genome. And while most of the community could not clearly see from the outset the potential impacts of that discovery, everyone was certain amazing things would come from it.
After the completion of the HGP, now-Nobel Laureate Dr. Jennifer Doudna began pioneering research at UC Berkeley. The Lab Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) saw potential in her efforts and allocated Lab Directed Research and Development funds to her early work. In the following years, as she conducted further research into Crispr editing techniques, Dr. Doudna utilized facilities at LBNL, SLAC, and Brookhaven National Lab in making her groundbreaking discoveries in gene editing.
Those DOE-supported life science discoveries, in addition to large scale imaging and other user facilities across the DOE complex, provided indispensable foundations for recent work of the life science community that developed pharmaceutical responses to COVID-19 in less than a year, versus the 4+ years that it likely would have taken without those discoveries (given the fastest vaccine development cycles of the past). As a result, it is likely that millions of lives globally can be saved, and the pandemic’s economic impact significantly mitigated.
No matter what your area of discovery or technology development may be, everyone in our community should feel some measure of pride as we reflect on the benefits to society of the DOE enterprise and discovery science support, especially as they were manifested over the past year.
Paul M. Dabbar
The Honorable Paul M. Dabbar served as the Department’s fourth Under Secretary for Science, He served as the Department’s principal advisor on fundamental energy research, energy technologies, and science, driving this mission through programs including nuclear and high energy particle physics, basic energy, advanced computing, fusion, and biological and environmental research, and direct management over a majority of the Department’s national labs and their world-leading user facilities. In addition, Mr. Dabbar managed the environmental and legacy management missions of the Department, addressing the U.S. legacy of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. In addition, Mr. Dabbar is the lead for technology commercialization activities for the Department and its 17 national labs.
During his time in government service, Mr. Dabbar has traveled to both the North and South Poles. He traveled to the North Pole by submarine to conduct environmental research while in the Navy, and to the South Pole in support of high energy physics astronomy missions by the Department at South Pole Station.
Prior to confirmation as Under Secretary for Science, Mr. Dabbar worked in operations, finance, and strategy roles in the energy sector. As a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan, leading various energy business areas, he has over $400 billion in investment experience across all energy sectors including solar, wind, geothermal, distributed-generation, utility, LNG, pipeline, oil & gas, trading, and energy technologies, and has also led the majority of all nuclear transactions. In addition, he had a senior leadership role for the company’s commodity trading business, including power, oil and gas.
Before joining J.P. Morgan, Mr. Dabbar served as a nuclear submarine officer in Mare Island, California, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He also served on the Department of Energy Environmental Management Advisory Board. He has been a lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy, and conducted research at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Dabbar received a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, and a masters degree from Columbia University. Mr. Dabbar and his wife, Andrea, are the parents of two children.