“It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of
belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of
Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had
nothing before us, we were all
going direct to Heaven, we were all
going direct the other way…”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Source: Dan Reed, CRA Board Chair, Snowbird 2006
The value and importance of a coherent industryacademia message and associated agenda
The value and importance of a coordinated approach to
the investment of federal and state government funds
Meeting The Technical
Challenges Of The Future
Dan Mote
President
University of Maryland
Craig Mundie
Chief Research and Strategy Officer
Microsoft Corporation
Richard Newton
Dean of the College of Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Richard M. Russell
Associate Director
Office of Science and Technology Policy
Executive Office of the President
Lucy Sanders
CEO
National Center for Women and Information Technology
Research
Commitment to double NSF, DoE SC, NIST over 10 years
Make permanent the R&D tax credit
Education
70,000 new teachers, alternative teacher certification, bolster
AP, improve participation in math and science
Workforce/Immigration
Expand worker training programs
Flexible H-1B caps, reform visa issues
Source: Dan Reed, CRA Board Chair, Snowbird 2006
 Are we better off organizing our efforts around
“input” goals or “output” goals, or is there a
balance?
 Input: “We will double the amount of long-term
R&D funding for Field X over 10 years.”
 Output: “We will eliminate our dependence on
foreign oil and establish the basis for a carbonneutral economy by 2025.”
 E.g. The Advanced Energy Initiative
“… will create the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), a proxy
organization for the computing research community, operating under the
leadership of the Computing Research Association (CRA), a membership
organization representing over 250 computing research entities in academia,
industry and government. … The CCC will facilitate research vision setting by
the computing research community and catalyze community thinking
regarding major initiatives pursuing audacious research goals, and
communicate those visions and goals to the broader national community.”
Computing Community Consortium (CCC), will be a
“community vehicle” for establishing a visionary
research agenda
 CCC will not establish the agenda, it will establish mechanisms
by which the computer science community establishes an
agenda
 Similar organizations exist in fields such as physics and
astronomy
Although CCC’s activities will be supported by NSF, CCC
will serve the field as a whole and multiple research
agencies, not just NSF
 How do we ensure that this renewed interest in funding for longterm research is sustained?
 Our political system has ADD and a “double in 10 years” approach is likely
not viable
 Grand-challenge problem focus versus funding for field focus
 How do we ensure that some funding is truly directed and
sustained towards ‘radical research’?
 In the face of a peer-review process
 In the face of inevitable budget pressure
 What steps must we take as a community to most effectively
develop the public-private partnerships needed to achieve
sustained investment in SMET education and research?
 Private/state matching programs to federal/state dollars
 State tax incentives for private investment
 Private/academic closely coordinated priorities and lobbying
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