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09.08
First National Science &
Technology Summit Recommends Policies to Sustain
U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness
By
IEEE-USA Staff
In mid-August, IEEE-USA
President Russell Lefevre joined with more 250
other national science and technology leaders
who converged on the Department of Energy’s Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.,
to participate in the first National Science and
Technology Summit.
The Summit was convened by the
President’s Office of Science and Technology
Policy, as mandated by Congress in the
America COMPETES Act of 2007, to
“examine the health and direction of the United
States’ science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics enterprises.” Their conclusion: the
United States enjoys many competitive
advantages, but faces significant global
challenges to our leadership in science and
technology, and can’t afford to be complacent.
In welcoming remarks on Monday
evening, National Science Foundation director
Arden Bement and John E. Kelly III, IBM Senior
Vice President and Director of Research,
emphasized the importance of science and
technology to U.S. competitiveness, and
highlighted some of the emerging challenges to
U.S. leadership and our ability to compete in
the global marketplace. Kelly called for
“radical collaboration between government,
higher education and industry,” using the
current national Nanoelectronics Research
Initiative as an example.
The Summit kicked off in earnest
on Tuesday morning (19 Aug.) with a series of
welcomes by leaders of the Tennessee
Congressional Delegation, including U.S.
Representative Bart Gordon, the chair of the
House Science and Technology Committee, and
Senator Lamar Alexander, who was the Senate
sponsor of the America COMPETES Act and
chief architect of the influential National
Academy report Rising Above the Gathering
Storm, as well as U.S. Representative Zach
Wamp, a COMPETES Act supporter whose
district includes the Oak Ridge Laboratory.
Their message — a consistent theme throughout
the entire summit — was that the S&T community
needs to join forces and focus its efforts on
the task of convincing Congress and the new
Administration to fully fund the research and
educational programs authorized by the
America COMPETES Act. They confirmed that
other issues currently high on the national
agenda such as improving energy independence,
along with the prevailing “pay as you go”
approach to federal appropriations, will make
that task challenging.
National Semiconductor CEO Brian
Halla provided the luncheon keynote, advancing
the theme that failures to obtain passage of key
legislation — such as appropriations for the
America COMPETES Act and a permanent
extension of the currently expired research and
experimentation tax break — are the consequence
of growing public and political apathy toward
S&T and its role in society. According to Halla,
the failure on the part of the high-tech
industry and the broader S&T communities to
convincingly explain the importance of
technology’s role in maintaining U.S.
competitiveness, and its potential impact in
broad fields of national concern such as health
care and homeland security, is at the root of
this national complacency.
According to IEEE-USA President
Lefevre, “leadership is also a key component.
Not only does the S&T community need to work
together to deliver strong, consistent messages
about technology and its importance to our
society, but we need political leaders with the
vision and ability to mobilize the nation to
respond to the threats and challenges we are
facing, such as America’s energy dependence.”
The rest of the Summit agenda
was divided into two concurrent tracks, with a
series of moderated panel sessions focusing on
science and technology investments in the public
and private sector and on science, technology,
engineering and math (STEM) education and work
force development. The findings and
recommendations from each panel discussion are
to be incorporated in a Summit report that will
be presented to Congress by year end.
The first panel, chaired by
National Academy of Engineering President
Charles Vest, looked at federal investment and
resource allocation. As first priority, the
panel agreed that cooperate efforts to obtain
full funding for the America COMPETES Act
is essential. William Jeffrey, President of HRL
Laboratories, emphasized the need for advanced
planning and collaborative roadmapping of
enabling technology goals to minimize the
so-called “Valley of Death” between basic
research and industry application of technology.
Former Director of Defense
Research Anita Jones emphasized the importance
of investing in the people and research
infrastructure, noting that the real payoffs
from federal basic research investments are the
people, tools and knowledge they generate, which
helps advance our technology frontiers. She also
urged “mission agencies” to assume more
responsibility for funding basic research in
enabling disciplines, such as health R&D
investments in computing research. Cherry
Murray, of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, described the need for “T-shaped”
professionals who have combined deep expertise
in a technical discipline with breadth in other
disciplines. Semiconductor Research Corporation
CEO Larry Sumney endorsed the idea of technology
roadmapping, and called for a shift in funding
resources toward research partnerships and
consortia, along the lines of the Semiconductor
Research Corporation (SRC) model [www.src.org].
