Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) worries (sub. may be req’d?) in the latest issue of Science that the U.S. isn’t doing what it could to continue the pace of innovation and “nuture the next Einsteins.”
All revolutions begin with a seminal moment. This year, we will celebrate one of the greatest in the history of science: the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s 1905 landmark papers that introduced the special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy. As we explore their impact, we must ask ourselves if we as a nation are doing what it takes to spark new scientific revolutions. Are we nurturing the next Einsteins? Regrettably, the answer is no. The lack of federal investment in basic research and restrictive immigration policies are eroding America’s leadership in the sciences. The ripple effects of these two troublesome trends are enormous: Our future economic competitiveness and quality of life depend on our ability to stay ahead of the scientific and technological curve.
The splitting of the atom ushered in an unprecedented era of public investment in basic scientific research after World War II. The National Academy of Sciences (citing the work of Nobel Laureate Robert Solow) estimates that nearly half of our nation’s economic growth since that time can be attributed to advances in science and technology.
However, in recent years investment has shifted away from research in the physical sciences and engineering to the life sciences. The irony is that advances in the life and medical sciences will be impossible without their physical and engineering counterparts. I agree with the recommendation of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that the funding levels for the physical sciences and engineering be brought to parity with that for the life sciences, which has more than doubled over the past decade. Adequate funding alone, however, will not guarantee that science in the United States maintains its strength.
I’m getting more encouraged by the frequency with which the concept that federal support of R&D leads to innovation, which in turn enables U.S. competitiveness, is showing up in the press and out of the mouths of policy makers on both sides of the aisle. As soon as I get some time, I think I’ll compile all the recent examples I can find — it’s a big list. But in the meantime, you can probably get more than a few examples by browsing the funding and policy categories in the archives on the left.
And the rest of the Alexander editorial is certainly worth reading.
Apologies for the lack of timely blogging, but things in CRA-ville are a little bit crazy as we prepare for our Spring Board Meeting, CRA’s Computing Leadership Summit, and our annual congressional visits day — all next week. But there is a story that is a little dated, but certainly worth a note here. CRA Board Member Leah Jameson, along with her colleagues Edward J. Coyle and William Oakes from Purdue’s Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program were awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize by the National Academy of Engineering on Monday night.
The EPICS project pairs teams of undergraduate engineering students with nonprofit organizations to solve engineering problems in the community.
Community service agencies face a future in which they must take advantage of technology to improve, coordinate, account for, and deliver the services they provide. They need the help of people with strong technical backgrounds. Undergraduate students face a future in which they will need more than solid expertise in their discipline to succeed. They will be expected to work with people of many different backgrounds to identify and achieve goals. They need educational experiences that can help them broaden their skills.
The challenge is to bring these two groups together in a mutually beneficial way.
Apparently, the NAE felt EPICS was meeting that challenge. The Gordon prize is given annually for “innovation in engineering and technology education” and carries a $500,000 award. And it’s not the first the program has received.
With a new Congress comes a new organization of congressional committees and memberships. We’ve covered the reorganization of the Appropriations committees and its impact on science funding. USACM’s Cameron Wilson has a great writeup on some of the other IT policy implications on USACM’s Technology Policy Weblog. It’s a good look at the new congressional landscape for intellectual property, privacy, and security issues. Update: (3/2) Fixed the link to Cameron’s post.
NSF is facing a tough budget year (as we’ve noted). They’re requesting a slight increase in funding — about 2.4 percent for FY 2006 — but it turns out most of the increase will go to fund the operation of some former Coast Guard icebreakers, as well as hiring some long-awaited new staff. Now news comes that a NSF-owned ship, the research vessel Maurice Ewing, apparently ran aground off the coast of Mexico this week and damaged a coral reef. The Mexican government is talking about “substantial fines” to NSF as a result of the accident and are threatening to seize the ship to ensure the fines are paid.
