For Larry McIntire, biomedical engineering is where new discoveries get turned into products that help people.

It’s a field that reaches across subjects—biology, chemistry, medicine—and one that often brings scientists nose-to-nose with regulatory agencies like the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“We have a lot of interest because of devices, therapeutics, and drugs, with things like how the FDA runs and how it runs approval processes for various types of things, which can be quite different depending on whether it’s a device or a cell or a chemical,” said McIntire, the chair emeritus of the Wallace Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech—a joint venture with nearby Emory University in Atlanta. “It’s mostly public policy that controls exactly how that happens.”

The mechanics of those processes are part of what got him interested in how science and government intersect, and part of what got him more involved with AAAS. In addition to his post at Georgia Tech, McIntire is the current chair of the AAAS Section M (Engineering)—one of 24 Sections within the organization that advise the leadership on public issues related to their disciplines.

“I think it’s important that scientists and engineers have a real voice in Washington, where all these decisions are made,” McIntire said.