Technology & Innovation - NYAS

A group of students present their school project in front of onlookers.

Innovation challenges not only provide an interactive way for students and other innovators to embrace science, but they can also play a direct role in making the world a better place.

Published December 1, 2011

By Adrienne J. Burke

In a day and age when “thinking outside the box” is universally touted as the fastest path to scientific and technological innovation, incentive prize contests have come to be seen as one of the most creative ways to generate groundbreaking ideas. Here’s how it works: Broadcast a challenge with specific parameters and reward whoever solves it first. This simple but increasingly popular approach to tackling scientific problems goes so far outside the box, in fact, that winning solutions frequently come from completely unexpected or even unknown entities.

Consider the solvers in some recent contests: It was a concrete industry chemist in Illinois who figured out how to separate frozen oil from water in an Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup challenge. A human resources professional posed a winning research question in a Harvard diabetes challenge. A Columbia University experimental astrophysicist won a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation challenge for suggesting a new approach to controlling malaria. And a team of West Philadelphia high-school kids built a super-efficient car that was a strong contender for an X Prize.

Even one of the most celebrated incentive contests in history is legendary for its surprising winner: a self-educated English watchmaker won Parliament’s £23,000 Longitude Prize for inventing the marine chronometer in the 18th century.

Ideas from Untapped Sources

Extracting ideas from untapped sources is largely the point of incentive contests. Proponents of the approach, which is sometimes called crowdsourcing or open innovation, frequently quote the wisdom of Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” When a problem has stumped your field’s experts, they say, casting the net to a broader, more diverse, and multidisciplinary population can yield amazing solutions. In fact, studies by Harvard Business School professor and innovation researcher Karim Lakhani have shown that winning solutions in challenge contests are most likely to come from solvers whose area of expertise is six disciplines removed from the problem.

At Scientists Without Borders, a program conceived by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) in conjunction with the United Nations’ Millennium Project, a web-enabled platform for seeking and suggesting solutions to science and technology challenges in the developing world is yielding input from a global and multidisciplinary set of innovators. The same is true at the Gates Foundation, where Program Officer Andrew Serazin says the five-year, $100 million Grand Challenges Explorations initiative to promote innovation in global health has successfully harvested ideas from a highly diverse set of people. “We’ve gotten some promising projects out of it, and we’ve gotten as much value out of reading applications,” he says.

Low Startup Costs

The startup costs for getting into the challenge-posing game can be surprisingly low. Platforms such as Scientists Without Borders and businesses like InnoCentive, IdeaConnection, NineSigma, and OmniCompete that facilitate contests for so-called “seekers,” make it easy for anyone to post a problem online and field solutions from around the world. You don’t need to offer a huge monetary reward to sponsor a successful incentive contest, either. Serazin contends that as little as a few thousand dollars can draw contestants, and plenty of seekers on Puri’s site get input without offering any reward at all.

Even if your organization isn’t ready to post its challenges to the outside world, simply employing the philosophies and practices of incentive contests can spur innovation within your own workplace. InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin notes, “The challenge-based approach is a fun way to get people inside an organization involved in solving a problem.”

Henry Chesbrough, the executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business says, “Any organization has biases, myopia, previous experiences that advantage certain approaches and discourage or discount others. A contest can transcend these cognitive barriers.”

Contest Limits and Benefits

While useful, contests also have their limits. And not every scientific puzzle lends itself to the challenge format. Experts agree that, to be suitable, a problem must be able to be very well defined, and the parameters for winning very clear.

“An explicitly identified goal is essential to focusing the world’s attention on a challenge,” Serazin says, “and the achievement of the goal must be measurable.” He points to contests such as the Ansari X Prize, which promised $10 million to the team that could build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface twice within two weeks. Contestants’ performance could be measured so that it would be clear who the winner was. “In health and biomedicine, getting that kind of specificity is not easy,” he warns.

Nor should incentive contests be seen as a cheap way to outsource R&D. Forming and managing a challenge requires substantial internal knowledge and resources. The genome researcher Craig Venter hosted a DNA sequencing challenge for several years before turning it over to the X Prize Foundation to administer. With the level of expertise and management the contest demands, he says, “it costs several million dollars to run a contest to give away $10 million.”

As Chesbrough notes, prize competitions aren’t going to render the internal R&D department obsolete, but they can complement, extend, and inform it. A small but growing segment of the business world agrees with him. According to a widely cited study by the consulting firm McKinsey, almost $250 million was awarded to prize-winning problem solvers between 2000 and 2007.

Meeting the Challenge

Large corporations, small businesses, philanthropies, universities, government agencies, and nonprofits—from GE to the Gates Foundation, from NASA to Scientists Without Borders—are among the organizations now offering cash to outsiders who can meet their challenges. InnoCentive, one of the best known companies serving the incentive contest market, has hosted more than 1,000 challenges since 2001 and boasts a solver community of more than 200,000 individuals in 200 countries. Robynn Sturm, advisor for open innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says challenges should be a part of any innovation portfolio. Today, analysts estimate the incentive-based prize market at $2 billion and growing.

President Obama is accountable for some of that projected growth. He recently called on federal agencies to increase their use of prizes and challenges to spur innovation. “Prizes and challenges are not the right tool for every problem, but right now they’re being so underutilized that it’s safe for us to call on all agencies to increase their use,” says Sturm. Already, the White House-sponsored Challenge.gov website features nearly 60 government challenges, and a banner there encourages government agency leaders to “challenge the world.” Government-sponsored contests are inspiring citizens of all stripes to offer up novel solutions to national problems such as childhood obesity, energy storage, and keeping astronauts’ food fresh in outer space.

