Going Beyond Green - Research Progress on Environmental Health and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials - page 75

clearly defines the metrics used to gauge progress and the roles and means of engagement of researchers
and stakeholders. Without such leadership, efforts are likely to result in wasteful and duplicative efforts,
fractured results, and knowledge gaps that could seriously dilute the science that underpins policy and
regulatory decisions. Moreover, the gap in empowered leadership of nanotechnology EHS research at the
federal level has made coordination and communication challenging and left the enterprise open to
perceptions of conflicts between technology development and risk research.
Such leadership requires a stronger central convening authority than the NNI can now provide—
one that has sufficient management and budgetary authority to direct implementation of a research
strategy throughout all the NNI agencies and to ensure its integration with EHS research undertaken in the
private sector, the academic community, and international organizations (NRC 2012, pp. 16-17). The
committee recognizes that attaining that objective fully may require changes in the statute that established
the NNI; as noted in our first report, such legislation was introduced but not adopted in the 111th
Congress (NRC 2012, p. 166). Movement in the desired direction could be achieved through the
designation of one of the NNI agencies whose mission includes EHS as the lead agency for directing EHS
research throughout the federal government. Alternatively, it may be possible to establish a new entity to
serve this function in analogy to the NIH NCATS.
Metrics of research progress . Delineation and tracking of clearly identified metrics of research
progress are well suited to the capabilities of a central organization devoted to oversight of
nanotechnology EHS research. Establishment of defined metrics that measure progress toward goals of a
research strategy has been recommended by this committee (NRC 2012) and in other reviews of the NNI
to increase the accountability of agencies and researchers. The specific needs include development and
implementation of performance metrics that can be used to track research progress against core
objectives, establishment of a rigorous means of assessing whether funded programs are conducting risk
research, and periodic estimation of the levels and identification of the sources of funding needed to meet
the specific goals and priorities defined by the agencies and the broader community.
As part of this activity, it is vital to strive for greater transparency in communicating the
distribution of research in one's portfolio. Agencies need clearer guidance in differentiating between
research directly relevant to EHS risk and applications-oriented research that has more indirect EHS
implications. If research that centers on risk questions is clearly differentiated from research that develops
applications with more distant EHS relevance, information on the relative amounts of funding allocated to
the two will be viewed as more credible by many stakeholders.
Sustained coordination and communication with all relevant stakeholders. In spite of good-faith
efforts, the committee finds that more structured, reliable, and continuing forums are needed both for
communication among researchers (in the United States and globally) and for stakeholder engagement.
For example, as uses of ENMs extend globally, research on the potential EHS consequences of ENMs
should be considered globally. The committee's workshop that informed the present report provided a
perspective on an extensive slate of research under way in Europe and elsewhere. The government should
invest in such a way as to ensure that the research enterprise outlined in Figure 4-1 fully engages the
global research community. Such engagement will widen the array of materials covered, provide analyses
that address diverse and heterogeneous exposures and outcomes, and facilitate development of validated
models.
Another important audience that needs to be engaged is stakeholders who are not part of the
nanotechnology EHS research community. With that in mind, the committee has identified a number of
attributes of effective stakeholder engagement that are largely missing from the NNI's efforts. It is
especially important to provide a process to continuously engage stakeholders and to receive their input
on research progress and priorities. That could be accomplished through, for example, the establishment
of standing advisory bodies that meet regularly to review strategy development, implementation, and
priorities. Such stakeholder groups may be best formed around application-specific sectors of
nanotechnology and nanomaterials and encompass each of the links in the value chain (for example,
workers, consumers, environmental advocates, and producers of raw materials, intermediates, and final
products). As an initial step, the committee recommends that the National Nanotechnology Coordination