Roland Schmitt Talks Science

When Roland W. Schmitt retired from his job as a senior vice president of General Electric Co. and director of GE’S Research and Development Center on January 31, he had little time to spend in leisure activities. On March 1, the 64-year-old physicist became the 16th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY He takes over an academic institution that is unique in its links with industry RPI has centers dedicated to interactive computer graphics, manufacturing productivity, composite materials and structures, and multiphase phenomena. The institution boasts its own industrial park, populated by a variety of technology-based companies. And the campus possesses “incubator space” designed to nurture small companies during their critical formative stages. Such cooperation has benefited both RPI and industry but now Schmitt faces the question of how strongly the institute should commune with industry in the future. In a wide-ranging interview with science writer Peter Gwynne, he openly addressed such issues as industry-university relations, but he also exhibited his long-time involvement in national science policy issues. A council member of the National Academy of Engineering, Schmitt is now in his second 2-year term as chairman of the National Science Board, the policy-making body of the National Science Foundation. In that role, he has to ponder such problems as academic pork-barreling, the impact on U.S. sciecne and technology of foreign-born scientists and engineers, and the role of technology in improving U.S. competitiveness. Q Now that you are in academia, you will be dealing with pork-barreling of new academic facilities. How does it look to you now from your position as president of RPI? A Well, let me not speak solely as president of RPI but more generally. I find it somewhat distressing if pork-barreling with respect to buildings and facilities becomes the same kind of a deal as bridges and waterways and harbors, an area that everyone would agree was abused in the past. The reasons that you’re getting pork-barreling in my view are quite straightforward. On the one hand, there’s a need. On the other hand, there isn’t a program to fit it. Ergo, it’s happening. I had hoped that we would be able to cause that to diminish and to substitute other programs that would fulfill a need. That hasn’t happened, much to my distress, so pork-barreling has been going up steadily. I wonder if there is any way we can add some sort of merit review or test of merit to the pork-barrel process. Q Would that answer the concern of Boston University president John Silber that traditional peer review provides jobs for the boys in established institutions? A I am coming at it from the other direction because I don’t think the charges are valid. It is true that excellence begets excellence and the greatest productivity in science and technology comes from a relatively few institutions. The other side of the coin, and perhaps the one I am sympathetic with, I realized after a meeting with Jim Wright before he became majority leader. Mr. Wright said: "Look, you fellows have it fixed so that if a genius arises in the state of Kansas, he’s got to go to MIT or Stanford to do his thing. What I want you to do is fix it so that a genius in the state of Kansas can stay in the state of Kansas if he wants to." I’m happy to say, incidentally, that that’s occurring. You witness what’s happening in high temperature superconductivity down in Houston, Texas, and at the University of Alabama at Huntsville; both places are supported by NSF. Q On another question of priorities, are the concerns that big science is going to overwhelm little science really valid? A If you look at all the programs going on—the aerospace plane, the space station, the superconducting supercollider, the genome project, you can even put SDI in that, I guess—you can see that in spite of having a president’s science adviser who in some sense is supposed to oversee that, there is no really forceful way of establishing priorities in the executive branch at the present time. The reconciliation occurs in 0MB with a budget battle there. And when you move over to Congress, you get all sorts of crazy things happening, like NSF and NASA being in the same appropriations subcommittees as the Veterans’ Administration and Housing. That absolutely is a nutty way to establish priorities. People ask, what about the SSC? My point of view is that it is a much higher priority of this nation to double the budget of the National Science Foundation than it is to fund the SSC. If you ask me where the space station and the human genome project and all that fit in this hierarchy, it would take further discussion. All I am saying is that the issue of big science versus little science ought to come out of a systematic way of addressing the scientific priorities of the nation at the federal level. But we don’t have the mechanism for doing that right now. Q What recommendations would you give the science adviser to the next president on this issue? A Well, first to get himself in a good, strong position to give this kind of advice to the president and to have it stick. Right now, whether the present science adviser has big influence or little influence depends on the vagaries of the White House and how it happens to be operating. One of the reasons Jay Keyworth did have considerable influence was because Ed Meese was the president’s right-hand man and Meese regarded Keyworth as his protege. If Meese agreed to something, it would get done. Q And that’s not the situation now? A Not as I perceive it. It hasn’t been the situation since Meese left the White House [to become Attorney General]. Q How do you assess U.S. competitiveness at the present? Is it in as bad a situation as we’re often led to believe? A No. I want to answer that in two ways. One is just to point out some industries where the U.S. is leading the world. In the area of jet engines, the U.S. is far ahead. You take engineering plastics; the U.S. is in a very strong competitive position there. So the fact is that while we have lost in several industries, we still are winners in several other industries. Now the second thing is: Look at the record of important generic discoveries. Let me go all the way back to transistors, integrated circuits, the laser, fiber optics, CAT scanning, magnetic resonance imaging, biotechnology. In none of those areas has Japan made the generic discovery or the generic technical advance, nor have the Japanese been the first to introduce a product in any of those areas. So it is not with generic new advances and the products based upon them that Japan has won. Where Japan has won is in the second, third, fourth, fifth round of product development. o What should be the U.S. re- sponse to this? To give up on the second, third, fourth rounds? A No. No. The reason we have bombed out is because we’ve for- gotten what we once knew. As soon as we learned how to be the fron- tiersmen and the pioneers in sci- ence and technology, we went for that full blast, and we kind of for- got the thing that you have to do to keep that continual improvement going. The