Unveiling of ARPA-H's Emerging Innovators Initiative
Good morning and thank you Secretary Becerra for your kind introduction. It’s wonderful to be at San Jose State University, Silicon Valley’s only public university, one of the most distinguished Hispanic Serving Institutions in the nation, and a leading university on Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. I’m proud to join Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, and ARPA-H Deputy Director Susan Monarez to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and to launch a funding opportunity for the next generation of health innovators through ARPA-H.
In March of 2021 President Biden invited me and a few of my colleagues to a meeting in the Oval Office to discuss a high priority of his… to find cures for the deadliest diseases we have not conquered such as pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer’s, and ALS.
President Biden lost his son Beau to glioblastoma, a deadly, aggressive cancer that currently has no cure. All of us know a friend or family member who have received a diagnosis that is a death sentence. During that meeting, President Biden’s vision was to establish a new agency that would mirror the structure of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a small, limber agency to take deadly diseases head-on and find cures. I went back to the Hill inspired by that Oval Office meeting and immediately set to work to pass a law to create this new agency… the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health or ARPA-H. Two years later, President Biden signed my legislation into law, creating ARPA-H with billions in federal funding to support its important mission.
Today we’re announcing the next way ARPA-H will break the mold to pursue big ideas to find cures. Today, ARPA-H is launching the Emerging Health Innovators initiative. This project will identify our country’s next biomedical geniuses at minority-serving institutions, such as San Jose State University, learn from their experiences, and provide the funding they need to pursue the next health breakthrough. Complacency and homogeneity are the enemies of innovation. By purposely pursuing those who have been traditionally left out of federal funding for biomedical research, ARPA-H’s Emerging Health Innovators can be part of our new team to end the death sentence of these dreaded diseases.