Author Archives: WD

The Storm Before the Storm

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I swear that I bring drama wherever I go. When I flew home for winter break (a short two weeks compared to the month-long excursion enjoyed as an undergraduate) I came in at the height of a major snowstorm. Whereas I left New Orleans in weather appropriate for pink shorts and flip-flops, I arrived in Boston to driving snow and biting winds; over two feet fell within a few short hours of my arrival.

My greeting upon arriving in New Orleans the other day was no less dramatic. Though I managed to arrive to clear skies, it was not long until black clouds rolled in, bringing torrential downpours and brilliant lightning displays. After listening to the drum of the rain on the roof, I opened the kitchen door which faces the backyard and sat on the sill, watching as the sky illuminated in great bursts and the rain fell in a staccato strobe. As the gutters began to spill over and the water pooled around the house, I was brought back to summer camp in Maine.

My favorite year there I lived in a cabin adjacent to a large and somewhat inclined field. One July day we sat inside as the forces of nature raged outside. Once the lightning had passed and we received a tentative all-clear from our counselors, we all rushed out into the field and proceeded to play a game of football, quickly becoming drenched and muddy. Word spread, more came, and the game soon became a free-for-all; but we did not care, ours was a divine kind of dirty.

Back to the present the water courses down, down, and I can not help but wonder where its eddies might take me if I would only let them.

ARPA-E

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President Obama has selected Steve Chu to be Energy Secretary. Chu is a seriously brilliant scientist and economist. In 2007, he served on the “Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century,” which was created in response to the following Congressional query:

What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century? What strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?

The report (of which I’ve only read the Executive Summary,) outlines major investments to be made by the Federal Government into math and science research in this country. Some hilights of the proposal include:

  1. Establish a national launching program for scientists by fully funding a launching program with a teaching requirement… ($20K/yr for 4 years in exchange for five years in public K-12 schools.)
  2. Increase federal investment in research with an emphasis on physical sciences, engineering, mathamatics, information sciences and DOD.
  3. Create in the DOE an agency modeled off of DARPA called ARPA-E… (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.)
  4. Reform patent system… make things more inclusive/logical.

In support of these recommendations, the report presents some interesting statistics from a variety of disciplines. Some that caught my eye:

  1. General Motors spends more on healthcare than on steel.
  2. Chemical companies closed 70 facilities in the United States in 2004 and tagged 40 more for shutdown. Of 120 chemical plants being built around the world with price tags of $1 billion or more, one is in the United States and 50 are in China. No new refineries have been built in the United
    States since 1976.
  3. A company can hire nine factory workers in Mexico for the cost of one in America. A company can hire eight young professional engineers in India for the cost of one in America.
  4. The United States ranks only 12th among OECD countries in the number of broadband connections per 100 inhabitants.
  5. American youth spend more time watching television than in school.
  6. In 2001, US industry spend more on tort litigation than on research.
  7. “We go where the smart people are. Now our business operations are two-thirds in the U.S. and one-third overseas. But that ratio will flip over the next ten years.” —Intel Corporation spokesman Howard High

All in all not not a rosy picture. However the report is hopeful and coherent, and I strongly support it. I am particularly interested in the ARPA-E aspect of the project. That led me over to http://science.house.gov where I found out that the project had been signed into law on August 9th, 2007. Selections from the bill:

  1. This section establishes the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) within the Department of Energy. Similar to the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this new organizational structure will support revolutionary and transformational energy research where risk and pay offs are high.
  2. ARPA-E shall be headed by a Director, appointed by the Secretary.
  3. Funds may be used for activities in any stage of the innovation spectrum from early-stage basic research to late-stage demonstration. A special emphasis should be placed on activities that serve to bridge between these stages and, ultimately, across the “valley of death” to commercial applications of the technologies.
  4. As with DARPA, the Director of ARPA-E will have special authority to hire program managers and other technical, managerial, and financial staff for limited terms, and at a salary commensurate with what such staff would expect to make in the private sector.

This is all part of the America COMPETES Act, the fruition of the work of Chu and the other members of the committee. Now that Chu is Energy Secretary, he will be able to appoint the Director of ARPA-E. What will be interesting to watch is how the development of this program unfolds. Since DARPA brought us the internet, one can only hope that ARPA-E will be able to deliver as revolutionary a result. This is a great step forward (likely cemented by Al Gore,) that shows a real commitment to create a 21st Century energy infrastructure that will be the envy of the world and the engine of our economy.