Dario Gil, senior vice president and director of research at IBM and recently nominated undersecretary for science and innovation at the U.S. Department of Energy, spoke at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy March 4 about the importance of research and development (R&D) funding and the future of U.S. science and technology (S&T).
“Scientific progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living and to our cultural progress,” Gil said.
At IBM, Gil directs innovation strategies in hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, quantum computing and exploratory science. He heads the technical community of IBM and is responsible for the company’s intellectual property strategy and business. Gil is also the chair of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF). An advocate of collaborative research models, he co-chairs the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which advances fundamental AI research to benefit industry and society. He also co-chairs the executive board of the International Science Reserve, a global network of open scientific communities that provides specialized resources to prepare for and help mitigate urgent, complex global challenges.
Gil discussed how policy and research intersect to shape the future of science and technology by explaining the country’s history with science policy. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, the head of the wartime U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, delivered a report to President Harry Truman titled “Science, the Endless Frontier.” The report proposed the creation of a national research foundation to leverage the collaboration between government, universities and industry in science and technology after its success in World War II.
“During the 1950s federal funding augmented investments that businesses were making in R&D, and in fact, federal funds were the largest source of support for R&D conducted by private business,” Gil said. “The federal government spent large sums well into the 1960s supporting use-inspired basic research and development work in the private sector. These labs were very successful in addressing technical challenges and yielding new products. They also made profound contributions to the natural sciences and computer science.”
In 1980, business investment overtook the federal government as the largest funder of R&D, returning to the pre-World War II pattern. Over the recent decade, the business sector funding has risen dramatically, but Gil notes that private sector R&D is concentrated on only a few key sectors such as information technology and pharmaceuticals.
“Business R&D is not a substitute for federal R&D; the two are complementary,” Gil said. “The business sector has long relied on the federal government to make the crucial initial bets on new ideas across all scientific fields. Many of S&T advances that underpin today’s commercial technologies and industries are rooted in research conducted decades before practical applications were realized. Simply put, federal investment in fundamental research today enables the emerging industries of tomorrow.
“One consequence of the success of U.S. science and technology over the last 75 years is that science and technology now have the same kind of economic and geopolitical importance as trade or military alliances — it is now a major playing field for economic and defense competition.”
Gil said China has increased sustained funding for R&D for at least a decade, and the country has now surpassed the U.S. in research publications, patents in knowledge and technology, intensive manufacturing and doctorates in science and engineering.
“S&T is increasingly important to the nation, and we have increased competition from China — the U.S. is facing a STEM talent crisis,” he said. “Trained and talented people drive innovation by carrying promising ideas from the laboratory to the workplace. It is deeply worrying that we’re failing to adequately educate and nurture our domestic students and workers among advanced economies.”
After his presentation, Gil sat down with Neal Lane, senior fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute, to discuss the S&T landscape and what the future holds. Neal, whose career includes leading the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and serving as director of the NSF, noted that both he and Gil are part of the blue-ribbon panel of science leaders called the Science and Technology Action Committee, which recently launched “Vision for American Science & Technology (VAST),” a brief, nonpartisan document that offers a vision of a future in which American science and technology can continue to serve the country.
VAST emphasizes that U.S. innovation has relied on the “uniquely American” cooperation between government, private industry and entrepreneurs and academia, philanthropy and capital markets as well as intellectual property protections.
“It came together through a broad coalition of leaders representing all of the sectors,” Gil said. “And I think it was an acknowledgement of this thesis, too, of this changed landscape that … we are operating in a different environment than the past and that, therefore, it was timely and important to put forth a set of recommendations on how to operate in that world.”
The event is part of the Civic Scientist Lecture Series, sponsored by Virginia Clark with additional support from Benjamin and Winifer Cheng and Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing, Weiss School of Natural Sciences and Rice Innovation.
Sponsored by the Baker Institute Science and Technology Policy Program, the Civic Scientist Lecture Series aims to increase the engagement of scientists and engineers with society to expand the public’s knowledge and interest in science.