Japanese today are talk- ing more about wanting to become pioneers, too. I think there’s a big question whether they will or not, but even if they succeed in that, their culture is going to keep them linked and rooted to the good hab- its they already have. Q So they won’t give up the market to Korea and Singapore? A I don’t think so. On the other hand, the good side of that is that we ought to be able to relearn that without giving up our innovative pioneering spirit. Q But how does this country do the relearning? Is it something for the universities to do? A In part, all this came about from the way we started teaching engineers in universities for one thing. Our educational process for engineers got to the point where both the subject matter and the motivation was indistinguishable from the scientists’. I think we’ve got to get back to educating engineers to be engineers. As an example, GE developed a brand new CAT scanner using what’s called a fan beam process, which quickly captured the market. But there came a moment when we formed a joint partnership with a Japanese firm that had previously been having trouble developing the technology on their own. When we conveyed the technology to them, they immediately designed a lower cost one than we had designed. Q That seems to be a good argument for joint ventures with the Japanese. A Oh, I think so. And you learn from it. They improve it for you. Q The U.S. corporate culture seems filled with takeovers and emphasis on the next quarters results somewhat to the exclusion of longer-term planning. Do you see take-overs as major road blocks to U.S. competitiveness? A To the extent that so-called mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring are driven by people trying to obtain assets that they break up and disperse for short-term gain, that is clearly detrimental to technology in this country in my opinion. On the other hand, restructuring can redeploy assets to be more productive, so that in the long run it should be good. In the short run, however, it may damage things. I’m also bothered by the contrast to the Japanese. There is no question that the Japanese have more persistence in the development of new products than American industries do on the average. Q What do you see as the role of the national labs in this country In improving competitiveness? A I believe that the national labs develop enormous first class scientific and technical capabilities in areas needed to fulfill their own mission. I do not believe that the national labs should initiate new programs with the sole intent of helping to make U.S. industry competitive or to develop new things for U.S. industry, because they don’t know how to do that. The final Thing to be said is that one other area in which the national labs can contribute is with spin-off entrepreneurial firms and a few such instances have occurred. The bottom line is that there are a few things that the national labs could help, but some of the proposals they’re making to help won’t work. Q There’s some call for restriction on the large numbers of foreign students in this country, particularly in engineering. Do you agree with that? A No, that would be a disaster. We have become absolutely dependent upon foreign nationals. We couldn’t get along without them in the U.S. today. If you look at the assistant professors in engineering in American universities under the age of 35, over 50% of those are now foreign nationals. If you go back to my old organization, GE’s corporate R&D, the number of foreign nationals has grown enormously in the past decade. The whole R&D activity of this country would be a disaster today were it not for foreign nationals. So we better not for a moment even think about putting restrictions on those, or we’re going to shoot ourselves not only in the foot but in the head. Why is it that the issue of foreign nationals comes up? It is largely because of the Japanese, the Koreans, and maybe the Taiwanese. People. from those countries come to this country to get education, do a lot of research, and then they go back and pose a competitive threat for us. Let’s take Japan. The real issue there is reciprocity We ought to insist that their research institutions—and that means mainly government laboratories, are open to the U.S. to the same extent that ours are open to them. Q The Japanese say that their institutions are open, but Americans aren’t taking them up on their invitations. A I dont accept that. When I say reciprocity, I don’t mean symmetry. Frankly, to get reciprocity we’ve got to insist on some asymmetry. They’ve got to do more to help our people learn their language, and they’ve got to do more to help our people find suitable housing and so on. They have been getting enormous benefits out of this country. They now haveto fix up their system to permit us to get reciprocal benefits. Q Can universities help improve U.S. industrial competitiveness? One of the complaints from industry, for example, has been that graduates, while very highly qualified, are not necessarily prepared for industry. Should your graduates be prepared to jump directly into an industrial job? A Yes. The confusion that has arisen in people’s minds about this business of turning out engineers who are ready to be useful when they leave is that some people think that it is counter to teaching engineers fundamentals. In my mind that isn’t true at all. The reason we want to teach engineers fundamentals is to prepare them so that they can keep learning, keep adapting to new changes in technology after they leave our hallways. When you consider that an engineer here today is, on the one hand, in classes where fundamentals are being taught and, on the other hand, working in the Center for Manufacturing Prodductivity where there are some real live problems in front of him, I think we’ve got the best combination you can think of to prepare these engineers for the future. Q Do you think there’s a danger that RPI might go over the line that separates academic pursuits from industrial pursuits? A Well, that danger is ever-present. If you’re asking me, do I think RPI is going to fall into that trap, my answer is no. The fact is that, in the right circumstances, industry is a tremendous source of important and interesting technical problem. Q How much do you worry about the issue of academic freedom in the industry-university versity link? A It is an issue that you’ve got to. keep in front of you in an academic institution all the time. There’s no question that there’s always the latent possibility of conflicts there. But in my view industries should not come to universities to support programs or projects that are going to do end-point product development or things like that. What they should do is come and support the front end of research and development for areas of interest to them, areas that they themselves are poised and ready to exploit. The way you get value from university research that you sponsor is by being the one most ready to exploit its results.

Roland Schmitt Talks Science

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May 1988

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