The story is only just starting to play out, but it bears some watching. Because the amount of increase planned for the agency budget is so small, a fine need not be terribly substantial to result in cuts to existing research budgets. And it wouldn’t be the first time NSF’s legal issues threatened to impact the Foundation’s research budget….
Anyway, keep it here for details…. Update: It’s been suggested that because this is an international incident, perhaps the State Department will take care of it. That sounds plausible to me. But I’d love to hear from anyone with more detailed information. harsha [a t] cra . org.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) — a CRA-affiliated organization — has named Vint Cerf and CRA Board Member Bob Kahn the winners of the 2004 A.M. Turing Award for pioneering work on the design and implementation of the Internet’s basic communications protocols.
ACM President David Patterson said the collaboration of Cerf and Kahn in defining the Internet architecture and its associated protocols represents a cornerstone of the information technology field. “Their work has enabled the many rapid and accessible applications on the Internet that we rely on today, including email, the World Wide Web, Instant Messaging, Peer-to-Peer transfers, and a wide range of collaboration and conferencing tools. These developments have helped make IT a critical component across the industrial world,” he said.
“The Turing Award is widely acknowledged as our industry’s highest recognition of the scientists and engineers whose innovations have fueled the digital revolution,” said Intel’s David Tennenhouse, Vice President in the Corporate Technology Group and Director of Research. “This award also serves to encourage the next generation of technology pioneers to deliver the ideas and inventions that will continue to drive our industry forward. As part of its long-standing support for innovation and incubation, Intel is proud to sponsor this year’s Turing Award. As a fellow DARPA alumnus, I am especially pleased to congratulate this year’s winners, who are outstanding role models, mentors and research collaborators to myself and many others within the network research community.”
Lots going on today. The House Science Committee will hold the first of its hearings on the FY 2006 Science Budget today at 11 am. Scheduled to appear are:
It’s always a little depressing to listen to directors of the science agencies forced to defend the lean budgets they’ve been saddled with, but for those who want to watch, the hearing will be webcast starting at 11 am today. Here’s the hearing charter (pdf).
Also happening today is a press conference hosted by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation — a coalition of industry and academic groups advocating for support of the physical sciences and engineering. The Task Force is releasing a series of benchmarks for measuring U.S. global competitiveness in research and innovation. Scheduled to appear at the press conference today at 1 pm are:
John Engler, President, National Association of Manufacturers
Craig Barrett, Chief Executive Officer, Intel
Nils Hasselmo, President, Association of American Universities
Deborah Wince-Smith, President, Council on Competitiveness
Burton Richter, Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences and former Director, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University
Diana Hicks, Chair, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology.
All will make the case for strengthening federal investments in science and engineering research, emphasizing the impact of those investments on long-term economic growth and prosperity.
The strength of this particular coalition, as can be seen above, is the strong participation of the high-tech companies and industry associations — who have some influence in the current administration — along with the academic groups (CRA is a member of the task force).
I’ll have more coverage of the benchmarks, as well as some other comments after the event this afternoon. Update: (2/16 6:30pm EST) – The Task Force press conference was remarkably well-attended — the 70-person capacity room was filled, with people lining the walls. It appears a good number of attendees were actually press, too. I’ll be posting links to coverage of the event here as I come across them.
For now, here is the official Benchmarks report (pdf). And the accompanying press release (pdf). Reuters is already out with the story.
Just a quick note to point out an editorial in today’s New York Times commending the State Department for finally “bringing some sanity” to the student visa issue. CRA has been urging this sort of reform since it became clear shortly after 9/11 that it was having a real impact on our member institutions. Thanks should go to AAAS, AAU and the National Academies — some of the real heavyweight academic associations — for moving the issue forward.
Computerworld has a story today that, I think, helps contribute to the common misunderstanding in some policy circles that “IT funding” is the same as “IT R&D funding.” The story combines budget news about the president’s proposed increases in federal IT funding — in this case, funding for IT procurement — with news about some aspects of the president’s science and technology budget. Here’s the first few paragraphs:
FEBRUARY 14, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) – President George Bush’s proposed budget for the federal government’s 2006 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, includes an increase in IT spending, despite significant cuts elsewhere.
