Remarks

I am delighted to be here and honored by the invitation to deliver The Moshe M. Barash Distinguished Lecture at Purdue University. The old cliché, "home is where the heart is," surely holds true for me. My heart is always here at this great and highly respected university. And wherever I go, Purdue will be "home."

I'm especially pleased to be invited to celebrate Moshe Barash's long and distinguished career, much of which was in service here at Purdue.

His achievements as a pioneer in a young branch of science, computer integrated design and manufacturing, are well known, as attested by his many awards and recognitions. His fingerprints are on many of the important advances and innovations in the field.

He was a leader in the establishment of NSF engineering research centers. The Center for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, which he and his colleagues established here at Purdue, was one of the centers that launched NSF's ERC program. It was the flagship of centers dedicated to manufacturing research.

This program became the template for the Foundation's more than three decade history of centers at universities across the nation.

Although our paths crossed over and over again, I have an indelible memory of Moshe as the pioneer on the cutting-edge of ideas and concepts. He was an early and leading practitioner of interdisciplinary research and of government-industry-university partnerships.

He was among those exemplary engineers whose careers wind a thread of creativity and innovation around the advance of engineering practice—who became models for today's students, and helped us to smoothly bridge the chasm between concept and realization. By changing paradigms, they enriched our vision and our society.

Before we get too serious, I want to share a light-hearted tale with you that describes the challenges involved in pursuing a different course and in bringing about change, especially the convergence among disciplines.

An engineer and a cosmologist await death at the hands of an executioner. The executioner asks the engineer if he has a final wish.

"Yes," he says, "I have some new findings on the implications of engineering for cosmology and I want to present them to the scientific community before I die."

The executioner then turns to the cosmologist and asks if she has a final wish. "Yes," she says, "just shoot me before I have to listen to that lecture."

I'm certain that those of us gathered here today have no such sentiments about crossing disciplinary boundaries! We know that contemporary research at the frontier is characterized by how it draws on and contributes to advances in many fields of science and engineering.

This story reminds us that new trends in science, engineering, and technology often encounter stubborn myths and traditions. No one ever said change was easy. Even scientists and engineers need perseverance to overcome the "stickiness" of accepted cultures.

Now, to more serious work. The title of my talk today, "In the Barash Tradition: Imagining the Shape of Things to Come" is meant to challenge some myths as I imagine Moshe would continue to do if he were with us today.

Through imagination, leadership and determination, Moshe worked to transform not only knowledge, but products, processes and even institutions. These qualities, together with the innovative technologies they foster, are in high demand today as America confronts new and complex challenges.

As I expand on these ideas, I hope to paint a picture of a science, engineering, and technology future that is vibrant and multifaceted, and above all, purposeful. Wearing my current hat as Director of the National Science Foundation, I will focus on issues of science policy.

We know that pursuing new knowledge and innovation is the best path toward economic prosperity and the solution to persistent societal problems, from energy security to climate change, and from poverty to disease.

Our ability to address the most pressing needs of our nation—and indeed of the globe—depends upon our resolve to pursue a future shaped by scientific vision and leadership.

I turn to the famous seventeenth century Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, to express this perspective. He once wrote,

"In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close, and to take a distanced view of close things..."

This advice applies to our science and engineering enterprise no less than it does in considering strategy. This perspective may sound at first like a contradiction, but a deeper reality is that research and discovery move forward within the context of society's larger goals and values.

As science and engineering advance, entirely new possibilities for discovery open up on many horizons. Whether we recognize these possibilities as opportunities to resolve pressing social dilemmas depends on adopting both a two-way perspective—from seeing the outside-in and also from the inside toward the outside. We look at the larger context to bring focus and meaning to our research aims. And we look toward our research to add substance and reality to our greatest aspirations.

Following this prescription brings something of a sea change to the conduct of science and engineering. We can detect this change at work in the recent effort by the National Academy of Engineering to lay out the grand engineering challenges of our times.

Ultimately the committee established 14 grand challenges.

1. Make solar energy economical
2. Provide energy from fusion
3. Develop carbon sequestration methods
4. Manage the nitrogen cycle
5. Provide access to clean water
6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure
7. Advance health informatics
8. Engineer better medicines
9. Reverse-engineer the brain
10. Prevent nuclear terror
11. Secure cyberspace
12. Enhance virtual reality
13. Advance personalized learning
14. Engineer the tools of scientific discovery.

That's a breathtaking list.

Underpinning each of these is a distinct vision of the shape of things to come. As the Academy points out, "Meeting some of them is imperative for human survival. Meeting others will make us more secure against natural and human threats. Meeting any of them will improve our quality of life."¹

Consider, for example the challenge of "making solar energy economical." The shape of the future we imagine here is one with a sustainable, secure, affordable, accessible and clean source of renewable energy. That is a future we can readily embrace.