OSTP Deputy Director for Policy, Tom Kalil, says that, in addition to increasing the number and diversity of minds tackling a problem, contests offer several advantages over traditional grantmaking, including freeing the government to pay only for results, not for unfruitful research. The approach, he says, also “allows us to establish a bold and important goal without having to choose the path or the team that is most likely to succeed.”

Different Approaches

Adds Sturm, “Prizes and challenges allow you to see a number of different approaches all at once. With a grant or contract, you have to pick your course and cross your fingers. With a prize, you can say, ‘This is our goal, and we’re happy to pay anyone who hits it, however they do it.’”

Scientists Without Borders uses challenges as one part of an open innovation platform designed specifically to generate scientific and technological breakthroughs in global development. It enables members of the community to work together and combine their resources and expertise to take action and accelerate progress. Organizers believe the challenge approach will move the needle by generating, refining, or unearthing effective solutions and then getting them deployed as widely as possible.

Craig Venter notes one more benefit of incentive contests: they can serve as truth serum against exaggerated claims and marketing spiel. When Venter joined forces with the X Prize Foundation to establish the $10 million Archon Genomics X Prize the idea was to incite progress in genomic sequencing technologies and to get beyond what he considers to be industry spin about the state of the art.

The winner will be, specifically, the first team to build a device and use it to sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days or less, with an accuracy of no more than one error in every 100,000 bases sequenced, with sequences accurately covering at least 98 percent of the genome, and at a recurring cost of no more than $10,000 per genome. “You can’t fake it,” Venter says. “There will be clear winners for a set of standards.” If prizes and contests can incentivize people and provide a reality check of all the claims that are out there, he says, “then they can really help science move ahead.”

Incentivized in Academia

What does a scientist, lab head, or manager need to know to enter the challenge arena? Tom Kalil points to the Harvard Catalyst/InnoCentive Type 1 Diabetes Ideation Challenge as an example of how the scientific community can use challenges— both within an organization and more broadly—to generate not just technological solutions, but new research ideas.

With funding from the National Center for Research Resources, the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center offered a cash reward for winning answers to the question, “What do we not know to cure type 1 diabetes?” Contestants were asked to formulate well-defined problems aimed at advancing knowledge about, and ultimately eradicating, the disease.

The challenge was open to the entire Harvard community as well as InnoCentive’s 200,000 solvers. Ultimately, nearly 800 respondents expressed interest in the contest, 150 submissions were evaluated, and 12 winners were each awarded a $2,500 prize. The winners included a patient, an undergraduate student, an MD/PhD student, a human resources representative, and researchers from unrelated scientific fields.

Promoting Collaboration

Eva Guinan, director of the Harvard Catalyst Linkages program and associate director of Clinical/Translational Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, says the contest itself was an experiment to see how the model could work in an academic biomedical environment, given that researchers are traditionally disincentivized from collaborating. She says top-down management support was one key to securing widespread participation. In an email to the tens of thousands members of the Harvard community, from deans to janitors, President Drew Faust endorsed every employee’s participation in the challenge, suggesting that it would “help stimulate innovative thinking and potential new understandings and therapies.”

“Companies need to open up and break down boundaries between departments,” Spradlin says. He points to a recent InnoCentive client—a large engineering organization that hosted an incentive contest internally, but opened the competition only to staffers with information technology backgrounds. “We told them to run the contest all over the company. The solution came from someone in the finance department.”

Be a Seeker and a Solver

Harvard’s Karim Lakhani suggests scientists can spur innovation in their own labs just by participating in contests, either as solvers or seekers. “Often scientists and PIs get narrowly focused in one area, but we know that being exposed to new questions and expanding your horizons can yield creativity,” he says. “There might be a very interesting problem out there that lets you directly export and apply knowledge from your field to a different field. That creative expression is worthwhile in itself, and working on another problem may unlock a problem in your field.”

For would-be seekers, he suggests a strategic approach: There might be problems you are stuck on, or a set of problems that aren’t high priority for your lab but need to be knocked off your list, he says. Those would be worth broadcasting to see if outsiders come up with interesting solutions. “Take a portfolio approach to your lab,” he says. “Decompose your problems and express them in modules. Then be strategic about them and say, ‘I think we’d benefit from outside perspectives here.’ It’s a very different way to do science.”

Not Just Motivated by Money

Edward Jung, founder and CTO of Intellectual Ventures in Seattle, says that crucial to results is the problem statement. “If you’re trying to invent the Boeing 787, you don’t put out a request to invent an airplane,” he says. “You divide it up into smaller, tractable pieces such as, ‘design a more efficient way of modulating turbine blades.’”

And Harvard’s Eva Guinan adds a word of caution: Before launching a challenge, “you really have to be convinced that it’s what your organization wants to do. There are a lot of people who aren’t believers.” With internal challenges, beware of managers who don’t buy in. “There can be complaints such as, ‘This person is working for me, and I don’t appreciate that they’re sitting on their computer working for someone else,’” Guinan says.

Others can be so hung up on the belief that the PhD is the smartest person in the room, that they’re not willing to consider input from anyone without an academic pedigree. “You have to be willing to push this as an issue of social and cultural change,” Guinan says. Karim Lakhani points to one more secret of incentive contests: Participants often aren’t motivated by the money. “Most people know they’re going to lose, but they participate anyway,” he says.