The plan also asks Congress to permanently extend a research and development tax credit while terminating a program to develop high-risk, high-payoff technology.
The 2006 Bush budget cuts back or eliminates 150 government programs while calling for a 7% increase in government IT spending, to $65.1 billion. About 55% of IT-related funding would go to defense and domestic security programs. At the same time, the plan raises IT funding for the National Science Foundation by nearly 26%.
Separately, Bush’s science and technology budget would drop from an estimated $61.7 billion in fiscal 2005 to $60.8 billion in 2006. The science and technology budget includes programs such as space exploration, renewable energy and agricultural research, as well as technology-related research and development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
…
The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), an industry trade group, praised the IT budget plan.
“America must pick up the pace in science, math and engineering,” ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement. “Countries around the world have clearly signaled their intent to challenge U.S. leadership in technology. Our economic well-being depends on answering this challenge.”
The conflation in the article of IT procurement issues –buying IT for uses within the agency — with science and technology funding issues aimed at supporting researchers working on the next generations of technology might lead the reader to conclude that IT R&D funding did well under the budget request. Indeed, the line about the 26 percent increase in funding at NSF, as well as Harris Miller’s (ITAA) quote about the need for America to “pick up the pace in science, math and engineering,” and the bit about the extension of the research and development tax cut seem to reinforce that.
Of course, that’s not quite the case. IT R&D funding overall would decline 7 percent under the President’s plan. NSF funding for IT R&D would increase agency-wide, but only slightly — $8 million or 1 percent over FY 05.
The irony is that the very important message conveyed in Miller’s quote argues for much more robust IT R&D funding, which despite NSF’s increase in IT procurement, isn’t happening.
Michael Mandel notes in today’sBusinessWeek Online op-ed that President Bush’s proposed cuts to federal support of R&D in his FY 06 budget request are shortsighted because of the impact they’ll have on the U.S. economy. He focuses on multifactor productivity (MFP). a measure of productivity that, when it goes up, means “output per hour of the average worker goes up without any additional skills or a change in equipment.”
“An increase in MFP equals free money, extra production that you don’t have to pay for,” he writes.
The key, according to Mandel:
Multifactor productivity is borne of the essence of technological innovation — the creation of new products and new opportunities out of ideas and thin air. For example, the spread of the Internet has not only made doing business easier and cheaper but also allowed people to do things that weren’t even possible in the past. Think about Amazon, Google, and eBay. Wireless phones aren’t just a substitute for landlines; they enable people to organize their activities in very different ways.
The rate of multifactor productivity growth represents the single best indicator of the economy’s true strength. When MFP is increasing rapidly, the size of the economic pie expands, real wages rise, profits go up, and everyone feels good. When that figure stagnates, things are tough all around.
For example, multifactor productivity didn’t rise at all in 1973-83, a period that included the era of runaway inflation, President Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise” speech, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. During that stretch, the stock market, adjusted for inflation, fell by 34%, while real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers descended by 11%.
By contrast, the birth of the New Economy can be clearly seen in the sharp acceleration of multifactor productivity growth starting in 1996. From that point to 2002 (the latest year for which figures are available), MFP gained a bit more than 1% a year. From 1995 to today, real wages have risen by 9%, while the inflation-adjusted stock market is up by 68%.
An economy with rapid multifactor productivity growth is potentially quite profitable for investors, which helps explain why the U.S. can attract so much foreign capital to fund its trade deficit. High MFP also generates lots of extra output, useful for paying for, say, military actions or better health-care benefits. It’s like having a cushion or a security blanket.
Mandel notes that the President’s cut to nondefense R&D spending “can only hurt the nation’s ability to maintain a rapid pace of multifactor productivity growth.”
Putting more resources into technology and education is the best way to ensure that the bounty of higher MFP continues in the future.
