WHY IS R&D IMPORTANT

Federal Support forResearch and Development Issues, Outlook, andAction AlertsRussell LefevreVice President, Technology Policy,IEEE-USAr.lefevre@ieee.org Bill WilliamsIEEE-USA Staffbill.williams@ieee.org

WHY IS R&D IMPORTANT R&D Promotes Economic Growth: • One estimate indicates that, over the past 50 years, advances in science and technology have produced over half of all economic growth in the United States. -- Robert Solow, Nobel Prize 1987 • “Develop breakthroughs, pile on applications, grow productivity throughout the economy” -- Bill Bonvillian, Legislative Director, Sen. Leiberman • “The phenomenal performance of the US economy…is due in large part to the technological innovations that have caused productivity growth to accelerate” -- Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chair

FEDERAL R&D SUCCESSES • Nanotechnology • Internet • GPS • Laser

R&D FUNDING In FY2004 • Total Federal R&D -- $125.9 billion. • $8.5 billion increase over FY2003. • $69.7 billion went to defense R&D projects. • $56.2 billion went to civilian R&D projects.

Bush Administration FY 2005R&D Funding Proposal • Total federal R&D budget of $131.9 Billion: Up 4.7 percent, $5.9 billion increase over FY2004 • However, the increase goes almost entirely to defense and homeland security: $74.1 billion for Defense R&D (up $4.4 billion) $57.7 billion for non-Defense R&D (up $1.4 billion)

R&D FUNDING In FY2005

R&D FUNDING IN FY2005 Main Areas of Concern for Engineers: • DoD Science and Technology (6.1-6.3) • National Science Foundation • NASA Research and Development • Department of Energy R&D • National Nanotechnology Initiative • Department of Homeland Security

Department of Defense R&D in the Bush Admin. Budget • DOD R&D hits an all time high: $69.9 billion, however… • S&T (6.1 to 6.3) will fall by 15.5 percent or $10.6 billion • Basic (6.1) is cut by 5.3 percent to a level of $1.3 billion • Applied (6.2) falls 12.3 percent to $3.9 billion • The big winner in the DOD R&D Budget is the Missile Defense Agency, which will see a 20 percent jump to $9 billion

National Science Foundationin the Bush Admin. Budget Last year the President signed into law a bill authorizing a doubling of the NSF Budget over a 5-year period. (IEEE-USA was a strong advocate of this bill.) Unfortunately, an authorization bill and a dollar will only get you a cup of coffee – the appropriations committees can do as they please. Although the authorization bill recommends a level of $7.4 billion for FY 2005, the Bush Administration request is only $4.4 billion.

Department of Homeland Securityin the Bush Admin. Budget The DHS R&D Budget increases 15% to a level of $1.2 billion. Most DHS R&D is done through its new Directorate of Science & Technology, which has a budget of $987 million. Increase is $78M ($65M for Biological Countermeasures, the only program that goes up) but most of the money goes for deployment of developed technology, not real R&D. This Directorate includes the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency (HSARPA), the DHS version of DARPA.

NASA in the Bush Admin. Budget NASA budget overall would increase by 5.6% to $16.2B. NASA R&D increases, by a healthy 3.9 percent to $11.3B. However basic/applied research declines $190M (-3.4%) from 2004, and the Aeronautics budget is $919M (-11%), less than the actual in 2001. The Int’l Space Station increases by $365 million, despite talk of phasing it out over the next several years. NASA is currently reorganizing in order to implement the President’s Vision for US Space Exploration – a far-reaching plan aimed at returning to the Moon by 2020 and eventually to Mars and beyond. No plans to repair the Hubble telescope (Spectrum, April 2004).

National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) The NNI is a multi-agency nanotechnology research initiative conducted at a total of ten federal agencies. Issue near and dear to IEEE-USA’s R&D Policy Committee. The R&DPC was at the forefront of efforts last year to get a bill passed in Congress authorizing $3.7 billion for Nano research over a 4 year period -- happily, this effort was successful. The President’s Budget Request follows suit by increasing the NNI budget by a very robust 13.7 percent to $982M. The NNI budget has doubled over the last 4 years.

