Category Archives: Research

Research Career in Industry or Academia

In, Working in Industry vs Working in Academia, a computer scientist (software engineering) shares their experience and opinion on research career options. He discusses 4 areas: freedom (to pursue your research), funding, time and scale, products (papers, patents, products).

In academia, you’re under a huge amount of pressure to publish publish publish!
…
In industry, the common saying is that research can produce three things: products, patents, and papers (in that order). To be successful you need to produce at least two of those three; and the first two are preferred to the last one. Publishing papers is nice, and you definitely get credit for it, but it just doesn’t compare to the value of products and patents.

Nanocars

Nano Car image

‘Nanocar’ with buckyball wheels paves way for other molecular machines

“The synthesis and testing of nanocars and other molecular machines is providing critical insight in our investigations of bottom-up molecular manufacturing,” said one of the two lead researchers, James M. Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and professor of computer science at Rice University. “We’d eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale, and these vehicles are great test beds for that. They’re helping us learn the ground rules.”

The nanocar consists of a chassis and axles made of well-defined organic groups with pivoting suspension and freely rotating axles. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. The entire car measures just 3-4 nanometers across, making it slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair, by comparison, is about 80,000 nanometers in diameter.

$75.3 Million for 5 New Engineering Research Centers

Photo: Claire Gmachl, associate professor of electrical engineering at Princeton, the MIRTHE center director.

NSF Awards $75.3 Million for Five New Engineering Research Centers including the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE):

The goal of the research is to produce devices that are so low in cost and easy to use that they transform aspects of the way doctors care for patients, local agencies monitor air quality, governments guard against attack and scientists understand the evolution of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
…
will combine the work of about 40 faculty members, 30 graduate students and 30 undergraduates from the six universities. The center also is collaborating with dozens of industrial partners to turn the technology into commercial products, and is working with several educational outreach partners, which will use MIRTHE’s research as a vehicle for improving science and engineering education.

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:

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

Continue reading →

MIT’s Energy ‘Manhattan Project’

MIT’s Energy ‘Manhattan Project’ by Mark Anderson:

David Jhirad, a former deputy assistant secretary of energy and current VP for science and research at the World Resources Institute, said no other institution or government anywhere has taken on such an intensive, creative, broad-based, and wide-ranging energy research initiative.
…
Many of these projects are ongoing and will continue under the Energy Research Council banner. Others, such as a new effort to make cheap ethanol using a biochemical technique called metabolic engineering, apply the expertise of faculty and staff who had never worked on energy problems before.

The council will also hire faculty in fields, such as optimizing energy distribution and transmission, if it finds MIT hasn’t devoted enough resources to them.

Susan Hockfield, Inaugural Address, 16th President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Continue reading →

R&D Spending in USA Universities

National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Academic Research and Development Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2004, NSF 06-323 provides a view of R&D spending at universities in the USA.

Spending over the last 5 years in billions: $30.7 in 2000; 32.8; 36.4; 40.1 and $42.9 in 2004. For 2004 the funding source for the spending was:

Federal Government: $27.4
State and Local: 2.8
Industry: 2.1
Institutional: 7.8
All other: 2.8

Also for 2004 of the total $32.3 billion was for basic research and $10.6 billion for applied research and development.

The schools spending the largest amounts on R&D in 2004 and the spending in millions:

Johns Hopkins $1,375
UCLA 773
Univ of Michigan (all) 769
UW – Madison 764
UC – San Francisco 728
Univ Washington 714
UC – San Diego 709
Stanford 671

The publication includes a huge amount of data on current spending and historical spending.

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRF) is now accepting applications (through early November). The NSF GRF is the largest and most prestigious graduate fellowship program for the sciences in the USA. Approximately 1,000 fellowships, which cover tuition and pay a $30,500 stipend for 3 years, will be awarded again this year. Previous winners include Sergey Brin, Google co-founder (he list winning in his 3 paragraph bio on Google’s site).

The main site for the NSF GRFP includes the solicitation with details on applying and eligibility etc.. I can’t figure out how you find the application from the main site but here is the link to apply for the fellowship.

Advice is available online for applying for the fellowship: How to Win a Graduate Fellowship, Advice for Applicants to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the University of Missouri provides a guide for completing an NSF FRF application.
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Kayak Robots

robotic kayaks

Kayaks adapted to test marine robotics

Working in labs that resemble machine shops, these engineers are taking small steps toward the holy grail of robotics — cooperative autonomy — making machines work together seamlessly to complete tasks with a minimum of human direction.

The tool they’re using is the simple kayak.

Yesterday it was submarine autonomus robots from Princeton (funded by the Naval Postgraduate School). The robot kayak project is funded by Office of Naval Research and the MIT Sea Grant College Program.

Much of the technology being tested is ultimately intended for use in underwater robots, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), but testing software on AUVs can easily become a multimullion-dollar experiment.

“I want to have master’s students and Ph.D. students that can come in, test algorithms and develop them on a shoestring budget,” said Associate Professor John J. Leonard of mechanical engineering.