Carlos Del Toro, secretary of the Navy and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, has established a new office tasked with providing independent, data-driven assessments and recommendations on developing guiding principles and priorities to advance the lethality of the naval force.

Cara LaPointe, former co-director of the Institute for Assured Autonomy at Johns Hopkins University, will head the Department of the Navy Office of Strategic Assessment, or DON OSA, as director, the Navy said Monday.

LaPointe is a former naval surface warfare officer with over two decades of experience in national security, technology policy and Navy leadership.

Her Navy career includes roles such as deputy technical director of the littoral combat ship program and chief of staff to the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for unmanned systems.

She was also an expert adviser for global emerging technology initiatives at the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and a member of the DON Science and Technology Board.

Under her leadership, the DON OSA will help drive the service branch’s current readiness investments and future modernization efforts to maintain its global competitiveness.

“Data-driven assessments looking strategically across the entire DON enterprise in support of the Joint Force will help us make smarter choices as we balance investments in current readiness and future modernization in order to enhance the Department’s competitiveness against the pacing threat,” Del Toro said.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality have released updated guidance on implementing nature-based solutions to address the impacts of the climate crisis on U.S. infrastructure, communities and ecosystems.

The Nature-Based Solutions Resource Guide 2.0 provides nearly 300 resources to equip communities and agencies with implementation tools necessary to advance effective nature-based solutions and inform communities about available funding programs offered by the federal government, the White House said Saturday.

According to the guidance, there are 140 federal funding programs offered by a diverse set of agencies that support or could support nature-based solutions to climate change.

Examples of nature-based solutions implemented by federal agencies are transportation and facility construction, wetland restoration, coral reef protection, farm and forest management and community development.

The guidance cited the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Natural Infrastructure for Water Security project in Peru, the Department of Agriculture’s Central Sierra Recovery and Restoration Project and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Regional Coastal Resilience Grants program for the Pointe au Chien Tribe.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has signed a memorandum of agreement with NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of the Air Force to strengthen coordination and expand collaboration on space weather research-to-operations-to-research.

Under the agreement, the agencies will collaborate on transitioning models, observations, forecast applications, techniques and other capabilities from research into operations to improve space weather forecasts and services, NOAA said Friday.

The agencies will also provide and acknowledge feedback and exchange operational data on the impacts of space weather on critical infrastructure.

The collaboration addresses the need for a formal interagency process for transitioning space weather forecasting capabilities as identified by the White House Space Weather Operations, Research and Mitigation Subcommittee.

“Strengthening collaborations and coordination across the federal government in transitioning space weather research to operations is critical for minimizing and mitigating the potential consequences of space weather events, and for supporting the growing commercial space enterprise,” said Stephen Volz, director of NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service.

The Department of Energy is investing $42 million to establish research and development hubs focused on inertial fusion energy.

The Inertial Fusion Energy Science and Technology Accelerated Research program will be led by the University of Rochester, Colorado State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, DOE announced Thursday.

The multi-institutional hubs will specialize in several disciplines including laser energetics and laser-plasma interaction. The agency will use $9 million from fiscal year 2023 funding and $33 million from the fiscal 2024 budget to support the three facilities.

The University of Rochester will lead the Inertial Fusion Energy-Consortium on Laser-Plasma Interaction Research hub, which will be managed by four other universities and private companies.

CSU will oversee the Inertial Fusion Science and Technology center, whose members include General Atomics.

The National Science and Technology Accelerated Research for Fusion Innovation and Reactor Engineering center will be led by LLNL, which last year achieved fusion ignition for the first time in scientific history.

“Harnessing fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific and technological challenges of the 21st Century,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm remarked. “The scientists in these hubs will be the vanguard of game-changing and planet-saving breakthroughs.”