Instead, participants are drawn by the opportunities to be part of a group effort, work on an interesting problem, learn something new, achieve a clear goal, and get feedback on their work. “This is at the heart of why people do science,” he says.

What’s Next in Incentivizing Science?

At the forefront of new models for hosting challenges is the grassroots, collaborative approach to problem solving that Scientists Without Borders enables. While the platform is also host to competitive incentive-prize contests, such as a current PepsiCo-sponsored challenge that seeks ideas for curbing folic acid deficiency, it also enables users to seek input from the broad and global Scientists Without Borders community—engendering a teamwork approach to solving the challenges of the developing world. Organizers don’t just want people to find each other—they want them to work together and combine their resources and expertise to take action and accelerate progress.

Unique among organizations that facilitate challenges, Scientists Without Borders provides user-friendly online modules that allow anyone to frame and post a challenge, offers an expert advisory panel for guidance, and enables users to help each other solve problems regardless of where the challenges exist or users reside. Organizers call it a bottom-up, user-generated challenge model that will surface barriers on the ground, in the field, or at the bench that might otherwise be overlooked.

Whether in the global development niche that Scientists Without Borders fills or in a scientific laboratory looking to ignite its members’ creativity, open innovation tools like incentive contests and challenges can be powerful and inspiring ways to tap human ingenuity.

Learn more about the Academy’s Innovation Challenges.

The Case for Inter-Galactic Biodiversity

Astrophysicists must consider various scientific factors as they search for habitable planets. What role does inter-galactic biodiversity play? And what makes a planet biologically active?

Published April 19, 2011

By Diana Friedman

Image courtesy of Maximusdn via stock.adobe.com.

On April 12, 2011, Ben Oppenheimer, a comparative exoplanetary scientist, spoke to educators, students, and amateur astronomers at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) about Inter-Galactic Biodiversity: Astrophysicists’ Search for Habitable Planets. Oppenheimer’s work often straddles the world of philosophy and science as he tackles the engineering and astrophysics of the search for habitable planets. He constantly grapples with the question “What if we actually find life on other planets?” as he engineers better ways to collect, analyze, and interpret the brightness of light as a function of wavelength, that is emitted or reflected by not too distant planets and their stars.

While Oppenheimer is an astrophysicist by training, his main area of study and the subject of his talk at the Academy offer something for teachers and students interested in the big questions of the universe—not only “Are we alone?”, but also “What does a planet with life look like?” His work and his answers to these questions traverse the historical divisions between physics, biology, and engineering.

In addition to describing the recent redefinition of planetary bodies in our solar system, he explained his use of adaptive optics (AO) to improve spectroscopy. The improvements to AO, which are technologies that decrease effects of wavefront distortion introduced when light travels through our inhomogeneous atmosphere, allow Oppenheimer a better, clearer picture of the radiating energy from planets and stars.

A Biologically Active Planet

That better picture has allowed scientists like Oppenheimer to predict what a biologically active planet would look like, specifically what chemical changes biology effects on a planet. Through improved spectroscopy, we can see that a biologically active planet will have different ratios of methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and oxygen compared to a biologically inactive planet.

The combination of big, philosophical questions about the nature of the universe with a rich thought experiment about how life changes a planet makes Oppenheimer’s work an enticing topic for educators. His talk not only highlights a new and exciting interdisciplinary science but also clearly outlines the process by which he and other scientists combine experimental design, philosophy, and engineering to conceive, test, and refine their ideas.

Also read: The Crucial Need for Ethics in Space Exploration

The Need for Entrepreneurs in Advancing Science

Steve Hochberg has put The New York Academy of Sciences in the position to support life-science entrepreneurs and the impactful work they do.

Published March 1, 2011

By Adam Ludwig

Behind every medical technology breakthrough—whether it’s a new drug that improves everyday life or a novel device that revolutionizes a surgical procedure—lies years of painstaking research, testing, verification, and investment. Transforming ideas into potentially life-saving innovations involves a diverse set of players that can include student researchers, physicians, lawyers, government regulators, and entrepreneurs. This complex interplay relies on a cross-pollination of expertise that can find businesspeople donning lab coats and cardiologists polishing their dress shoes for a fundraising luncheon.

Steve Hochberg, a Board Governor for The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) and co-founder of 12 companies, believes entrepreneurial tenacity is the key to forging real-world applications from pure scientific ingenuity. He is co-founder of Ascent Biomedical Ventures, a company that has helped bring an impressive array of medical technologies and pharmaceuticals to market. Among the many products his firm has had a hand in developing: medical scaffolding for soft tissue repair, including tendons, hernias, and aneurisms; a minimally invasive cage for performing spinal fusions; and dermal absorption drug delivery techniques.

Hochberg has an impressive record of matching scientific ingenuity with money and management. Beyond being a generous donor to the Academy, throughout his four years serving as an Academy Governor, Hochberg has also been active in recruiting new board members and raising funds, and he wondered how the Academy could get involved in furthering innovation in the greater New York area. So when Milena Adamian, an interventional cardiologist with Wall Street and venture capital experience, contacted him with the idea of creating an angel network to fund biomedical companies in the pre-institutional-financing stage, Hochberg immediately suggested the Academy as a venue.

The Life Sciences Angel Network

Thanks in part to seed funding that he provided, the Academy’s Life Sciences Angel Network (LSAN) was launched in November 2010, with Adamian as Director and Hochberg chairing the Screening and Investment Committee. Together, they recruited physicians, academics, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and technical developers to serve on the Committee, which closely reviews each project before presenting it to LSAN’s group of angel investors.

