Mid-Year Report to the IEEE-USA
Government Fellowship Committee

David A. Conner, Ph.D., P.E.

July 2003

The first seven months of the fellowship year have been extremely busy. Shortly after starting my assignment in the office of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the full duties of being a Congressional Science and Technology Legislative Aide became apparent. Assigned technical responsibilities included the following areas. 

• Space (District-Related Issues)
• Aeronautics (District-Related Issues)
• Research and Development Funding Energy (Research and Technical Issues only)
• Environment (Primarily Technical Issues)
• Military Affairs (Primarily Technical Issues)
• Intelligence Patents (Shared with another Legislative Aide)
• Telecommunications (Technical Issues Only)

Assigned committee oversight responsibilities included the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Resources Committee, and the House Science Committee (other than Space and Aeronautics Sub-Committee activities).

A significant portion of my time was spent following legislation and providing advice to the Congressman relative to the contents of bills of interest to him. The following list represents a few of these bills. 

• H.R. 238 - the "Energy Authorization Bill" (This bill was passed by the House Science Committee and included an amendment that I developed. This bill was combined into H.R. 6 and passed by the House. The bill is now in "conference" with the Senate.) 
• H.R. 766 - the "Nanotechnology Allocation" Bill (This bill was passed by the House and included an amendment that I developed.) 
• H.R. 909 - the "Patent and Trademark Office" 
• Bill H.R. 910 - the "Fair Distribution of Offshore Oil Revenue Act of 2003" 
• H.R. 914 - The "Zero-Gravity, Zero-Tax Act of 2003" 
• H.R. 1081 - the "Aquatic Invasive Species Research Act" 
• H.R. 1085 - the "NASA Flexibility Act of 2003" (This bill carries an amendment that I developed.)
• H.R. 1118 - the "Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Firefighters Act of 2003"
• H.R. 1578 - the "Global Research and Data Management Act of 2003" (This bill was rejected by the House Science Committee.)
• H.R. 1588 - the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004" (This bill was passed by the House and is now in "conference" with the Senate.)
• H.R. 1856 - the "Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research Amendments of 2003"
• H.R. 1904 - the "Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003" (This bill was passed by the House.) 
• H.R. 2183 - the "Minority-Serving Institution Digital and Wireless Technology Opportunity Act" (This bill was rewritten and included a number of amendments that I submitted, was republished as H.R. 2801, and passed by the House Science Committee as H.R. 2801.)
• H.R. 2608 - the "National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program Reauthorization Act of 2003" 2 H.R. 2692 - the "United States Fire Administration Act of 2003"
• H.R. 2734 - the "Federal Aviation Administration Research and Development Reauthorization Act"

Other activities have included 

• tracking student, H-1B, and L-1 visa issues, 
• writing speech notes (e.g., on the hydrogen economy), 
• developing white papers (e.g., on cloning), 
• developing letters requesting authorization of and appropriation of funding for constituent projects, 
• reviewing the new U.S. commercial remote sensing policy, 
• researching information on using a particular fungus in the eradication of "weeds",
• investigating the status of an experimental hover craft, 
• reviewing the status of development of personal miniature thermal vision systems, and 
• investigating the status of a new, high-speed, large-memory digital camera.

While my assignments have been interesting and challenging, I consider my most important contribution to date to be the development of amendments for H.R. 238, H.R. 766, and H.R. 1085 that have the potential to increase the number of U.S. Citizens pursing graduate degrees in engineering and science and assuming positions of leadership within agencies of the U.S. Government.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers - United States of America