Providing Appropriate Recognition and Treatment Needed to Enhance Relations Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Castro and Representative Kim for their leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4490, the PARTNER Act. This legislation represents an important step forward in our country's ability to collaborate with our international partners. In particular, this legislation contains the text of our Strengthening Science Through Diplomacy Act which simplifies our scientific collaboration with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

As a physicist, I spent more than two decades working with colleagues from around the globe at Fermilab in Illinois where international scientific collaboration allowed us to better understand each other and the universe that we are embedded in.

CERN already partners with several of our national laboratories, including Argonne National Lab and Fermi National Lab in the 11th District of Illinois that I represent.

In particular, this bill will allow for closer collaboration with CERN on the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, also known as DUNE, an international flagship experiment.

DUNE will help us to discover more about the nature of subatomic particles known as neutrinos, which could help us understand fundamental questions about the origins of matter and the beginnings of the universe. It will also search for previously undetected modes of proton decay, the subject for which I received my Ph.D. thesis many moons ago.

This legislation will allow CERN to send its scientists who have been working on the DUNE project to assist in person as these experiments come online.

One of the most exciting things about the DUNE project is we don't know what it will discover. When we built our proton decay detector many moons ago, we did not know that 160,000 years ago a star blew up, one supernova, in the greater Magellanic cloud, and for 160,000 years the flash of light from that stellar explosion and the burst of neutrinos traveled toward the Earth. It arrived in 1987 when the astronomers saw the flash of light and we saw the burst of neutrinos in our underground detector, so we learned an incredible thing about these stellar explosions.

It is this sort of thing that brings you, me, and other young people into science. I thank Ranking Member Castro, as well as Representative Dusty Johnson of the great State of South Dakota, who worked with me over the last few years to ensure the success of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, this bipartisan effort is an important step in solidifying our partnership with CERN and maintaining our Nation's role as a leader in scientific research.

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