R&D and Workforce Issues (1) The U.S. must boost science educationand R&D Budgets – “Rising to India’s Challenge,”Business Week (12/8/03) DOD funding for basic research should be increased by $2.8 billion over the next 5 years – “Persistent and Critical Issues in the Nation’s Aviation and Aeronautics Enterprise,” OSTP Workshop (11/03)

R&D and Workforce Issues (2) “Aerospace group urges more funds for research” - AIA calls for an additional $38 Billion over the next five years-- Daily Breeze (2/26/04) “…the President’s budget priorities…will place in even greater jeopardy America’s science and technology leadership, already under increasing challenge by nations in Europe and Asia.”-- ACS, AMS, AAS, APS, IEEE-USA Testimony to the House Science Committee (2/11/04)

R&D and Workforce Issues (3) ”Now More Than Ever, Innovation Is the Answer” - Jobs will arise from the creation of new products, processes, and markets. – Business Week (3/1/04) “The Nation’s R&D base should continue to be strengthened; This recommendation includes Federal funding for basic research in promising areas (such as nanotechnology, information technology, and manufacturing R&D)…”– PCAST Report (1/30/04)

Congressional ViewHouse Science Committee Sherwood Boehlert --“A healthy investment in R&D is the only way to ensure that our economy will continue to create jobs over the long term.” Bart Gordon --“If we hope to grow new industries, provide new skills to unemployed workers, and foster the economic conditions that will allow us to eliminate our Federal deficit, we have to invest in research and development programs.”

THE MESSAGE Basic and Applied Researchis very important to the country. • It is essential to economic growth • It can make a major impact on our current workforce problems

What You Can Do Get Involved! • Write, call, fax or e-mail your Congressman and Senator • Current climate makes them sympathetic to the message • Visit your Congressman or Senator in Person • Most Effective; usually not quite as busy when back home in District • Use specific examples to show how R&D affects you and others in your area personally

Dear Congressman/Senator We write to you as leaders of organizations representing scientists and engineers and industry throughout the United States to express our concern about diminishing federal support for the physical sciences, math, and engineering. If accepted by Congress, the President’s Budget Request for FY2005 will continue the decade-long stagnation of federal investment in critical science and engineering research at a time when the beneficial influence of increased investment on jobs, homeland security, national defense, and economic prosperity are needed more than ever. We urge you to reverse this debilitating trend and increase appropriations for Function 250 (general space, science, and technology). The stimulating effect of science, engineering and technology funding on America’s economy is well documented and noted by Nobel Laureates and other leading economists. Studies have shown that developments in science, engineering, and technology have been the driving force for over half of the economic growth over the last fifty years. This evidence suggests that our economy’s tenuous recovery could be strongly bolstered by a robust investment in science and engineering research and development. In addition, America is fast losing its technological competitive advantage as well as jobs to countries such as China and India, which are investing heavily in their scientific infrastructure and science and engineering educational programs. The very survival of many U.S. industries and millions of high-tech jobs depends upon America’s ability to remain in the forefront of technological innovation and production. Finally, but most importantly, research and development in science and technology provide the cornerstone for innovations that help to keep America secure and strengthen our national defense. Both the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security rely heavily on the federal investments for technological advances that keep America one step ahead of those who would do this country harm. As you review the appropriations for FY2005, we call upon you to reverse the decline in science and engineering support that threatens our status as the world’s leader in these areas, placing our nation at great future risk. We believe that renewed attention to federal research budgets is central to achieving the economic and military security goals. We strongly urge you to increase support for Function 250 to provide the necessary base for continued technological innovation. We thank you for your consideration.