Summarizing the panel’s
recommendations, Vest acknowledged the need for
experimentation in national R&D funding
strategies to encourage the research and
innovation “ecosystems” to interact more
efficiently and effectively. He also cited the
need to use 21st century challenges, such as
energy, climate, food, water and health, to
inspire and engage the public to support
research funding and to attract the next
generation into S&T careers.
The Summit’s second panel,
chaired by Kathie Olson, deputy director of the
National Science Foundation, looked at ways to
improve the participation of women and
under-represented minorities in STEM education.
Panelists agreed on a basic strategy of scaling
up successful local initiatives and building
partnerships between the research and education
communities. Exposing students and their
teachers to research experiences was among
priorities discussed.
The third panel looked at
research facilities, tools and infrastructure,
and addressed the role of “Big Science”
facilities in federal research priorities.
Panelists confirmed increasing importance of
large science facilities to basic research,
including their role in supporting education,
S&T work force development and socially relevant
research. Opportunities for both large and small
research facilities are increasing, along with
their cost; prioritization of the limited
federal dollars is essential but increasingly
difficult, both within and across disciplines.
The up and down of the annual federal budgeting
cycles are perceived as a major obstacles to big
science facilities’ effectiveness, reducing the
return on investment. The panel’s core
recommendation was to demand greater stability
and predictability of funding through the
life-cycle of a big facility program.
Panel four targeted K-12
education, particularly the challenge of
sparking student interest in math, science and
technology. The panel endorsed a more coherent
systems approach to STEM education, with a focus
on instruction in core topics and accountability
through national testing and teaching standards.
The panel concluded that students learn
STEM by doing STEM — especially if the
connections between science and math and its
real life application are clearly explained. The
panel also underscored the importance of
guidance counselors and administrators, as well
as teachers, in creating STEM-friendly
environments.
An industry panel with
executives from Honeywell, Dow Chemical, Siemens
and Hewlett-Packard explored private sector
incentives for investments in research. They
looked beyond federal R&D dollars to address the
overall business climate needed to spur domestic
innovation and keep global companies focused on
the U.S. market — including a consistent
regulatory environment, liberal immigration
policies to sustain a strong S&T work force,
limits on excessive litigation, and the need for
patent reform. They noted that foreign
investment decisions are driven primarily by
considerations of market access and the strength
of the local S&T enterprise (e.g. work force,
universities, laboratories, etc.). In their
recommendations, the panel endorsed funding of
the America COMPETES Act priorities, but
urged reforms that would enable closer industry
collaboration with the performers of basic
research, including changes in current federal
laws that would allow industry to obtain greater
control over intellectual property rights
derived from industry-funded university
research. Congress and the Administration were
also encouraged to evaluate the European Union’s
new approach to research, which allows direct
funding of industry-university-institution
research collaborations.
The final panel, chaired by
University of Tennessee President John Petersen,
looked at STEM undergraduate and graduate
education. The panelists noted the
transformations in education resulting from the
trend toward interdisciplinary research; the
imperative of expanding meaningful participation
by women and underrepresented minorities in STEM
fields, and the need to improve the alignment
between our national innovation agenda and our
STEM work force, possibly by shifting federal
dollars from the focus on research toward
support of individual students at the
undergraduate and graduate level.
Ambassador Richard Russell
closed the Summit on behalf of OSTP Director
John Marburger with a “thank you” to the
participants, acknowledging that because of
their interest and efforts, “policymakers no
longer need convincing of the importance of S&T
to America’s long-term economic
competitiveness.” Russell added, “We must now
transform this consensus into real progress by
securing the investments called for by the
President’s American Competitiveness Initiative,
and establishing momentum for these objectives
that will carry into the next administration.”
More information on the Summit
agenda and speakers is available online at:
www.ornl.gov/sci/natlscitechsummit/ The
Summit report is due to Congress by mid-November
and will be published at the OSTP Web site at:
www.ostp.gov
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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