Maryland has a wealth of scientific expertise and resources. The state is home to world-class hospitals, the university with the highest spending on research and development in the country, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and one of the nation’s most diverse and economically important marine habitats in the Chesapeake Bay. Yet the Maryland state legislature, with all this to manage, has no standing committee or advisory board to oversee science and technology legislation that could be vital for the health and growth of our state.

The Maryland State Senate has six standing committees and the House of Delegates has seven. The closest any of these comes to focusing on science and technology is the Senate Committee on Education, Energy and the Environment. Science-related bills in the State Senate tend to get dispensed to this committee for review, even when they exceed the bounds of the committee’s expertise. For example, H.B. 1420 was a proposed 2024 bill pertaining to the cybersecurity needs of the city’s utilities offices. Technically, this falls under the purview of “Energy,” even though in practice, understanding this legislation requires specific cybersecurity knowledge. Lack of expertise aside, it is a disservice to split the time of the committee between all science issues and the ever-important governance of education.

One bill, first proposed in 2022, calls for a “science and technology advisory commission” for the state legislature. The commission would be made of members of the Maryland community — experts and advocates who can provide insight on policymaking in a way that benefits the state. The bill proposes an annual $100,000 in the Maryland budget to fund the commission’s work — a whopping 0.000167% of the total state budget. Del. Terri Hill is a trained physician and the representative responsible for introducing this bill.

When it stalled out in the House Appropriations Committee in 2022, she re-introduced it in 2023 and then again in 2024. The bill finally passed through the House of Delegates last year, only to die once again in the State Senate Committee on Education, Energy and the Environment.

It is time for the members of the Maryland General Assembly to acknowledge the importance of science and technology innovations in this state and to admit that elected members of government do not always have the expertise to address these ever-changing fields. An advisory commission can and should contain experts from the wealth of science and technology institutes housed in Maryland who can complement the policymaking knowledge in the state legislature.

Additionally, constituents in Maryland — advocates for the communities in which they live — can serve on the commission, using their voices to make sure that science policy does not only serve the interests of large institutes. Water cleanliness, changing weather patterns, artificial intelligence, clean energy development and increasing incidents of flooding in coastal neighborhoods are just a few of the areas where science permeates the lives of Maryland residents. Surely the laws governing these sectors should be made with close input from the industries and residents whose daily lives and livelihoods rely on the technological innovations that the state can implement.

Beyond just guiding the state’s actions, the advisory commission provides Maryland residents the opportunity to leverage our scientific powerhouses — Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, the NIH and more. These institutions are strongly linked to the community (all of them are among the top 10 employers in the state), but they typically operate in isolation from their surroundings. The advisory commission will enable legislative action to facilitate collaboration between science institutes and the Maryland community.

Imagine if Hopkins and University of Maryland professors worked with local fishermen to clean up the Chesapeake, or if the NIH and the Maryland Science Center brought an after-school science curriculum to Maryland public schools. We must cultivate a diverse set of local and scientific advocates to steer legislation toward community-centered, expert-informed changes to state programs.

The 2025 legislative session is now underway. It is time for policymakers to finally establish a science and technology advisory commission as has been outlined in previously proposed bills. Members of the Maryland legislature should reintroduce and pass this bill to bring expertise and community advocacy to the table in our rapidly changing scientific and technological world.

Brendon Davis is a Ph.D. candidate in the Johns Hopkins University Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology and Biophysics Program. He is also the vice president for science policy in the Science Policy and Diplomacy Group at Johns Hopkins.