Category Archives: quote

Engineering the Future Economy

Today most nations, that have their act together, realize high tech jobs and a highly educated workforce are a huge key to economic success and they (governments often, but also companies, rich individuals and foundations) are taking action to position their country to do well. Anyone that is serious about this should read about How to cultivate Your Own Silicon Valley.

Related: The World’s Best Research Universities – Science and Engineering in Global Economics – Global Share of Engineering Work – U.S. Slipping on Science – Chinese Engineering Innovation Plan – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data

Where’d The Whiz Kids Go? by Nick Perry:
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Middle School Engineers

Burnsville’s budding engineers?:

The exercise is part of a pre-engineering program called Project Lead the Way, which aims to whet students’ appetites for engineering education and possibly careers.

Through a Kern Family Foundation grant, District 191 is providing PLTW in seventh grade this year, with plans to extend it to eighth grade next year and possibly to the high school level in subsequent years.
…
“Problem-solving is the rest of their lives,” she said. “If they’re seeing the relevance between the math they’re learning out of a book and a project they’re doing, it sticks.”

Great stuff. Getting kids to actually apply concepts is not only fun but the best way to learn. A bunch of previous posts about k-12 engineering education and experiential learning: k-12 Engineering Education – Middle School Students in Solar Car Competition – Robots Wrestling, Students Learning – What’s so Exciting About Engineering? – Middle School Science Teacher – K-12 Engineering Outreach Programs – NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education – Science Opportunities for Students – Why Schools Don’t Educate – Engineering is Elementary – Excellence in K-12 Mathematics and Science Teaching – Fun k-12 Science and Engineering Learning – K-12 Engineering Education Grant for Purdue – Colorado Science Teacher of the Year and on and on…

Diplomacy and Science Research

Today more and more locations are becoming viable for world class research and development. Today the following have significant ability: USA, Europe (many countries), Japan, Canada, China, Brazil, Singapore, Israel, India, Korea and Australia (I am sure I have missed some this is just what come to mind as I type this post) and many more are moving in that direction.

The continued increase of viable locations for significant amounts of cutting edge research and development has huge consequences, in many areas. If paths to research and development are blocked in one location (by law, regulation, choice, lack of capital, threat of significant damage to the career of those who would choose such a course…) other locations will step in. In some ways this will be good (see below for an explanation of why this might be so). Promising new ideas will not be stifled due to one roadblock.

But risks of problems will also increase. For example, there are plenty of reasons to want to go carefully in the way of genetically engineered crops. But those seeking a more conservative approach are going to be challenged: countries that are acting conservatively will see other countries jump in, I believe. And even if this didn’t happen significantly in the area of genetically engineered crops, I still believe it will create challenges. The ability to go elsewhere will make those seeking to put constraints in place in a more difficult position than 50 years ago when the options were much more limited (It might be possible to stop significant research just by getting a handful of countries to agree).

Debates of what restrictions to put on science and technology research and development will be a continuing and increasing area of conflict. And the solutions will not be easy. Hopefully we will develop a system of diplomacy that works, but that is much easier said than done. And the United States will have to learn they do not have the power to dictate terms to others. This won’t be an easy thing to accept for many in America. The USA will still have a great deal of influence, due mainly to economic power but that influence is only the ability to influence others and that ability will decline if diplomacy is not improved. Diplomacy may not seem to be a science and engineering area but it is going to be increasingly be a major factor in the progress of science and engineering. Continue reading →

The World’s Best Research Universities

Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University produces a ranking of the top universities annually (since 2003). The methodology used focuses on research (publications) and faculty quality (Fields and Nobel awards and citations). While this seems a very simplistic ranking it still provides some interesting data: highlights from the 2006 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide include:

Country representation in the top schools:

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location Top 101 % of World
Population		 % of World GDP % of top 500
USA 54   4.6%   28.4%  33.4%
United Kingdom 10  0.9   5.1 8.6
Japan   6 2.0 11.2 6.4
Canada   4  0.5   2.4 8.0
The rest of Europe 18 4.4
Australia   2   0.3   1.5 3.2
Israel   1   0.1   0.3 1.4

