CONGRESSMAN SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY)
ADDRESS TO RIT INVENTORS DINNER
April 15, 2002
It's a pleasure to be here to address your annual "Inventors Dinner."
For one thing, it's nice to be in a place where words like "inventive" and "invention" has a positive connotation. That's not always the case in Washington. In the Capitol, calling an idea "inventive" is often a way of saying that it's loopy, unrealistic or just plain dangerous. Turf battles are sometimes described as "NIH syndrome" - that stands for "not invented here." And "invention" can be just another word for "lie." So it's great to be with a group that proudly wears the label "inventor" - no matter what gauntlet of skeptics you've had to pass through.
Actually, though, Washington is not at all "down on" inventiveness - at least the variety which you personify - we just call it "innovation." In fact, for at least the past 20 years or so, federal policy has been designed to encourage researchers, especially academic researchers, to become inventors.
For example, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which enabled universities to patent inventions developed with federal funds, has functioned as a sort of "Bill of Rights" for inventors, and has spurred the creation of a wide variety of processes and devices on college campuses across the nation. Many universities now tout their royalty revenues as a sign of their status - a phenomenon that would have been unimaginable years ago.
Congress has also tried to create similar incentives for the government's own researchers, passing laws like the Technology Transfer Act of 1986 - one of the first laws I helped shape on the Science Committee - which govern the patent rights of inventors in federal labs.
So the idea of encouraging academic and government researchers to think about the practical applications of their ideas is nothing new, but it took on greater force in the wake of September 11th and the subsequent anthrax attacks.
It's quite clear that, like the Cold War, the war against terrorism will be waged - and won - in the laboratory just as much as on the battlefield.
And that means that institutions like RIT, which specialize in more applied research and in working with industry, will be especially critical. Much of what we need to fight the war on terrorism and to improve homeland security will be created through near- to mid-term research honing ideas and devices that are already past the formative stage.
Indeed, the response to terrorism from inventors has been overwhelming - quite literally. The federal government has been besieged - if I may use that word - by offers from researchers with ideas they believe can be put to work to counter the terrorist threat.
Indeed, one of our chief concerns at the Science Committee's hearing on bioterrorism last December was whether the federal government had an adequate process in place to review all the incoming ideas and to encourage work on those that were most promising.
At that point, understandably, the process clearly was not up to the task. Even the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House, with a tiny staff and no programmatic responsibilities, received 70 unsolicited proposals. The Department of Defense, in response to a request for one-page descriptions of ideas on how to respond to terrorism, received more than 12,000 responses.
By the Administration's own account, the review process is (quote) "still evolving," as the President's Science Advisor, Dr. Jack Marburger, put it in a recent written response to our Committee.
For now, much of the work of reviewing proposals has fallen to a little-known, joint State Department-Defense Department panel called the Technical Support Working Group, or "tiz-wig," which sounds like something one might want to keep away from terrorists.
The Science Committee will be holding further hearings on R&D related to terrorism in June, and we'll be continuing to push for a system that helps inventors navigate their way through the federal system, whether they're looking for information, funding, sales or regulatory approvals. That's a goal that, of course, the Administration shares, but we have to make sure it doesn't get overlooked in the press of other business.
Congress will also have to see that the research needed to wage the war on terrorism - and indeed all research, which in some ways is the same thing - receives adequate funding.
I've made a particular point of focusing on the research needed to improve cybersecurity - which can be easy to overlook because, so far, the nation has been spared a spectacular attack on our computer and computer networks. But we are vulnerable to such an attack - actually increasingly vulnerable as more and more of the systems on which we depend on for basic necessities - water, electricity, fuel - rely on computer networks.
Yet despite our dependence on these systems, neither the federal government nor the private sector has devoted much money or attention to cybersecurity research. The result is that cybersecurity is a small field, largely lacking in fresh ideas and fresh recruits.
We're finally poised to do something about that. In February, by an overwhelming margin (400-12), the House passed my bill to pump almost $900 million into this field over the next five years.
Under the bill, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology would create new cyber-security programs to fund university-industry research centers; undergraduate and masters curricula; doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships; and grants for senior researchers in related fields. All of this should help foster new ideas and attract a cadre of researchers to the field.
The education piece of this bill is critical - and I'll expand on my concerns about education in a couple of minutes. But let me say that I think it would be great, for example, if, in a few years, some of RIT's renowned coop students were working on issues related to cybersecurity, and if some of your honored inventors were tackling this problem.
