Protecting America's Economic Future

This year has been good for the physical sciences. It started during President George W. Bush's State of the Union address in January, when he announced the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) to enhance physical sciences funding and education to ensure future U.S. economic competitiveness. The momentum for physical sciences continued throughout the year as Congress took steps to implement the initiative.

With congressional activity on ACI expected to resume when the new Congress convenes in January, the scientific community is doing its part to inform the debate. One such activity was a workshop held just outside Washington, D.C., on Dec. 3-5 with support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, and the National Institutes of Health. The workshop, titled "Enhancing Innovation & Competitiveness through Investments in Federal Research," pulled together leaders from the physical sciences sectors of industry and academia to discuss how to effectively use the enhanced federal investments to reenergize basic research and fuel U.S. competitiveness. The consensus was that ensuring U.S. economic competitiveness could be best achieved by promoting innovation, collaboration, and education.

"One of the unique things about this workshop was the opportunity to engage some of the highest level research leaders of some of America's most competitive science and technology companies, as well as innovators from research universities," said Mark S. Wrighton, workshop cochair and chancellor of Washington University, St. Louis. "It was great to have a dialogue with leaders from industry and to hear from them about what could come from a reinvigoration of basic research."

The two-and-a-half-day workshop will be the basis for a report that Wrighton told C&EN he expects to be finalized by Feb. 1, 2007—just in time to inform the new Congress. In addition to targeting legislators, the report will also be aimed at the community of scientists and engineers who are in positions to respond to the opportunities identified in the report, as well as at federal agencies that support fundamental research.

To provide a complete picture of the state of the physical sciences, the workshop allowed participants to discuss broad issues such as workforce needs, education, and the current state of U.S. competitiveness. It also allowed participants to share their scientific research and identify bottlenecks and gaps in knowledge at the industrial level that federally supported basic research could address.

According to Wrighton, the final report will capture this breadth of the discussion by including both policy and program recommendations. The policy findings will be aimed at the broad concerns, while the program suggestions will stem from areas of research identified at the workshop as being important to maintaining U.S. competitiveness.

Basic research as the key to innovation emerged as an important theme. Participants acknowledged that while the U.S. currently has a commanding lead over the rest of the world in many technological areas, other countries, particularly in Asia, are catching up. And they pointed out that one way to maintain the U.S.'s competitive edge in technology, and thereby keep its economy strong, is for the U.S. to reinvigorate its basic research, which will in turn drive future innovations.

Gary S. Calabrese, chief technology officer and vice president at Rohm and Haas, termed this competitive edge the U.S. "innovation gap" over the rest of the world. He noted that to keep this lead and a strong economy in the global market, the U.S. must keep the chemical industry healthy because so many of the innovations driving the gap come from this sector.

The importance of the chemical industry to the economy was also emphasized by Donald B. Anthony, president and executive director of the Council for Chemical Research; he talked about the macroeconomic impacts of R&D in the chemical sciences over a 20-year period. On the basis of an economic analysis using historical data, Anthony said an annual federal investment of $1 billion in chemical sciences R&D will in two decades yield from the chemical industry a growth of $8 billion per year in tax revenues, a growth of $40 billion per year in the gross domestic product, and 600,000 new jobs per year.

Workshop participants added that this contribution by basic research to the U.S. economy is actually an underestimate, because the calculation considers only the traditional chemical industry and does not take into account the impacts of chemical science research on related areas such as the pharmaceutical industry. The group agreed that since the government understands economics better than science, this information will help make a case for putting more funds into the physical sciences.

Another theme that emerged is the need for better collaboration between industry and academia. Yakov Kutsovsky, vice president and global director of R&D at Cabot Corp., presented the idea of a sabbatical for academic faculty to spend time in industry and for industry folks to spend time in universities. He noted that this exchange would give both sides valuable perspectives on what academics can offer and what industry needs.

For universities that do collaborate with industry, Matthew Tirrell, Richard A. Auhll Professor and dean of engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, proposed creating a new position, which he termed a "university vice president of sales." This person, he said, would coordinate and align all funds coming into a university from development, industrial relations, and other sponsored projects being done on campus.

One issue that appears to be limiting domestic industrial-academic collaborations is how to deal with resulting intellectual property rights when negotiating agreements. In fact, many industrial representatives at the meeting noted that this difficulty is leading companies to partner with institutions outside the U.S. where institutions are more flexible.

"U.S. academic institutions are acting too much like for-profit companies," Calabrese said. He explained that when dealing with domestic universities, companies have to pay twice for the technology—once to fund the research and again to license the resulting technology. This is not the case for institutions outside the U.S., where companies often get more favorable collaboration terms.

For agreements made with U.S. universities, university representatives pointed out, not all schools are equal. In fact, they acknowledged that when companies come looking for academic collaborators, some universities are known to be better to deal with as each school has its own policies and procedures. One way to improve this situation is to develop standardized agreements, the group suggested.

The importance of enhancing the U.S.'s K-12 education system emerged as the third theme. Although the participants noted that previous reports have made ample recommendations in this area, the group agreed that their final report should reaffirm that improving K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education is critical to U.S. competitiveness.

These three overarching themes of innovation, collaboration, and education were also discussed by American Chemical Society President-Elect Catherine T. Hunt, who has made them the focus of her presidential term, which begins next month. She stressed that ACS can serve as a translator to help get the ideas and recommendations of this group and others in the science and engineering community to the appropriate places in government. This synergy is something that Wrighton told C&EN he plans to take advantage of.

The group also heard about the changing demographics of Ph.D. earners in the chemical sciences and its impact on U.S. competitiveness. Charles P. Casey, emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, presented statistics showing that while the overall number of chemical Ph.D.s awarded annually over the past few decades has remained constant at about 2,000, the number of awards to white males has decreased. That drop is slightly offset by a rise in awards to women, but the bulk of it is balanced by an increase in awards to non-U.S. citizens.

This shift in demographics is not necessarily bad, Wrighton said, but for companies that need American scientists and engineers who can get security clearances to work on defense projects, for example, it can be a problem. One such company is Boeing, which was represented at the workshop by Krishnan K. Sankaran, senior technical fellow at the company. He said that Boeing has many defense contracts and needs U.S. citizens to work on them, but recruitment is challenging when the number of U.S. graduates is down.

The workshop also brought to light several key areas of research that participants believe could be pushed forward with enhanced federal support. Among them was fundamental research to gain predictive power over complex systems. The group also discussed the need for more process research, new high-resolution imaging techniques, and measurement technologies.

To help support advances in these and other areas in the physical sciences, the participants also noted that the government must reevaluate its support of infrastructure. Both academic and industrial representatives pointed out that federal support of grant programs for major research equipment such as synchrotron sources and magnetic imaging instruments has dropped off in recent years. Also drying up is federal funding to cover the cost of technicians to run such instrumentation already in place, they added. For the U.S. to retain its innovation gap, the group said, the government must spend more in this area.

At the workshop's conclusion, Wrighton told C&EN he is pleased with the quality and quantity of engaging interactions among workshop participants. "I can tell from the strength of participation at this meeting that, if nothing else happens, a lot is going to be discussed back at the participants' home institutions," he said.