Update: see our post on 2007 best research universities results

Top 10 schools:

  • Harvard University
  • Cambridge University
  • Stanford University
  • University of California at Berkeley
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)
  • California Institute of Technology
  • Columbia University
  • Princeton University
  • University Chicago
  • Oxford University

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Science and Engineering in Global Economics

The main point of The Global Race – Is America Still a Contender? by James Schultz is that the United States is too complacent: thinking its past success guarantees future success. I have stated that I believe the economic comparative advantage the USA has enjoyed due to science and technology leadership is almost certain to shrink and we should take steps to slow that decrease. Also see: Engineering Education and Innovation, The Future is Engineering, Engineers and the Economy and The Science Gap and the Economy.

From the article:

The hungry don’t dither, and neither do relatively lean economic adversaries. Worldwide, up-and-comers are integrating economic development with governmental practice, teaming eager, growing-wage, and increasingly skilled workforces with coordinated national policies. If laws get in the way, they are changed; if labor movements demand too much too quickly, they are quashed…

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Recapturing R&D Leadership

Recapturing R&D Leadership by John Teresko

Lieberman says manufacturers need to focus on two concerns, the first is avoiding other people’s patents and the second is getting patents of their own or getting some exclusivity on the things that they’re making or designing. “Unfortunately it is virtually impossible to either know or satisfy yourself in advance of coming out with a product that you’re not going to infringe somebody’s rights.

Manufacturers should also focus on lobbying for more sensible patent laws. From our previous post on research support by Governments:

I happen to side with those like Lawernce Lessig that believe we are harming the United States economy by having a government policy that too restrictive about intellectual property. I believe countries that have sufficient clout to stand up to the United States, and who have a more sensible IP policy will gain a great advantage if the United States were not to adjust policies based on the ideas of Lessig and others.

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Engineers in the Workplace

Vivek Wadhwa again addresses the question: Engineering Gap? Fact and Fiction. This is a question that deserves a continued look – I still believe we do need more focus on educating more engineers:

Additionally, the positive macro-economic effects of a strong scientific, engineering and technology community to an economy are not necessarily directly correlated to high salaries for those workers. That is one positive factor, but even if those salaries were not high the other benefits of innovation, manufacturing leadership, invention, etc. would still benefit the economy. So a country that is investing in the future could sensible target investments in science and engineering education even without increasing salaries pointing out that the supply and demand in the market was indicating a shortage of those workers.

From Vivek Wadhwa’s most recent article:
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Google Tech Talks

Webcasts of great engineering talks at Google via: Google TechTalks

Videos include:

Toyota Robots

photo of Toyota partner robot

Toyota Announces Overview of “Toyota Partner Robot”

Toyota wants its partner robots to have human characteristics, such as being agile, warm and kind and also intelligent enough to skillfully operate a variety of devices in the areas of personal assistance, care for the elderly, manufacturing, and mobility. Furthermore, since each area requires a special set of skills, Toyota is promoting the development of three different types of partner robots (walking, rolling, and mountable), each with its own areas of expertise.

Read posts about the Toyota Productions System (TPS) on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.

Others are making progress on human like robots including Sony and Honda. See Sony QRIO Robots in action in this flash video below:

And read more about Honda Robots: ASIMO and P3.

The Future is Engineering

Do Great Engineering Schools Beget Entrepreneurism? by Brent Edwards provides two great links.

How to Kick Silicon Valley’s Butt by Guy Kawasaki:

Focus on educating engineers. The most important thing you can do is establish a world-class school of engineering. Engineering schools beget engineers. Engineers beget ideas. And ideas beget companies. End of discussion.

If I had to point to the single biggest reason for Silicon Valley’s existence, it would be Stanford University—specifically, the School of Engineering. Business schools are not of primary importance because MBAs seldom sit around discussing how to change the world with great products.

Why Startups Condense in America:

You need a great university to seed a silicon valley, and so far there are few outside the US. I asked a handful of American computer science professors which universities in Europe were most admired, and they all basically said “Cambridge” followed by a long pause while they tried to think of others. There don’t seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best in America, at least in technology.

Both essays make many excellent points – read them! Continue reading →