Preparing for the 21st Century: Science and Engineering Research in a Changing World (1997)

to provide support to graduate students.

• Establish a national database on employment options and trends for scientists and engineers.

• Provide the flexibility to redress pay inequities and reward superior performance in compensating federal employees, including scientists and engineers.

• Recruit highly qualified scientists and engineers into key policy positions in government.

Cellular telephones, computers, medical lasers, diseaseresistant crops, satellites, biotechnology, optical fiber networks—all these 20th-century technologies and many others can trace their origins at least in part to science and engineering research. New knowledge alone is not enough to achieve major economic, military, or social objectives. But through the combined efforts of business, government, and academic and other nonprofit organizations, new knowledge has been converted into new technologies, new means of production, and new industries. In the process, science and engineering research has enhanced national security, improved human health, produced a stronger economy, and led to a cleaner environment.

Science and engineering research will be even more influential in the 21st century than it has been in the 20th century. No one can predict which technologies will define the next century. But we know that the increasing interconnection of computers into a global network will transform work, communications, entertainment, and education. Greater understanding of biological processes will help to meet the needs of an expanding global population while reducing the adverse effects of humans on the environment. And new treatments and preventive measures for diseases and injuries will improve the quality of life and lengthen the human life span.

The United States has risen to a position of global leadership in part through its strength in science and engineering research. With wise policies for resource allocation and governance, that strength can continue to catalyze US leadership in the next century.

The call for the United States to stay at the frontier in all areas of science and engineering research reflects the synergistic nature of the enterprise. Many scientific and technological advances have had their origins in research that could not have been predicted to have those outcomes. For example, modern communications is founded on research into the fundamental properties of electromagnetism and electron flow in semiconductors, which resulted in the transistor. Recombinant-DNA technology arose from studies of unusual processes in bacteria. Mathematics, a contributor to engineering and technical arts for more than a century, continues to be at the core of applications as diverse as aircraft design, computing, and predictions of climate change.

Research not only produces new knowledge, it deepens and broadens the experience of scientists and engineers who will go on to apply that experience in many productive ways. The research universities educate the young scientists and engineers who will take jobs in industry, government, and academe. The movement of scientists and engineers among these three sectors diffuses ideas widely and cross-fertilizes different fields of endeavor—often in unexpected ways. The direct interaction of scientists and engineers with each other and with others in society is a particularly effective way of transferring and enlarging new knowledge and technologies.

Scientific information now moves quickly around the world, both through information technologies and through the movement of students and researchers across borders. Because the US maintains a ferment of cutting-edge research across the entire frontier of knowledge relevant to science and engineering, US industry and academia have in place or can readily find the trained personnel they need to take advantage quickly of new opportunities and findings whenever and wherever in the world they occur. This flexibility will become ever more important in the next century, as the complexity of new technologies increases the importance of interdisciplinary knowledge transfers and the pace of change intensifies worldwide.

Given the growing role of research in meeting national goals, an appropriate objective for US policy is as follows: The United States should be among the world leaders in all major fields of research and should achieve preeminence among nations in selected fields. (A-1, A-2) “Among the world leaders” means that the United States should have capabilities (including research excellence and the ability to recognize, extend, and use important research results that occur elsewhere) and infrastructure (including education and