Taking a cue from Hochberg’s work at Ascent, which produces safe and effective clinical data from new therapeutic ideas—with the ultimate goal of designing and implementing actual U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trials—the Committee scrutinizes candidates’ viability for clinical, regulatory, and commercial success before presenting them to potential investors in this notoriously risky field.

Hochberg describes LSAN’s role as “bridging the gap between the napkin stage and the clinical testing stage,” with the scribbled-on napkin representing the earliest germ of an idea. A $500,000 to $2 million investment from LSAN’s angels can lead to further research, helping to attract the next-stage institutional investment of between $2 million and over $10 million necessary to facilitate clinical trials. In short, LSAN can get companies over the hump before they receive the kind of investment necessary to bring innovations to market.

Looking for Unmet Clinical Needs

Hochberg is happy to report that the first three companies to submit proposals to LSAN all received financing offers. “We are looking for unmet clinical needs,” he says. “That doesn’t always mean that there isn’t some existing therapy out there; just that it could be greatly improved on.” For example, he points to hypertension, where new approaches are needed for people who aren’t responding to existing drugs.

What excites Hochberg most is the possibility that a scientific meeting could be convened at the Academy to discuss a novel life-science question, and within months a company might get financing for an innovation that addresses this very question, with the entire process shepherded by the Academy. “There are a lot of stakeholders that make up the Academy network,” says Hochberg. “At the end of the day, we want to create great therapies using the science and technology that exists in New York.”

Hochberg would never call himself a “renaissance entrepreneur,” but in many ways the label fits. In addition to his on-the-job science training and his involvement in developing medical technology and care delivery, Hochberg is vice chair of Continuum Health Partners, a six-hospital health system in New York City. He is co-founder of the award-winning Evening Land Vineyards and has helped publish books on the medical implications of obesity and the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. He’s also a professional positive thinker. When asked about the long-term prospects for the Academy’s LSAN to foster life-changing innovation, he replies, “I’m a venture capitalist; I’m an optimist by virtue of what I do every day.”

Also read: What Happens When Innovative Scientists Embrace Entrepreneurship?

About the Author

Adam Ludwig is a writer in New York City.

Innovative Technologies to Serve Those in Need

Flags for different countries flying outside of the United Nations.

A UN General Assembly Week event stressed the need for global collaboration in developing science and technology solutions to the most pressing problems of poor communities.

Published September 23, 2010

By Adrienne J. Burke

A solar-powered autoclave for sterilizing surgical instruments in the field, a portable irrigation system that instantly converts saltwater to fresh water, and a bicycle that can be converted to a corn sheller or cell-phone charger were among the innovative and inexpensive technologies introduced by 18 teams of inventors at a science fair and development forum yesterday.

The Science, Technology & Innovation Forum, hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) during UN Week festivities, highlighted the work of teams of inventors from laboratories at world-class public, private, and academic organizations that have made the integration and application of science, technology, and innovation for development their primary goal. The event also featured several talks about the importance of innovative science and technology and global collaboration to solve problems with and for communities in need.

“Many of today’s global challenges are shared and require solutions that cross borders, sectors, and disciplines, and addressing these issues cannot be met without appropriate scientific knowledge and technological expertise,” said Rajiv Shah, MD, USAID Administrator. In announcing USAID’s Grand Challenges for Development strategy, which is designed to solve some of the most difficult development problems facing those in need in all parts of the world, Dr. Shah said, “At USAID, unleashing new technologies and game-changing innovations means taking a new approach and we intend to target our investments in areas where we can have the greatest impacts, improving the lives of millions.”

Integrating Better Science, Technology, and Innovation

Dr. Shah noted that there is unprecedented momentum within USAID and among many government, host-country, foundation, and private sector partners to integrate better science, technology, and innovation to solve today’s most pressing needs using frugal, high-impact, life-saving, and income-producing products and technologies.

Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD, leader of a scientific trial supported by USAID that showed promise for a microbicide-based method of protecting women from HIV infection, highlighted the importance of partnerships between research, public health, and business communities that were critical to this breakthrough. And Shaifali Puri, Executive Director of the Academy’s own Scientists Without Borders initiative, discussed a new approach to cross-sector global collaboration: the Scientists Without Borders open innovation web platform. “Our novel tools provide dynamic and meaningful ways for passionate problem-solvers from all sectors, disciplines, and geographies to engage their expertise, connect with others similarly interested, and exchange resources and knowledge to improve the quality of life for the world’s poorest people,” Puri said.

All of the inventions exhibited, including the Bicilavadora pedal-powered washing machine, the Dirt Power microbial fuel cell battery, and the Spiral Pine Needle Cookstove, are already in use or are poised to enter the marketplace, and all have significant lifesaving and income-producing impact or potential.

Also read: Sustainable Development for a Better Tomorrow

Putting Academy Webinars to Work for New York City

A man in a suit and tie poses for the camera.

An innovative grant from the Manhattan Borough President will lead to new programming at the Academy, which aims to spur economic and technological growth in the city.

Published September 1, 2010

By Adam Ludwig

When The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) applied to the Office of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer for funding to optimize its webinar broadcasting capabilities, it could hardly have expected a more enthusiastic response. Stringer has a strong vision about how to bridge New York’s science and business communities to promote new industry and stimulate job growth. Seeing how the Academy uses new media to extend the reach of its activities, he recognized the potential for a dynamic collaboration.

