Richard Templeton, chairman, president, and CEO of Texas Instruments, and Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, make the case for government funding of science and engineering in Politico.
“A kindergarten student in the United States today will enter adulthood living in a very different type of house, working in a very different office environment, traveling in a vehicle unrecognizable by current standards and communicating globally through a device that doesn’t resemble today’s phone,” they write.
They continue, “We now are on the cusp of a data-driven, supercomputer powered, Web-enabled globally interconnected world. The only question is, who will lead this new technological revolution? Will it be the U.S. or another country?”
Transformational innovation in the U.S.—exemplified in the GPS, the Internet, and MRIs—has been the result of collaborative efforts of government, industry, and academia.
The continuation of such fruitful efforts, they say, is now threatened by the looming sequester. They note that indiscriminate cuts may save money in the short term but at a significant long-term price to pay if government cuts support for science and engineering.
They conclude, “Good times or bad, one must manage for the future. Discovery and innovation is the pathway there.”
Read their complete commentary in Politico.
