More than four months af­ter Er­ic Lan­der, the fa­mous found­ing di­rec­tor of the Broad In­sti­tute of MIT and Har­vard, re­signed from his top White House spot af­ter bul­ly­ing staff, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has nom­i­nat­ed Arati Prab­hakar to serve as the next di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Pol­i­cy (OSTP), which is a Sen­ate-con­firmed po­si­tion.

Prab­hakar is the first woman, im­mi­grant, or per­son of col­or nom­i­nat­ed to serve as the di­rec­tor of OSTP, and if con­firmed, she would al­so take the role of As­sis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.

Prab­hakar can im­me­di­ate­ly take up the sci­ence ad­vi­sor post, ac­cord­ing to Sci­ence, which first re­port­ed Prab­hakar’s new ap­point­ment last week. In be­tween Lan­der’s de­par­ture and yes­ter­day’s nom­i­na­tion, Biden had to scram­ble to find sci­en­tif­ic lead­er­ship, bring­ing for­mer NIH di­rec­tor Fran­cis Collins back from re­tire­ment to help. Biden still has yet to nom­i­nate Collins’ Sen­ate-con­firmed re­place­ment.

“Dr. Prab­hakar is a bril­liant and high­ly-re­spect­ed en­gi­neer and ap­plied physi­cist and will lead the Of­fice of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Pol­i­cy to lever­age sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and in­no­va­tion to ex­pand our pos­si­bil­i­ties, solve our tough­est chal­lenges, and make the im­pos­si­ble pos­si­ble,” Pres­i­dent Biden said in a state­ment. “I share Dr. Prab­hakar’s be­lief that Amer­i­ca has the most pow­er­ful in­no­va­tion ma­chine the world has ever seen. As the Sen­ate con­sid­ers her nom­i­na­tion, I am grate­ful that Dr. Alon­dra Nel­son will con­tin­ue to lead OSTP and Dr. Fran­cis Collins will con­tin­ue to serve as my act­ing Sci­ence Ad­vi­sor.”

Prab­hakar is a safe se­lec­tion for Biden as she was unan­i­mous­ly con­firmed by the Sen­ate to lead the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­o­gy, which she led from 1993 to 1997. She al­so led DARPA more re­cent­ly, from 2012 to 2017.

At DARPA, ac­cord­ing to the White House, she es­tab­lished a new of­fice to spur nov­el biotech­nolo­gies and jump-start­ed the de­vel­op­ment of a rapid-re­sponse mR­NA vac­cine plat­form, mak­ing pos­si­ble the in­cred­i­bly fast roll­out of Covid-19 vac­cines. And that work may trans­late in­to help­ing out with the cre­ation of ARPA-H, which is just be­gin­ning to stand up un­der the NIH.

Born in In­dia and raised in Texas, Prab­hakar earned her PhD in ap­plied physics from the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in 1984 (where she was the first woman to earn a PhD in ap­plied physics).

“She is the right per­son at the right time to sup­port the U.S. in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem, im­prove trans­la­tion­al sci­ence, at­tract and re­tain di­verse tal­ent pools, and en­sure that in­vest­ments in re­search and de­vel­op­ment solve the re­al chal­lenges fac­ing the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the com­mit­tee that over­sees sci­ence pol­i­cy, said in a state­ment on the nom­i­na­tion.

More and more women are driving innovation and taking leadership roles in biotech – as evidenced today in the release of Endpoints News’ list of the top 20 women in the R&D world – but those gains are beginning to extend across pharma sectors.

In pharma manufacturing in the US today, around 46% of all roles are occupied by women, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2021. And according to a Bloomberg report, women’s roles across manufacturing roles had a massive boost after the start of the pandemic.