The Academy’s proposal calls for an overhaul of its webinar production and networking equipment—including upgraded HD cameras, recorders, routers, switches, server storage, and a new fiber-based internet connection—in order to enhance online broadcasts that reach its membership base of 25,000 scientists and students, and beyond. Existing Academy web-based outreach includes Science & the City’s programs for the general public; conferences, symposia, and discussion groups for the scientific community; career counseling and networking opportunities for science students through the Science Alliance program; and the Academy’s newly launched New York City Science Education Initiative.

While acknowledging the value of enhancing the Academy’s educational mission, Stringer’s approval of a $265,000 grant also comes with a counterproposal. He wants to see the Academy expand the purview of its webinar series to promote economic development in New York by nurturing science entrepreneurs and connecting scientists to the business community.

A New Series of Interactive Online Webinars

With the equipment upgrade and expansion, the Academy will launch a new series of interactive online webinars focused on giving scientists access to available resources that will help them create more science- and technology-based jobs in New York City. Through live programming, the Academy currently strives to help science and technology entrepreneurs turn their ideas and discoveries into businesses and jobs. The new webinar offerings will enhance these programs, supplying an accessible and flexible forum where scientists can gain an understanding of all the facets involved in an early-stage venture.

Stringer’s support of the Academy dates to 2006, when he advocated for an $800,000 grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to outfit the Academy’s new space at 7 World Trade Center. He says he appreciates the unique potential of science and technology as catalysts for job creation. Too often, science and business are “two ships passing in the night,” he says. “There are smart people with great ideas in the science community,” he notes, “but they miss greater opportunities because they are isolated from the business side.”

Stimulus from local government is just one of the instruments that can foster a strong connection between science and business, and Stringer’s faith in this model is rooted in a vision of how the city might look in 20 years. “Look at where the Academy is located,” he says, gesturing towards the view from his Centre Street office. “It’s right next to Wall Street.” Stringer sees this proximity as favorable for the emergence of a new Silicon Alley, with the Academy’s webinar capabilities functioning as a tool to stimulate business investment in science and technology initiatives throughout the city.

Cross-Pollination of the Science and Business Communities

Stringer would like to see “the next Google in Manhattan, the next Apple in Queens, the next food-production idea in the Bronx,” and he knows that the push to capitalize and market scientific innovation has to come from both public and private sources. A plugged-in Wall Street will generate corporate investment in new technology, but the city and the state have to promote an atmosphere in which scientists and businesspeople stay connected, he says.

Stringer’s vision for the cross-pollination of New York’s science and business communities is part of a larger plan to address the economic slowdown, as well as state- and citywide budget shortfalls. “Taxing Ring Dings and cutting jobs is not a long- term solution,” he says. Having the wherewithal to exploit innovation in science and technology, Stringer believes, offers the best hope for economic revitalization, and he is optimistic about the city’s future. “We’ve always gotten there,” he says. “New York is a magnet city. How do we keep people coming? We grow the economy. Science and technology creates those jobs.”

When it comes to boosting the Academy’s role in the city’s future by supporting the webinar program, Stringer’s attitude is refreshingly transparent. “I’m very excited,” he says of the partnership.

Also read: A Science State of Mind in the Empire State

About the Author

Adam Ludwig is a writer in New York City.

Can Our Knowledge of Nature Ever Be Complete?

“So, even if there are other intelligent life forms out there, we are, for all practical purposes, alone. This revelation should fill us with awe.”

Published May 1, 2010

By Marcelo Gleiser

Image courtesy of Juan via stock.adobe.com.

I’d like to start this essay with a statement that might be surprising coming from a scientist: We are surrounded by the mysterious.

I’ll follow with a quote from another scientist: “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

Albert Einstein wrote those words in 1930, as part of a text entitled “What I Believe.” By “mysterious,” we both mean “that which is beyond our current knowledge.” That is, the knowledge we still don’t have of the universe. Einstein was well aware that we could only understand part of the whole. “What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility,” he said.

Sadly, this concession to our limitations has been forgotten over the years. Perhaps some of the blame goes to Einstein: for the last two decades of his life, he searched for a “final theory,” a mathematical structure that would reveal the unity of nature, perfect in conception and in symmetry. His approach has been criticized for having been out of touch with the mainstream physics of the time. But his legacy as a unifier remains strong, having inspired a new generation of theoretical physicists in search of a final theory of nature.

Einstein believed—as did the Pythagoreans of pre-Socratic Greece—that geometry is the key to nature’s deepest secrets. Likewise, superstring theory—the preeminent modern incarnation of the final theory—aims to build a unified explanation for how the elementary particles of matter interact among themselves based on geometrical arguments.

The Ultimate Triumph of Reductionism

The stated goal is far from humble: the Theory of Everything should be the ultimate triumph of reductionism, the culmination of a search that started some 25 centuries ago in the Turkish town of Miletus. Can such a theory ever be devised? Or is the notion of unification, of Nature’s deep unity, more a myth, inspired by the pervasive influence of monotheistic ideas in Western thought?

To answer this question we must turn to particle physics, the branch of physics that searches for matter’s smallest building blocks. There is no question that the notion of symmetry is one of the cornerstones of physics. To deny this would be foolish

Many theories that successfully describe natural phenomena are based on the idea of symmetry and how it is applied mathematically. The problem starts when symmetry stops being a tool and becomes dogma. Because it’s been so successful so many times, it’s hard not to elevate symmetry to a pedestal and claim that nature’s harmony must be the expression of a grand mathematical code hiding underneath it all. The problem is, we have no experimental evidence that it must be so.

