Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative 2011 Optimize & Resolve Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative 2011 Optimize & Resolve 2 Council on Competitiveness Optimize. Table of Contents 3 TLSI Dialogue Series 2011: Optimize & Resolve Table of Contents DIALOGUE 5: ENSURING U.S. LEADERSHIP IN STRATEGIC TEC H N O LO G I ES Letter from the President 8 PART 1: SETTING THE STAGE FOR TLSI DIALOGUE 5 Introduction 10 Overview of National Research Planning and Strategic Activities 13 The Federal Research Enterprise 13 Development of Federal Research and Innovation Strategies 17 Initiatives to Lead in Strategic Technologies and Address Grand Challenges 20 Key Policies 20 Strategic Technologies 21 Grand Challenges 22 Questions for TLSI Participants 28 Linkage between TLSI and U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative 29 Working Group Progress 30 PART 2: FINDINGS FROM TLSI DIALOGUE 5 Opening Remarks 33 Department of Energy: The Path Forward 34 Setting the Stage 39 How Can the United States Improve Decision Making Across the 40 Innovation Enterpries? Working Group Updates 45 High Performance Computing 49 Luncheon Keynote 54 Exploring the Frontiers: Emergent Technologies for Future Competitiveness 59 Conclusion 65 TLSI Dialogue 5 Participants 66 4 Council on Competitiveness 2011 DIALOGUE 6: CHANGING THE U.S. INNOVATION LANDSCAPE— THE PATH FROM WORDS TO DEEDS Letter from the President 70 PART 1: SETTING THE STAGE FOR TLSI DIALOGUE 6 Introduction 72 Recent Developments Across the Innovation Policy Landscape 75 Patent Reform 75 Research & STEM Education Budgets / U.S. Fiscal Environment 76 International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) Initiative 79 Congressional Reaction: House of Representatives 81 Lab to Market Initiatives 82 Startup America Recommendations 83 Recommendations of the TLSI Working Groups 84 Coordination with Council’s U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative (USMCI) 84 PART 2: FINDINGS FROM TLSI DIALOGUE 6 Opening Remarks 88 Research at the U.S. Navy and Defense Department—Foundations and Future 90 Rear Admiral Nevin Carr, Jr. 90 Chief of Naval Research and Director, Test and Evaluation and Technology Requirements, United States Navy Dr. Andrew Phillips 92 Academic Dean and Provost, United States Naval Academy Table of Contents 5 Luncheon Remarks 100 Reporting Out and Framing Next Steps: TLSI Working Group Recommendations 101 Federal Outlook for Science, Technology and Innovation 107 Dr. Cyrus Wadia 107 Assistant Director, Clean Energy and Materials R&D White House Office of Science & Technology Policy High Performance Computing Initiative 111 The Path Forward: Implementing the TLSI Agenda 113 Conclusion 114 TLSI Dialogue 6 Participants 115 Technology Strategy Leadership Initiative Participants, 2011 117 Council on Competitiveness Membership 119 About the Council on Competitiveness 122 Optimize. Dialogue 5: Ensuring U.S. Leadership in Strategic Technologies July 14, 2011 Washington, D.C. THIS REPORT IS UNDER REVIEW—NOT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION THIS REPORT IS UNDER REVIEW—NOT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION 8 Council on Competitiveness Optimize. Letter from the President On behalf of the Council The Dialogue featured leaders from the Department on Competitiveness, it is of Energy and asked participants to share ideas on my pleasure to release how to improve federal decision-making. Participants Optimize, the fifth also heard updates from the TLSI Working Groups, report of the Technology shared ideas about high performance computing, and Leadership and identified strategic technologies that are critical to Strategy Initiative (TLSI). America’s economy and security. The TLSI convenes The Council also expresses its sincere thanks the technology leaders U.S. Department of Defense for its support. The from America’s premier Council is committed to help the Department bring companies, universities new technologies into practice faster and more and laboratories to efficiently—thereby strengthening America’s industrial energize America’s base and our national and economic security. The research enterprise, lead TLSI dialogues are designed to be an open exchange in strategic technologies of ideas. The opinions and positions presented in this and apply technology wisely to the nation’s greatest report are those of the Council or the individual who challenges. offered them. The opinions and positions in the report The initiative is led by Ray Johnson, senior vice do not reflect official positions of the Department of president and chief technology officer of the Defense or other government agencies. Lockheed Martin Corporation; Mark Little, senior vice president and director of GE Global Research for the General Electric Company; and Klaus Hoehn, vice