But cybersecurity is just one example of our research needs. We need a wide range of institutions working on questions related to the terrorist threat, broadly defined. And not all of that work falls into the category of basic research.
In Congress, we talk a lot about the basic research the nation needs to prepare for the future, and that is of vital importance. But even strong advocates for science funding, like me, sometimes fail to point out the importance of the federal investment in applied research - estimated at about $24 billion this year, just about $500 million more than federal spending on basic research.
I should point out that, as with basic research, the federal budget for applied research is increasingly skewed toward biomedical research. Indeed, almost the entire proposed increase in applied research for next year would go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Now I support the doubling of the NIH budget - which should be achieved in fiscal 2003 - and I agree that health research should be priority and therefore receive a disproportionate share of federal funds.
But disproportionate need not mean "monopolistic." Other areas of research contribute to the nation's prosperity, security and knowledge - and indeed to the improvement of human health.
One of my goals over what I hope will be the remaining four and a half years of my chairmanship of the Science Committee will be to work with the Administration to better balance the federal science portfolio.
But I have another goal that supersedes that one; indeed it has to be the foundation for all my other goals as chairman - and that's to improve math and science education at all levels - and I mean by that to include engineering and technology education. My primary responsibility - and yours - is to ensure that we are developing the next generation of inventors.
Right now, we're falling down on the job. International tests continue to show U.S. high school students performing near the bottom of the pack. Worse still, performance gets worse the longer students are in school - our elementary students do relatively well; middle school students are mediocre; high school students are worse. In addition, students lose interest in science and math every step of the way, including in the first two years of college.
This has got to change. All students need a sound grounding in science and math in our increasingly technological age.
So what can we do? Well, more can be done on the front lines in places like Rochester, which is known for its education reform efforts, than in Washington. But we can create programs to make your work easier and to encourage more places to volunteer for the task. This is, of course, a priority of the President's as well as of the Congress.
I've focused my efforts on two bills. The first is the Math and Science Partnerships Act (H.R. 1858), which the House passed last May and the Senate should take up this year. The bill has two programs that I think are especially valuable.
One is our version of the President's math and science partnerships, which are designed to bring the expertise and resources of universities and colleges to bear on the problems of K-12 education.
These partnerships between institutions of higher education and school districts and also, we hope, businesses, can improve curriculum, ensure that teachers are up on the latest advances and pedagogical ideas in their fields, and provide research experiences for students, among other activities.
NSF is already soliciting proposals with $160 million that was provided for this fiscal year. The President has proposed spending $200 million on the program next year, and I will be pushing for that.
The second program is one that I've been working on for more than a decade - the Noyce scholarships, named for an inventor, I should note, Bob Noyce, a founder of Intel and one of the inventors of the transistor. These scholarships would be awarded to top math and science majors who commit to teaching two years for each year of aid they receive. We need to get more of our top students to become teachers. No education reform is as important as improving teacher quality.
NSF is funding this program on an experimental basis this year at $5 million. We hope to get $20 million next year. I should add that the money goes to universities and colleges, which, in turn, award the scholarships - and that some of the money must be used for programming to help the scholarship students become good teachers.
The second bill I'm working on is known as the Tech Talent Act, and it's received a lot of attention from high tech industries. Senator Joe Lieberman is the sponsor in the Senate. The bill would create new grants at NSF to improve undergraduate math and science education, and schools that win the grants would have to increase the number of graduating math and science majors to reach numerical goals they set out in their applications.
NSF is also funding this program at $5 million this year, and we're looking to ramp up the program next year. Senator Lieberman is trying to increase the funding to as much as $100 million.
These are all programs that I hope will draw strong participation from schools throughout New York State, and I would think that RIT, with its strong history of community service and innovative approaches to education, would be especially interested.
So we do try to do some positive inventing in the Capitol, even if we shy away from that word. But the most we can hope for from our inventions - good federal programs - is that they encourage and facilitate your inventiveness - whether you're figuring out how to create a new product or how to motivate a new student. All we can do from Washington is maybe change the inspiration/perspiration ratio that Edison famously mentioned by just a little bit.
So I applaud the work that all of you have done - and are doing; it is truly inspiring. And I look forward to working with you to ensure that dinners like this can continue long into the future. Our nation today has many pressing needs: we have the necessity - we need the invention. Thank you.