Current particle physics identifies four fundamental forces of nature: to the familiar gravitational and electromagnetic forces, we add the strong and weak nuclear forces, both active only within the confines of the atomic nucleus. The goal of unification is to show that all of these forces are, in fact, manifestations of a single force.

“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”

We can’t perceive this unity at the low energies of our everyday lives, or even in our most powerful accelerators. But close to the Big Bang, at inconceivably high energies, the unity of nature would be revealed in all its amazing beauty. One senses Plato’s legacy—the belief that only in the pure beauty of mathematics can truth be found—or, as Keats wrote, that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Unfortunately, nature is not willing to cooperate.

One of the great triumphs of modern physics is the Standard Model of particle physics, a theory that collects all (or almost all) that we know of the world of the very small. In the 1960s, Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steve Weinberg built a theoretical framework whereby the electromagnetic and weak interactions were “unified”: At high energies, the weak interaction behaves in ways similar to electromagnetism.

The theory made some remarkable predictions, which were spectacularly confirmed by experiments in 1983 at the European Center for Particle Physics. In spite of its well-deserved success, the reality is that the theory can’t be considered a truly unified description of the two forces. Traces of both forces remain throughout; too many experimental facts must be accommodated by hand. In 35 years of attempts and massive experimental searches for the predicted effects such unification would entail, efforts to go beyond this “electroweak” unification to incorporate the strong force have failed.

Interestingly, we can detect a growing attitude shift in recent papers published by the high-energy physics community. Many scientists are proposing that perhaps things are not so perfect after all—that perhaps the universe started with the forces as described by the Standard Model, featuring only the partial electroweak unification.

Surrounded by the Mysterious

Image courtesy of Claudia Kamergorodski.

We can now revert to our opening statement—that we are surrounded by the mysterious. One of the problems with the notion of a final unification is that it assumes that we have complete knowledge of the fundamental particles and their interactions. Einstein was criticized for his stubborn attachment to gravity and electromagnetism; how can we be sure that there aren’t other interactions out there, beyond those we can currently measure?

We only know what our instruments tell us. And although their accuracy is increasing, allowing us to see more of the cosmos, it will always be limited. Since we cannot know all there is to know, we cannot build a theory of everything. We don’t even know what “everything” is!

The historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin called the notion of ultimate explanations a “fallacy,” blaming it on the pre-Socratics. There is a perennial darkness out there, beyond the circle of our current knowledge. And although this circle is always expanding, so is the level of our ignorance.

Imagine how much Galileo found he didn’t know when he pointed his telescope to the sky in 1609; just as when van Leeuwenhoek looked through his micro-scope only a few years earlier. In our times, think of all that the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed. Einstein was right when he wrote of how imperfect and limited our knowledge of nature is. And Berlin was right to condemn the rigidity of monistic ideals.

As we leave notions of mathematical perfection and final unification behind, what do we have left? A universe that thrives on the imperfect, on the manifestation of asymmetries from particles to galaxies; a universe that is no less fascinating for not hiding a “mind of God.”

Fundamental Imperfections

The argument doesn’t stop with fundamental physics. Life itself is only possible due to fundamental imperfections. Take, for example, the remarkable chirality, or handedness, of organic molecules. As Pasteur revealed more than 150 years ago, life seems to have a marked preference for molecules of specific spatial configurations. In modern times, we identify the amino acids that make up all proteins in living organisms as being “left -handed,” while the sugars that form the backbone of RNA and DNA are identified as being “right-handed.”

Handedness here relates to how these molecules are able to rotate the polarization of light either to the left or to the right, like the blades of a fan. The curious thing is that, when synthesized in the laboratory, these amino acids and sugars come out fifty-fifty. So, out of two choices, life picks only one.

No one knows why, although there are many tantalizing ideas. Perhaps, as I suggested in a recent paper, the choice of chirality depends on the complex interactions between the primitive organic chemistry and the early terrestrial environment of four billion years ago. Other life forms in other planets or moons may have opposite chirality to ours.

Survival by Genetic Mutation

As life developed, it only survived because of genetic mutations, themselves imperfections during the reproductive cycle. Life’s complexity, the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms, is an amazing feat of adaptability, of the symbiotic relationship between living creatures and Earth’s unique properties.

As we look out at our neighbors in this solar system, we see barren worlds, most probably devoid of life. What about the rest of the galaxy or even the universe as a whole? Current research indicates that simple life may not be so rare; but complex life, and, in particular, intelligent life, is a whole other story. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program, known as SETI, is 50 years old, but no radio signal from an alien civilization has been detected. Furthermore, the distances are vast; with current technology, it would take us over 110,000 years to arrive at the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

So, even if there are other intelligent life forms out there, we are, for all practical purposes, alone. This revelation should fill us with awe: we are how the universe thinks about itself. And for this reason, we have the moral obligation to preserve life at all cost. Not bad for a species that has only a limited knowledge of reality.

About Marcelo Gleiser

Marcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the recipient of the Presidential Fellow Award from the White House and the National Science Foundation, as well as several literary awards. He is the author of A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe (Free Press), published in April 2010.

Developing a Database of New York Battery Test Sites

An Academy team completed a needs assessment project for NY-BEST.