Some examples from the NSF portfolio can help clarify this. The first NSF Engineering Research Centers were, in part, a response to the fears about Japanese industrial competition. Back in the 80's, these centers were revolutionary efforts to bring university researchers and industry together to work on persistent problems. They were also intended to speed the transfer of university research to the marketplace.

I mentioned the Center for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems launched here at Purdue in the 80's. The Center took on the task of transforming the entire manufacturing endeavor by harnessing the emerging power of computation to the old workhorses of production, exemplified by this slide.

I am not exaggerating when I contrast the assembly line, a culmination product of the first industrial revolution, to the vision embodied in intelligent manufacturing systems. Moshe's algorithms helped describe the huge productivity advances achievable when computers entered the scene.

As we fast forward to the present, we envision entirely integrated virtual environments that enable global production with greatly expanded spatial and temporal synchronization, from design to delivery, and from global material flows to enterprise integration.

On the horizon are entirely new conceptions of manufacturing that reach down to the nanoscale.

Yale engineers have created a process to fabricate nano-molds, nano-wires, gears, membranes and much more by molding metallic glass over scales from 13 nanometers to several millimeters.

This example would have pleased Moshe!

Scientists at the University of California at Davis, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a powerful computing tool that allows engineers to extract features and patterns from enormously large and complex sets of raw data. This problem-solving algorithm is compact enough to run on computers with as little as two gigabytes of memory.

Investigators at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have fabricated stretchable electronics that increased the stretching range by as much as 140 percent and allows extreme twisting. This emerging technology promises new flexible sensors, transmitters, new photovoltaic and microfluidic devices, and other applications for medical and athletic use.

The ERC program is alive and well today, but has evolved to meet the demands of our changing times. ERCs have always been agents of change for academic engineering programs and the engineering community at large. But today's Generation-Three centers must play an even larger role in our national life. Investigators must bring fresh, risky, ideas to bear on problems that have not yielded to conventional approaches, or that have only just been identified as areas of great promise.

In this sense, the guiding motif is still to bring research and education, and academia and industry, into harmony. But new rhythms come into play as well. Thus, diversity, outreach, and innovation are now indispensible parts of this grand symphony.

The Smart Lighting ERC based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is exploring the distinctive properties of advanced materials in order to create new lighting devices and systems with fully controllable and tunable characteristics. These innovations will make solid-state lighting significantly more functional and easier to manufacture.

The ERC for Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems, called FREEDM, will conduct research to transform the nation's power grid into an efficient network that integrates alternative energy generation and novel storage methods with existing power sources.

This new, distributed network would permit any combination and scale of energy sources and storage devices through standard interface modules. The Center's overall goal is to facilitate the use of green energy sources, reduce the environmental impact of carbon emissions, and alleviate the growing energy crisis.

The Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN) at the University of Arizona is creating new technologies for optical access networks by using integrated chip-based nanostructures, silicon nanophotonic devices, and new optical materials. These technologies will enable virtually any application (including multimedia streaming) in any location to seamlessly and efficiently interact with core networks in a cost-effective manner.

Each of these ERCs has numerous university and industry partners across the nation, as well as International collaborations.

I don't intend to diminish by one iota the value of exploration for the sake of exploration—what has often been called "curiosity driven science," which is also high on NSF's agenda. It has an important place alongside more purposeful exploration. Children learn best when they learn this way, and if we are fortunate, we carry the sublime joy of curiosity and discovery with us throughout life.

Putting science and engineering in the context of societal goals is an addition, not a subtraction. One of the advantages of this perspective is that it focuses our attention on the common good. An ancient Greek saying has it that the fox knows many small things, while the hedgehog knows but one big thing,² which speaks to the value of versatility and adaptation.

Public policy seeks to develop the universe to which we aspire. Science and technology create the path by which we realize those aspirations.

Much debate has recently centered on what type of spending is—and is not—a "stimulus." There is no doubt in my mind that NSF investments in research and education at colleges and universities provide immediate and worthwhile economic benefits for both jobs and knowledge.

Many studies have focused on the how funds spent directly on research at colleges and universities have created jobs and income throughout local and regional economies.

Just consider NSF's South Pole neutrino observatory, IceCube, designed to probe the mysteries of black holes and more. NSF selected the University of Wisconsin-Madison to serve both as the scientific leader of the international project and its overall manager.

Since construction began in 2002, $77 million has been spent in the state to design, engineer and build IceCube components. That spending has touched more than 90 businesses in 21 counties, including some 65 companies with headquarters in the state.³

A recent report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation⁴ takes a broader view. It concludes that "a $20 billion dollar investment in our national research infrastructure will create or retain approximately 402,000 American jobs for one year."

