Promoting Science Technology and Innovation
Transcripts of video presentation by President’s Council of Advisors on Science Technology and Innovation
http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/pcast/100107/default.cfm?id=11927&type=flv&test=0&live=0
John Holdren: On behalf of my PCAST co-chair Eric Lander and Harold Varmus, let me officially open this public session of thethird meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Welcome the members of PCAST, our, the first of our distinguished speakers Under Secretary Kristina Johnson, to whom we will turn the floor over in a few minutes, and all of our observers who have gathered to participate in this meeting. I’m going to make a few remarks at the outset of the irresistable sort, launching a new year, namely saying a few words about the year we’ve just experienced and a few words about the PCAST’s agenda going forward and then we will turn to the very rich agenda for this particular meeting. In terms of looking back at 2009, I would say that in the context of the extraordinary set of challenges faced by the Obama administration in its first year of office which included of course the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the need for healthcare reform to deliver better outcomes to more Americans at lower cost, two wars, continuing struggles with terrorist, the growin challenges at the intersection of energy and climate and more, in the context of all of that, the positive roles that science and technology and innovation can play and must play got a lot of attention from the administration, and were the locus of very important progress. That particular emphasis on science and technology and innovation has been very conspicuously led by the President himself. It started with his campaign speeches, his inauguration speech, his first speech to a joint session of Congress, the extraordinary speech he gave at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences at the end of April. The speech he gave in Cairo about reaching out to the Muslim world, including with new initiatives in coopration in science and teachnology, the speech he gave at MIT in October on the energy issue, the roll out of an American innovation strategy over the summer. His continuing engagement in events around science, technology engineering and math education to a really extraordinary degree.
This really has been a President-led focus on the relevance of science technology and innovation and the investments we must make in it if we are to successfully address this array of challenges. In concrete terms, the FY’09 and FY 10 budgets including the recovery act contain the biggest boost in federal support for research and development in the country’s history. In the Recovery Act, $100 billion was devoted to science and technology, including advanced energy technology, energy and transportation infrastructures and more.
Another 100 billion in the recovery act was put into education, augmenting plummeting state and local funds available for education in a manner that avoided 300,000 teachers losing their jobs. Also included a 4.4 billion race to the top initiative with particular emphasis on incentives for states to boost science technology engineering and mathematics education. The President appointed the first Chief Technology Officer and first Chief Information Officer for the country in its history. Put a Nobel laureate in physics in charge of the Department of Energy. Strengthened in science and technology in the budgets and top appointments, not only in the Department of Energy, which included the creation of a new advanced research projects agency for energy. ARPAE, but strnghtened science and technology in the budgets and top appointments as well in the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Interior, the Department of Transportation, the DOD. The Department of Homeland Security and more.
The administration developed and rolled out, as I already briefly mentioned, an American Innovation strategy. To boost American Competitiveness, sustainable economic growth and high quality jobs, focusing on strengthening the building blocks for innovation in our country, promoting competitive markets to spur innovation and focusing science and technology resources on the grand challenges of the 21st century.
We move to revitalize international cooperation in science and technology in a great many ways, including reviving the joint commisions on science and technology cooperation that we maintain with Russia, with China, with India, with Brazil. And including the extraordinary initiatives growing out of the Cairo speech, which have now entailed appointing the first three Presidential science envoys in the persons of Ahmed Zewil, a member of PCAST a missing member because he’s on his first science envoy mission to countries in the Middle East. Including also Elias Zerhoun, former director of NIH and Bruce Alberts the former President of the National Academy of Sciences. We made a great deal of progress on what you might call the bureaucratic underpinnings of success in the science and technology policy domain with reforming stem cell research guidelines, with improving the Vista Mantis procedures to facilitate exchanges in science, engineering and innovation with other countries, including the Open Government Initiative, providing much greater access to not only the full science and technology community, but the public to what the government is doing in the science and technology domain and in other domains of government activity.
As for PCAST itself, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, this group was appointed and brought into action more rapidly than in any other administration in recent times. It delivered its first report to the President of the United States in person already at its very first meeting at the beginning of August. A report on the science issues around the H1N1 flu.
PCAST now has underway initiatives being led by subgroups in health information technology, in influenza vaccinology what can we improve going forward our capacity to produce vaccines more quickly and nanotechnology and science technology engineering and math and education. Energy research development and demonstration in new industries for economic growth, and high quality jobs.
In international security, in understanding the science underlying carbon offsets, and in international cooperation in science and technology as an important element of diplomacy and even then I have not listed them all. But you will see looking at the agenda of this meeting that we will be visiting many of these topics. Just to return, in closing, to the President’s personal commitment to science and technology and innovation. I will mention it was again on display as recently as yesterday in the President’s participation in the Presidential Award For Excellence in science and mathematics teaching and the Presidential awards for mentoring in science and technology, where we had in the White House 87 outstanding teachers in the K through 6 science and mathematics teaching domain, coming from all 50 states, and we had 22 outstanding mentors who were selected in part of their achievements in mentoring underrepresented groups in science and technology. The President, once again, rather than treating this award ceremony as a formality in which he would offer a few platitudes delivered an extremely substantive and thoughtful speech about how and why teaching in science and mathematics and technology are so important to the future of our country, making the flat statement, which I think all of us in PCAST would agree with, that if we fail in this challenge of improving science and technology, engineering and mathematics education in this country we will ultimately fail as a country. We will fall to a lower place in the ranking of the world’s nations in terms of our capacity to innovate, to produce and to address the great challenges that we all know are ahead of us. I think all this bodes well for 2010. We cintinue to face, of course, a very potent array of challenges, but we understand that science, technology and innovation are going to provide the keys to surmounting many of these, and we have the good fortune to be working with and advising a President who understands with extraordinary clarity what the roles of science, technology and innovation are going to have to be in order to surmount those challenges and the character of the investments in money and human talent that the country will need to make in order to realize that potential.
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Humour — Ease of manner, courtesy, openness, and friendliness.
Perseverance — Military stamina, mental and physical endurance.
Mercy — Mildness and gentleness.
Dignity — A sense of self-worth, personal pride.
Discipline — Military oath under Roman protective law & citizenship.
Tenacity — Strength of mind, the ability to stick to one’s purpose.
Frugality — Economy and simplicity of style, without being miserly.
Gravity — A sense of the importance of the matter at hand, responsibility and earnestness.
Respectability — The image that one presents as a respectable member of society.
Humanity — Refinement, civilization, learning, and being cultured.
Industriousness — Hard work.
Justice — Sense of moral worth to an action.
Dutifulness — More than religious piety; a respect for the natural order socially, politically, and religiously. Includes the ideas of patriotism and devotion to others.
Prudence — Foresight, wisdom, and personal discretion.
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