Published April 22, 2010

By Adrienne J. Burke

The Academy recently completed a needs assessment project for the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST). NY-BEST is an industry-led coalition of New York energy storage professionals. Their goal is to establish New York as an industry leader in the energy storage sector by accelerating the commercialization of relevant technologies developed in the state.

The Academy was asked to compile and analyze information on the energy storage testing needs and capabilities of New York’s research and business community. The team was tasked with determining what the statewide needs and capabilities are for testing batteries for use in cars and heavier duty transportation as well as energy storage devices for the electric grid.

A Diligent Assessment

In early March, the Academy submitted an assessment to NY-BEST based on reviews of 24 survey responses and 69 research proposals by stakeholders, as well as interviews with more than 40 battery researchers in New York. The Academy recommended the creation of a database for use by NY-BEST members that would identify and describe available capabilities around the state. The Academy also recommended that the state create a new position for a “testing facilitator” who could assist organizations in matching needs with capabilities and identify common unmet needs in the area of battery testing.

Ben Levitan, a program associate involved with this effort, says, “Our goal was to come up with an inventory of the energy storage device testing capabilities in the state and to highlight the needs for particular energy storage testing capabilities. As the project progressed, it became clear that the needs across the state were diverse and divergent, and that a database would be highly useful.” A working prototype of the database, built upon the Academy’s research, is currently available to NY-BEST members.

Also read: The Economic Imperative for Better Battery Technology

The Role of Technology in Drug Development

Biophysicist Maria Freire draws inspiration from her work which involves putting more emphasis on developing drugs for underserved populations than on chasing profits.

Published December 1, 2009

By Maria Freire, as told to Abigail Jeffries

Maria Freire

I was born and raised in Lima, Peru, where my extended family lives. After attending university in Lima, where I received my bachelor’s degree, I came to the US on a Fulbright Foundation scholarship to pursue my doctorate in biophysics at the University of Virginia. It was my good fortune to be able to remain in the US and to embark upon what some considered a peculiar career path.

The journey began when I went to Capitol Hill as a Congressional Science Fellow from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I worked in the offices of then-Congressman Norm Mineta, who was on the Science and Technology Committee, and Senator Jay Rockefeller. In this context, I realized that a piece of legislation called the Federal Technology Transfer Act was moving forward.

This legislation allowed government laboratories to protect their intellectual property and encouraged the commercialization of these inventions. The Bayh-Dole Act had already been passed to allow universities and businesses to retain title to intellectual property developed with federal funds and to license their rights to for-profit entities. Through exposure to these complementary acts, I began to understand the transformational potential of technology transfer.

A Serendipitous Path

After finishing my fellowship on the Hill, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, recruited me to help start the new Graduate School. It was there that after a couple of years I let them know that I wanted to focus on the up-and-coming field of technology transfer. Surprised, my boss asked, “What do you know about patents?” I confessed that I didn’t actually know anything about them, but they gave me the chance and I established the university’s first Office of Technology Development. It’s that kind of serendipitous path–a non-traditional approach to science–that leads to unexpected opportunities. I learned an enormous amount, and I loved it.

From there, I went to the US National Institutes of Health where I directed the Office of Technology Transfer. I was responsible for the development and implementation of technology transfer policies and procedures for the Department of Health and Human Services, and for the patenting and licensing activities for NIH and the Food and Drug Administration. This was a fabulous position, at a remarkable point in history, tackling thorny issues such as the patenting of human genes, which few had thought about before.

The Most Successful Technology Transfer Operation

At NIH, I wanted to assess success not only using financial metrics, but also on the impact a commercial application or the transfer of technology would have on the population. When it came down to a decision between having NIH earn more royalties on technology it had developed versus allowing the technology to move forward and benefit people, the decision was very clear.

At the end of the day, this was technology the taxpayers had funded, and the benefit to the taxpayers was to make sure the new drug, vaccine, or diagnostic tool was available to them. I am pleased to say we were able to achieve this balance, making OTT the most successful technology transfer operation in the US government.

The transfer of technology for cancer or diabetes or other indications for which there was a large, profitable commercial market, was entirely feasible. However, we couldn’t manage to give away technology associated with indications like malaria or cholera, in spite of the huge impact these would have on global health. I found this extremely frustrating.

In 2001 when the opportunity arose to work on developing a drug for tuberculosis, I left NIH and became the first CEO of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development. There were three of us, we had a seed grant of $15 million from the Rockefeller Foundation. Over six years, we grew to a team of about 40 people with over $200 million and the support of U.S. and European governments and the Gates Foundation. This was no longer technology transfer; it was the development of drugs for an underserved population, and it was inspirational.

What’s Next?

Once the TB Alliance was poised to succeed, I wondered, “What’s next?” That’s when the Lasker Foundation knocked on my door. At Lasker, I can look at science from the perspective of what has been accomplished and the gaps that still exist, and I can try to focus the right sources and support on what science can do that’s transformational. Lasker presents awards through a juried process—an extraordinary panel consisting of 25 scientists, many Lasker or Nobel Laureates or both—aimed at identifying accomplishments that have profoundly influenced a scientific field and by honoring scientific, clinical, and public service careers that leave us in awe.

Lasker is usually first at recognizing such outstanding work; scientists tend to get the Nobel Prize after they have received the Lasker, and if one wins the Lasker, he or she has been vetted by the brightest in the world. The Lasker Foundation illuminates the paths of where things came from and where we believe they have the potential to go. Part of my interest is in trying to present the excitement and the transformational potential of biomedical science to the next generation of students, through increased funding of biomedical science, through the example of our Lasker Laureates, and through identifying areas of science with global impact on which we have not yet shone an appropriate light.