The authors refer to such an investment as "stim-novation." The implication is that we can meet immediate goals and achieve sustainable long-term economic benefits at the same time.

Michael Mandel, Chief Economist for Business Week sees a trend in the movement of the U.S. economy toward greater production of "intangibles." Among intangibles he counts both human capital, produced by the education system, and intellectual capital, namely "the accumulation of scientific knowledge, business and financial knowhow, and artistic accomplishments."

Intangibles may be difficult to measure in terms of GDP, but they do produce jobs. As Mandel points out, "During the last business cycle, which ran from March 2001 to December 2007 the intangible sector accounted for about 75% of job growth."⁵

How do we understand the value of our scientists and engineers? This anecdote, which some of you know, may shed light on that question. Mathematician and electrical engineer Charles Steinmetz was the scientific genius responsible for the early success of GE.

Legend has it that long after Steinmetz retired from GE he got a panicky request from a GE employee to come fix what was wrong with a complex system of machines that had broken down.

Steinmetz agreed and came to the facility. He walked around testing the various machines, and then took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and marked an 'x' on a specific spot on one particular machine. The GE people took that machine apart and found that the defect lay exactly beneath where Steinmetz put his 'x.'

Shortly after that, GE received a bill for $10,000 for services rendered. Management protested the amount and asked for an itemization. Steinmetz' bill read as follows: Making one chalk mark -- $1; knowing where to make it -- $9,999.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking to the House leadership in January, emphasized some of what that $9,999 represents. He said, "We really need the federal government to invest in human capital, in the citizens of our country....[and] we need greater investment in our nation's science and technology infrastructure." Why? Because "America...has to return to growth that's built on innovation and productivity."⁶

Many business leaders have similarly recognized the ever increasing value of science and technology "intangibles."

Something extraordinary is blossoming in this country—an awakening that is shifting science, engineering and technology from the periphery into the mainstream of national attention, understanding and action.

Those of us who have been part of the science and engineering community for many years will remember the reality check and anxiety over Sputnik in the '60's and the resulting boom in funding for science and engineering research.

In the eighties, concerns about increased Japanese competition led to an innovation explosion in industry and business.

It turns out that attention waxed when the pressure was great, and waned when our highly resilient knowledge-based economy responded with increasing innovation and entrepreneurial zeal.

But times have changed. Now we have seen the "competitiveness issue" clarify and crystallize into something we understand instead as globalization, a much more complex, permanent, and challenging environment—caused by ubiquitous computing and information networking that is now shrinking the world rapidly. These circumstances call for a sustainable, long-term response, not just a short-term fix.

At NSF we use the term "transformative research" to describe science and engineering endeavors that revolutionize research thinking, create entirely new fields, disrupt accepted theories and perspectives, and destabilize markets.

The support of transformative research is critical to NSF's mission and mandate, and the success of America in the current fast-paced, science and technology-intensive world. We must depart from familiar approaches, take risks, and break rules to provide grist for the innovation mill and to realize the full benefits that science and technology promise for society.

The dilemma in speaking about transformative research is that we cannot know for certain that a given direction will be transformative until the research is complete. Or can we?

This is where the direction of public policy and technology come together to pose the question, "in what new ways can science and engineering address national and global needs?"

This nexus between science and engineering and policy is not a new subject. It's a challenge to understand—and is embedded in a question posed by one technology scholar:⁷ "how can intelligent social decisions be made in the face of great complexity, high uncertainty, and rampant disagreement."

Nevertheless, these are precisely the decisions we must make in the case of climate change, energy and water resources, health, security and a host of other pressing concerns. Science and technology can help us make smarter choices by serving up the broadest possible set of options, informed by a robust science and technology base.

In one sense, our accumulated knowledge and technology are now so vast that we can, with some predictability, imagine and choose different futures. With a sound foundation in basic knowledge, we can begin to anticipate the future. Policies informed by science can help expand our options for the future. Policymakers and citizens alike can make better choices and better mitigate unintended consequences when these options are on the table.

It has been said that science and policy come together in two ways. There is "science for policy" and "policy for science." We think of "science for policy" when we engage in research that informs issues of national concern, like those I've have been discussing. We think of "policy for science" chiefly when we ask for larger research budgets!

As a practical matter, the two are not as far apart as this clever dichotomy makes them appear. Nations are capable of making great commitments to meet great challenges, like energy, environmental and economic sustainability. But great commitments require all the requisite ingredients, including adequate investments.

Despite the sea change in our vision of science, engineering and technology, we are not there yet. There is yet a chasm between our new knowledge and technologies, on the one hand, and our deployment of that knowledge and technology in the service of society’s most urgent needs, on the other.