Read the whole piece.
Thanks to Anthony Pitagno of ACS for the tip.
USACM’s David Padgham has a good post on House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner’s “Real ID Act,” a bill inteded to disrupt terrorist travel and bolster U.S. border security.
Among privacy and civil liberties advocates, the bill has renewed worries about the development of a national identification system. Indeed, critics of the bill assert that implementing the standards and information sharing compacts would amount to a de facto national ID card. Supporters of the bill contend that the bill is needed to address a number of vulnerabilities in border and homeland security efforts.
ACM has more info on national ID’s here.
Read the whole post.
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Sen. Alexander Frets That U.S. Isn’t Nurturing Next Einsteins
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaSen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) worries (sub. may be req’d?) in the latest issue of Science that the U.S. isn’t doing what it could to continue the pace of innovation and “nuture the next Einsteins.”
I’m getting more encouraged by the frequency with which the concept that federal support of R&D leads to innovation, which in turn enables U.S. competitiveness, is showing up in the press and out of the mouths of policy makers on both sides of the aisle. As soon as I get some time, I think I’ll compile all the recent examples I can find — it’s a big list. But in the meantime, you can probably get more than a few examples by browsing the funding and policy categories in the archives on the left.
And the rest of the Alexander editorial is certainly worth reading.
Catching Up: Gordon Prize
/In: People /by Peter HarshaApologies for the lack of timely blogging, but things in CRA-ville are a little bit crazy as we prepare for our Spring Board Meeting, CRA’s Computing Leadership Summit, and our annual congressional visits day — all next week. But there is a story that is a little dated, but certainly worth a note here. CRA Board Member Leah Jameson, along with her colleagues Edward J. Coyle and William Oakes from Purdue’s Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program were awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize by the National Academy of Engineering on Monday night.
The EPICS project pairs teams of undergraduate engineering students with nonprofit organizations to solve engineering problems in the community.
Apparently, the NAE felt EPICS was meeting that challenge. The Gordon prize is given annually for “innovation in engineering and technology education” and carries a $500,000 award. And it’s not the first the program has received.
Congressional Reorganization: IT Policy Implications
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaWith a new Congress comes a new organization of congressional committees and memberships. We’ve covered the reorganization of the Appropriations committees and its impact on science funding. USACM’s Cameron Wilson has a great writeup on some of the other IT policy implications on USACM’s Technology Policy Weblog. It’s a good look at the new congressional landscape for intellectual property, privacy, and security issues.
Update: (3/2) Fixed the link to Cameron’s post.
New NSF Liability?
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaNSF is facing a tough budget year (as we’ve noted). They’re requesting a slight increase in funding — about 2.4 percent for FY 2006 — but it turns out most of the increase will go to fund the operation of some former Coast Guard icebreakers, as well as hiring some long-awaited new staff. Now news comes that a NSF-owned ship, the research vessel Maurice Ewing, apparently ran aground off the coast of Mexico this week and damaged a coral reef. The Mexican government is talking about “substantial fines” to NSF as a result of the accident and are threatening to seize the ship to ensure the fines are paid.
The story is only just starting to play out, but it bears some watching. Because the amount of increase planned for the agency budget is so small, a fine need not be terribly substantial to result in cuts to existing research budgets. And it wouldn’t be the first time NSF’s legal issues threatened to impact the Foundation’s research budget….
Anyway, keep it here for details….
Update: It’s been suggested that because this is an international incident, perhaps the State Department will take care of it. That sounds plausible to me. But I’d love to hear from anyone with more detailed information. harsha [a t] cra . org.
2004 Turing Award to Cerf, Kahn
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThe Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) — a CRA-affiliated organization — has named Vint Cerf and CRA Board Member Bob Kahn the winners of the 2004 A.M. Turing Award for pioneering work on the design and implementation of the Internet’s basic communications protocols.
Here’s ACM’s press release.
More news coverage at the New York Times.