president, advanced technology and engineering for Sincerely, Deere & Company. This report weaves together two parts. Part one set the stage for the dialogue. This “pre-report” analyzes the federal research enterprise, explains how the federal government sets research and innovation Deborah L. Wince-Smith President & CEO policy, and reviews current technology initiatives. Part Council on Competitiveness two captures the ideas put forward in the fifth TLSI Dialogue held July 14, 2011, in Washington, DC. Table of Contents 9 Part 1: Setting the Stage for TLSI Dialogue 5 10 Council on Competitiveness Optimize. PART 1: SETTING THE STAGE FOR TLSI DIALOGUE 5 Introduction In 1810, a small town bordered by Honey Creek was established in the west central portion of Ohio. New Carlisle, located a little north of Dayton, would be the birthplace a century later for a future scientist named Roy, born in June of 1910. Although New Carlisle remains a rural area to this day, technology innovation has dramatically reshaped life there, as it has most places in the world. Roy, a contributor to that innovation, entered life at the onset of perhaps the most innovative century in human history. Look- ing at a few aspects of American life in 1910 makes clear just how profound innovation has been in a Jefferson Street in New Carlisle, Ohio circa 1910. single lifetime. Start by considering transportation. In 1910, the also from that of petroleum, parts, electronics, con- transition was still underway to automobiles, and struction, glass, steel, plastics, radio, music, shipping, the horse remained the principal means of everyday tourism, food and many other industries. transport as it had been for thousands of years. The Ford Motor Company, organized in 1903, was striv- Cars altered environmental and sanitation concerns, ing to make automobiles within the financial reach eliminating animal waste and certain disease risks of most Americans. In 1910, Ford was one of about from city streets but eventually raising concerns 200 car companies in the United States and sold about things like smog and carbon emissions. Gas- about 19,000 Model T cars. By 1917, sales would powered vehicles changed the way warfare had rise to more than 783,000 cars.1 In 2010, U.S. ve- been conducted for centuries, making troops more hicle sales topped 11.8 billion2 and Americans own mobile and replacing cavalry with tanks. Cars also more than two vehicles per household.3 are culture. Americans sing of Little Deuce Coupes, Pink Cadillacs and Little Red Corvettes. They thrill Automobile ownership changed lives in many ways— to NASCAR and watch movies like American Graf- altering where people could live and travel, how and fiti, Bullitt, or Pixar’s animated Cars produced using what they ate, what jobs they held and what infra- high performance computing. structure was expected from their tax dollars. Con- sider the economic impact of cars and trucks not Another mode of transportation, aviation, also was in only from the viewpoint of vehicle manufacturers, but its infancy in 1910. The pioneering Wright brothers lived and worked in Dayton—a mere 17 miles from Roy in New Carlisle—took their famous first flight in 1 Model T Ford Club of America. www.mtfca.com/encyclo/fdsales.htm North Carolina in 1903. Flight, too, would transform 2 Ward’s Automotive Group. wardsauto.com/keydata/ human activity dramatically over the next century. 3 AutoSpies.com. Study Finds Americans Own 2.28 Vehicles Per Household. February 2008. www.autospies.com/news/Study-Finds- Americans-Own-2-28-Vehicles-Per-Household-26437/ Introduction 11 So what about the budding scientist, Roy, back in New Carlisle? When Roy was born in 1910, his par- ents had no radio (commercial broadcasting began in 1920) and no television (the first U.S. commercial licenses were granted in 1941). Roy’s parents also almost surely did not own a refrigerator. Mechanical refrigeration was largely lim- ited to breweries and meat packers at the time, most using ammonia compression systems. But many of the chemicals used posed toxic hazards.5 Scientists began searching for alternatives. Roy J. Plunkett left New Carlisle to attend Manches- ter College in Indiana and the Ohio State University, where he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1936. He took a research position with DuPont and, in 1938, Plunkett, right, reenacts discovery. was experimenting with Freon refrigerants. One An equally amazing shift occurred in medicine. The night, a sample had frozen into a whitish, waxy solid. average life expectancy for Americans in 1910 was Rather than discard the apparent mistake, Roy and 49.4 years for men and 51.8 years for women.4 his assistant tested the new polymer and found that Today, those figures stand at 75.7 and 80.6 years, it had some very unusual properties: it was extremely respectively. As a