In the first place, a gap exists between our existing stock of frontier discoveries and its effective development and application to pressing problems. I would include in this category the old, but persistent problem of "tech transfer"—of assuring that research results reach the private and government sectors engaged in delivering new products, processes and services.

The old, strictly linear model—where "the academy proposes, and industry disposes"—no longer suits the complexity of today's research or the rapid pace of technological innovation. The commerce between industry, academia and government calls for multiple feedback loops, and ongoing information exchange and problem solving.

In addition, scientific knowledge is often not marshaled in an effective and timely way to inform public policy. If news about available knowledge and technological innovations does not reach policymakers when needed, we suffer a growing "decision deficit." Our stock of policy options for steering the future of the nation and the planet is diminished.

There are myriad examples of policies that do not take into account a full array of options based on existing knowledge. Policy governing the management of global fisheries, many of which are near collapse, is one example. The management of increasingly scarce water resources is another case, and one that is likely to loom large in our future.⁸ When we consider the need for policies to manage energy, environment and economy—fisheries and water included—as coupled systems, the scale of the problem increases exponentially.

In truth, confronting the colossal and complex challenges of energy, environment, economy, poverty, security and health requires new knowledge, new technologies, new financial investments, and new, forward-looking policies.

These are not separate, but interrelated challenges requiring new approaches for understanding complexity. Science and technology have always been powerful forces for human progress. Today, they are ubiquitous features of our life and will only increase to be in the future.

Universities and colleges are already deeply involved in seeking such approaches. So, what lies ahead?

Your response to this cartoon tells me I have hit a nerve!

It's commonly said that science deals with what "is" and "could be," while policy aims at what "ought to be." Although that is a useful distinction, our times surely call for a more subtle and complex perspective.

Today, research scientists and engineers participate in policymaking mostly by addressing short-term questions posed by policy makers.

What if, instead, we used the breadth of our understanding and our facility with the scientific method in its broadest sense to engage in policy activities with much more scope and purpose?

What if the role of scientists and engineers were to delineate an assortment of future options for decision makers and the public, based on emerging concepts and discoveries, so that choices could truly reflect the vision of science and technology in shaping our common future?

This gives a truly revolutionary, transformative meaning to imagining the shape of things to come. This is not a new idea, but it is, unfortunately, not yet a reality.

As a community, we may not currently be ready to play this role because of the time-honored rigor of the scientific method. Risk is definitely a factor, and consensus building must be preserved and strengthened.

As for being willing, I leave that for you to decide. My instinct tells me that if given an opportunity to shape the future in meaningful ways, to such an important national—indeed, global—challenge, there would be "standing room only" in the arena.

During the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signing ceremony, referring to the role of basic science in the nation's recovery, President Obama said that "this investment will ignite our imagination once more, spurring new discoveries and breakthroughs that will make our economy stronger, our nation more secure and our planet safer for our children." NSF intends to translate this eloquent statement into reality.

It seems to me especially appropriate that the Act was signed, and these remarks expressed, at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, a long-time recipient of NSF funding aimed at the very thing the President hoped for, namely, "to ignite our imagination once more" in science and innovation.

Imagining the shape of things to come will always remain an enduring quest, an on-going process. We will always need to nourish the process with fresh ideas and a fundamental commitment to engage fully in crafting options for the future. It will be demanding, exciting, and a bit precarious, as the unknown always is. But it can also be more purposeful, and thus more satisfying.

Remembering Moshe Barash, as we do today, we can see that this is a natural elaboration of the Barash tradition of vision and leadership.

I am confident that many of those who will lead us are present today, right here in Indiana, at Purdue University. Many of you will continue to lead. And the students among us will embark on a lifetime of imagination and leadership.

It has been a continuing privilege for me, as it was for Moshe Barash, to be part of this educational and inspirational enterprise— which brings me full circle to my absolute delight at being back home at Purdue.

Thank you.

NOTES

1. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10072008; accessed February 24, 2009. (Return to speech)

2. Quoted from The Economist. (Return to speech)

3. http://www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu/profiles/IceCube/ ; Madeline Fisher; accessed February 27, 2009. (Return to speech)

4. "Stim-Novation": Investing in Research to Spur Innovation and Boost Jobs; Daniel Castro and Rob Atkinson; Information Technology & Innovation Foundation; January 2009. (Return to speech)

5. Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek; http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2008/db2008129_060427.htm (Return to speech)

6. Remarks by Steve Ballmer, delivered at the U.S. Rpresenttives Democratic Caucus Retreat, Williamsburg, Virginia, February 6, 2009. (Return to speech)

7. E. J. Woodhouse, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (Return to speech)

8. "Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists," National Research Council; October 2008. Accessed at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12452 (Return to speech)