Busy Day: Hearing and Press Conference
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaLots going on today. The House Science Committee will hold the first of its hearings on the FY 2006 Science Budget today at 11 am. Scheduled to appear are:
It’s always a little depressing to listen to directors of the science agencies forced to defend the lean budgets they’ve been saddled with, but for those who want to watch, the hearing will be webcast starting at 11 am today. Here’s the hearing charter (pdf).
Also happening today is a press conference hosted by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation — a coalition of industry and academic groups advocating for support of the physical sciences and engineering. The Task Force is releasing a series of benchmarks for measuring U.S. global competitiveness in research and innovation. Scheduled to appear at the press conference today at 1 pm are:
All will make the case for strengthening federal investments in science and engineering research, emphasizing the impact of those investments on long-term economic growth and prosperity.
The strength of this particular coalition, as can be seen above, is the strong participation of the high-tech companies and industry associations — who have some influence in the current administration — along with the academic groups (CRA is a member of the task force).
I’ll have more coverage of the benchmarks, as well as some other comments after the event this afternoon.
Update: (2/16 6:30pm EST) – The Task Force press conference was remarkably well-attended — the 70-person capacity room was filled, with people lining the walls. It appears a good number of attendees were actually press, too. I’ll be posting links to coverage of the event here as I come across them.
For now, here is the official Benchmarks report (pdf). And the accompanying press release (pdf).
Reuters is already out with the story.
NY Times Applauds Improvements to Student Visa Process
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaJust a quick note to point out an editorial in today’s New York Times commending the State Department for finally “bringing some sanity” to the student visa issue. CRA has been urging this sort of reform since it became clear shortly after 9/11 that it was having a real impact on our member institutions. Thanks should go to AAAS, AAU and the National Academies — some of the real heavyweight academic associations — for moving the issue forward.
IT Spending Does Not Equal IT R&D Funding
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaComputerworld has a story today that, I think, helps contribute to the common misunderstanding in some policy circles that “IT funding” is the same as “IT R&D funding.” The story combines budget news about the president’s proposed increases in federal IT funding — in this case, funding for IT procurement — with news about some aspects of the president’s science and technology budget. Here’s the first few paragraphs:
The conflation in the article of IT procurement issues –buying IT for uses within the agency — with science and technology funding issues aimed at supporting researchers working on the next generations of technology might lead the reader to conclude that IT R&D funding did well under the budget request. Indeed, the line about the 26 percent increase in funding at NSF, as well as Harris Miller’s (ITAA) quote about the need for America to “pick up the pace in science, math and engineering,” and the bit about the extension of the research and development tax cut seem to reinforce that.
Of course, that’s not quite the case. IT R&D funding overall would decline 7 percent under the President’s plan. NSF funding for IT R&D would increase agency-wide, but only slightly — $8 million or 1 percent over FY 05.
The irony is that the very important message conveyed in Miller’s quote argues for much more robust IT R&D funding, which despite NSF’s increase in IT procurement, isn’t happening.
Business Week Makes the Economic Case for Federal R&D Spending
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaMichael Mandel notes in today’s BusinessWeek Online op-ed that President Bush’s proposed cuts to federal support of R&D in his FY 06 budget request are shortsighted because of the impact they’ll have on the U.S. economy. He focuses on multifactor productivity (MFP). a measure of productivity that, when it goes up, means “output per hour of the average worker goes up without any additional skills or a change in equipment.”
“An increase in MFP equals free money, extra production that you don’t have to pay for,” he writes.
The key, according to Mandel:
Mandel notes that the President’s cut to nondefense R&D spending “can only hurt the nation’s ability to maintain a rapid pace of multifactor productivity growth.”
Read the whole piece.
Thanks to Anthony Pitagno of ACS for the tip.
Real ID Act Passes House
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaUSACM’s David Padgham has a good post on House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner’s “Real ID Act,” a bill inteded to disrupt terrorist travel and bolster U.S. border security.
ACM has more info on national ID’s here.
Read the whole post.