Materials Research Policy
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BY GEORGE A. KEYWORTH II Science Advisor to the President Director, Office of Science And Technology Policy I still like to think of myself as a physicist, even if 1 am working in that state of suspended animation known as "working in Washington." So please recognize that I'm overcoming all those years of assuming only physics really counts when I say that materials research may well be the most important field of science in the U.S. today. The reason is actually simple: Not only are materials scientists needed for the success of virtually all the new technologies important to our industrial progress, but many of you have been years ahead of the rest of us in anticipating the benefits of multidisciplinary approaches to frontier research. To explain the importance of that observation, let me recount an experience I had last month when leaders of a National Academy panel on the use of computers in design and manufacturing came to my office to present the results of their review. As frequently happens these days, the talk soon shifted to problems of universities, industry, and education—especially engineering education. Since we ran out of time long before we ran out of discussion, we met again a few weeks later—this time inviting in leaders and officials of the National Science Foundation, too. We had a single item on our agenda: It was how universities could do a better job of preparing today's students to function in tomorrow's industrial environment. We all recognized that students take—and master—an impressive array of specialized courses. But, at the same time, very few learn enough about how people in industry work—or about how they succeed. Students are educated in an abstract world, and then most of them are expected to jump right into a practical profession. I should emphasize that we weren't looking for people to blame for this situation, and in particular the universities came in for more commiseration than anything else. After all, in light of the demands on them, they're already hardpressed to maintain existing programs; few universities are in a position to undertake major reforms on their own. They need help—and justifiable help—from the beneficiaries of their efforts—the eventual employers of those students and the users of new knowledge—industry and government.
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Industry /University Cooperative Models As one outcome of that meeting, I asked the National Science Foundation to work—particularly with the
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 80.82.77.83, on 30 Aug 2017 at 09:13:02, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/S0883769400050375 MRS BULLETIN, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
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engineering community—to identify promising university/industry cooperative models for support. One of the more exciting approaches already proposed is for oncampus "engineering centers" in which undergraduate and graduate students can work with faculty on scaled-down industrial research problems in
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