Research and Intelligence … Research for Intelligence

I’ll be at Penn State University for the next couple of days, at the Research in American conference.  This particular conference, with the theme “Connecting Technology Thought Leaders with Government Officials,” is sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, focusing on their Science and Technology area. 

Here’s the agenda for the conference, which has an excellent lineup of technologists presenting their approaches and progress. 

ODNI turned to the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) to host and run the conference.  Someone, somewhere in the chain, slipped up and invited me as the Keynote speaker for Tuesday – I’m planning to do the thing with no slides and to speak (in part) about the emerging possibilities of revolutionary research in a post Web 2.0 world.

For some sobering background information,  check out a recent tour of the research-funding horizon by Amy Ellis Nutt in the New Jersey Star-Ledger (“As research funds stagnate, science in state of crisis“).  Here’s a taste:

Once the world’s gold standard, American scientific enterprise is in free fall. Short of government funds and strapped for cash, researchers across the country are abandoning promising avenues of scientific investigation and, increasingly, the profession of science itself.” – Amy Ellis Nutt, The Star-Ledger

Do you share that pessimism?  Think it’s overstated?

I’ll give an update about the conference tomorrow.

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Pentagon’s New Program for Innovation, in Context

FACT: According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the Pentagon has announced “the selection of six university professors who will form the first class of the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows Program. The professors will receive grants of up to $600,000 per year for up to five years to engage in basic research — essentially a bet by the Pentagon that they will make a discovery that proves vital to maintaining the superiority of the U.S. military.”

ANALYSIS: This new program is an innovation from DoD’s Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), and since tomorrow I’ll be at Ft. McNair for a two-day conference sponsored by DDR&E on Strategic Communications, I’ll congratulate John Young and his staff for the good idea.

But the Post article falls short in two ways: one immediate (it leaves out key information about next year’s program and the upcoming deadline!) and one longer-term (it ignores the overall context of federal support for R&D).  I’ll fill in the blanks below.