ANDREW VITERBI ORAL HISTORY 1999 Q. What’s your opinion on federal spending on research and development and purchases? Viterbi: I’m a member of Clinton’s Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee, and we just put out a report six months ago urging the government to continue doing basic R&D. Not application oriented research, but fundamental research. There’s no one to develop the transistor equivalent of the twenty-first century. Research that brought ARPAnet and the Shannon Information Theory fueled our information economy, which is the fastest growing segment of our economy. Fundamental research also developed the transistor and radio astronomy. This kind of research is not going to be carried on by industry because shareholders won’t allow it. GE and RCA gave up on pure research thirty years ago. Bell Labs and IBM gave up on pure research about five to ten years ago. None of them are doing really basic research. If they are, it’s minuscule. As for where it should be done, I think it possibly should be done in the universities. They are geared for it. CEOs can’t face their shareholders and say, "I am creating shareholder value by doing research that may or may not have an impact ten years from now, and I probably won’t commercialize it." That is the position in which IBM found itself, and certainly AT&T found itself in that position even more. In the past AT&T could afford to keep Bell Labs doing pure research because they were a monopoly. There was a lot of foresight there, and there were no constraints. AT&T shareholders could be guaranteed their 7 percent, which might have been 7½ percent if there hadn’t been a Bell Labs, but they were in no position to complain.

ANDREW VITERBI ORAL HISTORY 1999 Q. How do you get past the objection that, as a head of a big company, the federal government is funding research that threatens your own? What if they are trying to invent the next generation of wireless communications? Viterbi: If you’re not enough fleet of foot to take advantage of it, you don’t belong. Then you have no right to be a foremost and successful company. If you are talking about the coach manufacturer being put out of business because somebody came up with the internal combustion engine, that’s old think. Nobody has a right to say that today. We’re doing some very innovative things such as a system for high-speed wireless access to the Internet, a product that we will be announcing in a major way in a week and a half. We are getting up to 2 megabits per second, the equivalent of DSL and cable modems in a wireless manner. We’re using cellular frequencies on the order of 1½ Megahertz of bandwidth getting 2 megabits per second transmission rate. It’s quite a challenge, and I think our guys have demonstrated capability. That’s very good advance development. It’s also good applied research. However it is not fundamental, basic research. It’s something that we hope will be a major commercial success in two years. Basic research is something that’s purely speculative and may be typically five to ten years out before any application is developed. Five years is optimistic. Ten years out is more realistic. We should do it for our national good. After all, what do we have that the rest of the world doesn’t have? We have a very good higher education system and a rather weak secondary education system. It’s an enigma how it is that we can have the best university in the world that everybody wants to come to and have a rather weak K-12 program. The answer is absurd. Because all the rest of the world wants to come to study here, we admit some percentage of them, probably less than 10 percent of the applicants, and they maintain our quality of higher education. I gave that as a commencement speech at Berkeley.

Department of Defense R&D The DoD Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Program (RDT&E) sub-divides accounts into seven activity areas: • 6.1 Basic Research • 6.2 Applied Research • 6.3 Advanced Technology Development • 6.4 Demonstration and Validation • 6.5 Engineering and Manufacturing • 6.6 Management and Support • 6.7 Operational Systems Development

Department of Defense R&D (Cont.) The DoD’s Science and Technology (S&T) Programconsists of the 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 Accounts. 6.1 Basic Research: supports research that produces new knowledge in scientific or technology areas of interest to the military • Approximately 60% goes to universities • Approximately 25% goes to DoD R&D facilities

Department of Defense R&D (Cont.) 6.2 Applied Research: supports the exploratory development and initial maturation of new technologies for specific military applications or further developing existing technology for new military technology 6.3 Advanced Technology Development: supports larger scale hardware development, integration, and experiments that can demonstrate capability in more operationally realistic settings. • Approximately 50% of 6.2 and 6.3 research is performed by industry and 30% at DoD facilities

Dept. of Energy R&Din the Bush Admin. Budget All of the data has not yet been analyzed for the DOE because there is a lot of shifting around of funds, but here is what wedo know: • DOE Research and Development will increase slightly (0.7 percent) to a level of $8.9 billion • DOE’s Office of Science will decrease slightly to a level of about $3.1 billion. • The budget would increase hydrogen research at DOE dramatically, from $159 million to $228 million. • The DOE also plans to ramp up funding for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER.

National Science Foundation An independent U.S. government agency responsible for promoting science and engineering through programs that invest over $3.3 billion in almost 20,000 research and education projects. The only federal agency devoted solely to non-defense related scientific and engineering research and education. 56% of all NSF research dollars goes to engineering and math, physical, and computer sciences.

WHY IS R&D IMPORTANT