Arati Prabhakar

The late 2022 confirmation of Prabhakar as OSTP director made her the first woman, first person of color, and first immigrant to hold the position. A physicist who previously headed both DARPA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Prabhakar has her work cut out for her, given President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot goal of halving the cancer death rate within 25 years, among other biomedical priorities. Also on the agenda: advancing scientific integrity and protecting government science, the topic of a detailed report Prabhakar’s office published this January, partly in response to an erosion of trust in science in recent years.