A Non-Traditional Route

When I was growing up, the expectation was for scientists to go into academia. Early on I realized this was not the route I wanted to take. Now scientists have the option of going into a vast number of fields, from biotechnology to the computer industry—there are many alternative possibilities. My career choices seemed odd for the times, but for me it wasn’t difficult to take this non-traditional route; it made all the sense in the world.

Also read: The Evolution of an Environmental Scientist

About the Authors

Marie Freier is the President of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundaton. She has been an Academy member since 2005 and holds a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Virgina. She has received a Fulbright Fellowship, two US Congressional Science Fellowships, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, the 1999 Arthur S. Flemming Award, and the 2002 Bayh-Dole Award In her free time she enjoys furniture refinishing and mystery novels.

Abigail Jeffries is a freelance health and science reporter based in Tolland, CT.

Informing the New Age of Human Space Flight

Can NASA afford to look beyond the international space station given budget constraints?

Published August 13, 2009

By Adrienne J. Burke

Academy member Norman Augustine, who chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee on strengthening research and education in science and technology, has another critical assignment. He’s chairing an expert panel investigating options for the future of the U.S. space program.

NASA convened the committee in response to a request by President Obama and the Office of Science and Technology Policy in May. The panel, which heard from former astronaut Sally Ride and others in Washington, DC, held its last scheduled public hearing August 12. It has until the end of the month to deliver its report.

Ride told the committee that the U.S. can’t afford to send humans on any missions beyond those to the international space station – such as to Mars – without boosting NASA’s budget. Augustine, former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, acknowledged that, “If we do want a strong space program, we might have to face up to investing more,” according to the New York Times.

A Long and Illustrious Career

Augustine has had a long and illustrious career in the worlds of science and engineering. In addition to his long-standing Academy membership and tenure at Lockheed Martin Corp., he serves on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council. He also is a former undersecretary of the Army and served as chairman and principal officer of the American Red Cross

He has been honored with numerous awards, including the National Medal of Technology and the U.S. Department of Defense’s highest civilian award, the Distinguished Service Medal, given to him five times. He also received the 2005 AAAS Philip Hauge Abelson Prize and the 2006 Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Augustine was among several experts who testified before Congress in 2007 on the NAS report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. The report, released in 2005, was requested by Congress as a way to address concerns that the U.S. was falling behind other nations in assuring the adequacy of its scientific and technical infrastructure and pipeline of young investigators.

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A Global Advisor on Science and Technology

The Mexican flag with a castle-like structure in the background.

Expertise from The New York Academy of Sciences is helping regions around the world to build capacity in their own R&D efforts.

Published June 2, 2009

By Adrienne J. Burke

Image courtesy of Leonid Andronov via stock.adobe.com.

The New York Academy of Sciences’ (the Academy’s) reputation as a world-leading scientific event host and neutral convener of meetings among industry, academia, government, and NGOs has special value in what many are calling the “Knowledge Century,” where scientific and technical expertise will be the drivers of growth and sustainable development. People charged with building such capacity around the world are increasingly calling upon the Academy for guidance.

When the New York State Foundation for Science and Technology Innovation wanted to identify technological areas of importance to New York, it called on the Academy for help. After presenting its analysis of the state’s R&D strengths to stakeholders, the Academy helped NYSTAR identify clean technology as a growth area. Later, the Academy reconvened the group to examine specific strengths, opportunities, and models of clean-tech development. Leaders of the UK’s Global Medical Excellence Cluster (GMEC) also sought guidance from the Academy in breaking down the walls that prevented flow of knowledge among their research institutions.

Rick Trainor, president of King’s College, says the GMEC community of six universities, two hospitals, three corporations, and the London Development Agency wanted to promote collaboration, and was attracted to the Academy’s track record for nurturing partnerships.

“The Academy was neutral, it was interdisciplinary, and it was coming from another metropolis with a track record for bringing academic institutions there together,” Trainor says.

Bridging Public and Private Research

And when Mexico City’s Mayor decided to bridge the public and private research sectors in his city, he asked the Academy to show him how. The result was a four-day science and innovation conference in Mexico City in September, convened by the Academy and the administration of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón. Some 300 corporate leaders, scientists, government officials, educators, investors, and students attended. With tracks examining Mexico City’s strengths in health, innovation, green energy, urban infrastructure, and science education and careers, the gathering spurred discussion about next steps toward developing a knowledge economy.

Advising groups outside of its hometown is becoming a new business for the Academy. To respond to requests from governments for guidance on policies and investments in science-and-technology-based innovation and economic development, the Academy has developed an advisory program.

“We’re leveraging our strengths as a uniquely independent organization with a broad knowledge of global science and a deep expertise in building communities that include all stakeholders in science and technology,” says Rene Baston, the Academy’s Chief Business Officer. “The goal of our ‘cluster’ activities is to develop and link knowledge centers around the world.”

What’s the value of this work to Academy members? “We’re advancing science,” says Karin Pavese, Vice President, Innovation and Sustainability. “We’re translating one of the Academy’s core competencies—to bridge disparate communities and build robust networks—to other parts of the world.”

And as scientists in Mexico City and other emerging sci-tech clusters join the Academy, all members benefit from being linked to a wider circle of scientific excellence.

Also read: Aligning Scientific Efforts in Mexico

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