Every day the economic news gets worse. In January more than 598,000 people lost their jobs. The national unemployment rate climbed to 7.6 percent. Business bankruptcies soared in 2008 and news of new filings continues. Congress is contemplating a nearly $1 trillion recovery bill to help America regain its economic footing.
There is no doubt that America needs to reboot its economy. But how would we do that?
The power we need will come from innovation.
Much innovation is the result of basic research conducted on university campuses across the country, supported by the federal government, and often done in collaboration with industry. Basic research is often called "knowledge for knowledge's sake." It is open-ended, often ambitious and doesn't have a specific application. But it can lead to unexpected results with significant economic impact.
Google exemplifies this. Today, Google is a household name, but the ideas behind the extremely successful search engine were generated by two graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose basic research was supported by a National Science Foundation grant.
There are many other examples of businesses and entire industries born from basic research. The $280 billion semiconductor industry and the $85 billion biotech industry are two. Much recent innovation in the biotech industry has been spurred by the largely government-supported human genome project.
As a society, we are only just beginning to benefit from the knowledge gained by mapping the human genome. At the University of Pennsylvania, researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health have demonstrated that gene therapy used to restore retinal activity to the blind also restores function to the brain's visual center, a critical component of seeing.
Innovation, and the research that fuels it, is essential to our economic recovery and long-term well-being. President Obama and congressional leaders in both parties recognize this. Importantly, the recovery legislation includes funding for medical and scientific research grants and critical research infrastructure, which will immediately create jobs and stimulate economic activity in communities across the country. Critical instrumentation and facilities projects at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Energy await money included in the recovery legislation to get under way. Estimates of jobs that will be directly or indirectly funded by these projects range in the tens of thousands, and the research is critical to meeting challenges in energy, environmental, semiconductor and medical technologies, among other areas. The recovery legislation also includes new money for NSF.
Federally funded research grants have a significant economic impact. In just one area _ Philadelphia _ the salaries of more than 6,900 full- and part-time University of Pennsylvania employees are funded through 600 sponsored research projects that are conducted on the university campus. Penn's research programs alone have resulted in the launch of nearly 60 start-up companies over a five-year period, creating high-paying jobs for the entire region.
As these examples show, targeted, short-term funding opportunities in the research arena will help with our immediate economic challenge. But equally important is providing strong, predictable funding for basic research year-in and year-out. A funding tap that runs hot and cold depending on the appropriations process and competing domestic priorities only wreaks havoc on the research process and hurts our ability to benefit from the innovations that flow from research. It also hurts the hundreds of communities around the country where research is a major component of the economy.
This is why Obama's campaign pledge to double basic research funding for physical and life sciences, mathematics and engineering over the next decade is so encouraging. Properly funded, basic research will not simply contribute to the nation's knowledge base. It will fuel innovations that will lead to new technologies, new industries and high-value jobs for the next generation of American scientists, engineers, doctors and teachers.
It will help bring about the transformational technologies necessary for the United States to achieve energy security and enable us to continue our historic leadership in advanced computing technologies. And not least, it will contribute to improved health care for Americans through new medical device technology and patient care tools.
In short, innovation has the power to reboot our economy. Researchers across America are ready to tackle the basic scientific and technical challenges of the 21st century. The results of these studies will feed existing and new businesses and drive economic growth. We just need to power up our innovation capabilities.
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ABOUT THE WRITERS
Craig Barrett is chairman of Intel Corp., 2200 Mission College Blvd., Santa Clara, Calif. 95054-1549. Amy Gutmann is president of the University of Pennsylvania, 100 College Hall, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104-6380.
This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.
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(c) 2009, Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services