What areas would you like to see the institute zoom in on?
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One of the things I’ve been really working on is to increase our interaction with various federal partners as well as trying to involve the larger community in our actions and our activities. Scientists need to do a better job of helping the general public understand what we do, why it is important and what it means to them. Many scientists take the attitude that what they do is too complex, and in fact, my response to that is, “Then you don’t really know what you are doing.” So I think that we need to meet with our constituents, understand what their concerns are, listen to them, learn from them and then help them to understand what our findings mean. The dialog has to be a two-way street.