In an effort to bolster scientific partnerships in the Middle East, two US congressmen have introduced a bill that would fund research and education in Muslim-majority countries. The move follows a speech made last summer by President Barack Obama at Cairo University in Egypt in which he promised to ramp up science diplomacy in the Arab world.

“We need to keep America in the business of exporting one of our greatest national resources—our intellectual and creative capacity through science,” California Democrat Howard Berman told Nature Medicine.

The Global Science Program for Security, Competitiveness and Diplomacy Act, co-sponsored in March by Berman and Jeff Fortenberry, a Republican from Nebraska, would provide grants of up to five years to universities and businesses and fund infrastructure for research in a number of specific fields, including multi–drug-resistant and water-borne diseases, renewable energy and nuclear nonproliferation, among others. Research into sensitive subjects such as bioterrorism and select agents would not be funded. The bill, which does not specify a budget, also aims to create a 'global virtual science library' that would make scientific journals available at little to no cost.

Hands-on diplomacy: Bridging Middle East science. Credit: istockphoto

Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-born chemist at the California Institute of Technology and a member on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, applauds the legislation. “This is about creating the infrastructure, exchanges and management” in science between the US and the Muslim world, says Zewail, who was one of three science envoys appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in November.

Still, he concedes that some countries in the region do not have the capacity to support research, even if paid for by US taxpayers. “Some countries are at different levels,” he says. “Some will only be able to contribute human resources,” but others should produce concrete results.

Many scientists are hailing the move, although most do not expect to see groundbreaking findings come out of the program. Nicholas Vonortas, director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University in Washington, DC, sees the legislation as an effort primarily to “project an image that we're not just destructive, but constructive.”

To become law, the bill must first pass through both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Science and Technology, before going before the entire chamber. Neither has scheduled a hearing for the program.