Building the Illinois Innovation Economy Summary of a Symposium (2013) / Chapter Skim
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Panel II: Federal R&D Strategies
Panel II: Federal R&D Strategies
Pages 66-81
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From page 66... ...
Peterson began with an overview of the National Science Foundation (NSF) -- a national funding agency with no labs of its own.
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From page 67... ...
Examples of basic research areas within advanced manufacturing included complex systems design, cyber-based approaches, materials design, and scalable manufacturing. The National Science Foundation is also investing substantially in "secure and trustworthy cyber space (SaTC)
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From page 68... ...
"They are especially important at NSF, because unlike DoD, NASA, and some other agencies, we will never buy a product we have invested in. So we can invest in any good idea." Some companies built on NSF SBIR research include IntraLase Corp, Bluefin Labs, Inc., and ABS Materials.
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From page 69... ...
imaging. He concluded with several examples for which initial basic research investments by NSF provided substantial momentum toward successful commercial products or companies: SBIR support of Qualcomm: In 1985, Andrew Viterbi and six colleagues formed "QUALlity COMMunications", and in 1987 NSF provided $265,000 in SBIR funding for single-chip implementation of the Viterbi decoder.
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From page 70... ...
He called ONR "the Navy-Marine corps bank for funding research." More formally, the ONR mission, as defined by Public Law 588 of 1946, is "to plan, foster, and encourage scientific research in recognition of its paramount importance to future naval power and national security." Among the innovation milestones of ONR, he said, were development of a "drone" airplane in 1916 that could fly by radio control; the timing mechanism that allows the GPS system to work; and early technologies to launch terrestrial satellites. He proposed a fundamental distinction between innovation and invention.
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From page 71... ...
The real acceleration of this strategy, he said, occurred with the government's decision to use public funding to support science during the Vannevar Bush era after World War II. With that decision, the ONR became the first federal funding agency, predating the NSF, and DARPA.
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From page 72... ...
The projects under the category of innovative naval prototypes are the technologies that "sailor or marines don't know they need yet, but the best science can produce." For example, the ONR can see that in order to sustain its technological leadership, it will have to develop complex new systems, such as directed energy,30 ship-borne laser weapons, tactical satellites, electromagnetic railguns,31 and persistent littoral undersea surveillance. Such high-risk, highpayoff programs may cost hundreds of millions of dollars over five years and require the involvement of department leadership.
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From page 73... ...
Lee proposed an innovative approach to research on one of the most intractable research challenges -- discovering cures for cancer -- and demonstrated that even the largest federal agencies can have the flexibility to experiment with unusual strategies. The need to innovate in this case, he said, was apparent because of three stark realities.
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From page 74... ...
Second, there is virtually no saving therapy for disseminated or metastasized cancers, which cause more than 90 percent of cancer deaths. "As the disease begins to spread," he said, "no matter where it starts, the data shows your ultimate outcome grows dismally worse the farther the disease spreads." Third, there has been virtually no change in this reality in the four decades since the "war on cancer" was proclaimed by President Nixon.32 In fact, unlike other major disease killers, cancer continues to take nearly the same toll it did in 1950.
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From page 75... ...
He said we absolutely needed to build programs that had broad deployment of data and tools for everyone in order to empower the entire cancer research continuum -- not just basic science or treatment or diagnosis or prevention." At the NCI, Dr. Lee's Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives (CSSI)
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From page 76... ...
It was described as a "comprehensive genomic characterization that defines human glioblastoma genes and core pathways." "We found," he said, "despite everybody's disbelief, a couple of genes no one had ever associated with brain cancer." This energized the scientific community, many of them not funded by CSSI, to use this reference genome, like a chemical engineer would use a steam table, to find additional signatures. In 2009, a group using the reference data found that response to aggressive therapy differs by subtype, which allowed new ways to exclude patients who were unlikely to respond to the drug.
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From page 77... ...
As such, he said that the first follow-up to the genome program was the Cancer Target Discovery and Development Network (CTD2) which accelerates the translation of patient genomic data into clinical application.
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From page 78... ...
Mirkin and others agreed, and helped persuade then NCI external scientific advisors that this was possible. This effort has now entered its second phase, he said, which builds upon more than five clinical trials launched in the first phase, and would be even more clinically focused.
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From page 79... ...
" he asked. To tackle this, CSSI began a bold move of inviting participation of scientists outside of the cancer fields for whom large data sets are a familiar part of their own work.
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From page 80... ...
Similarly, research centers have to run an equivalent gauntlet, such as proving the value of a diagnostic or therapeutic candidate, only to find that after clinical trials, "the funding just stops and you face a different group now and there is no connection between the two. Unless we close those gaps it's hard to imagine progress." He asked whether there was a strategy within NCI to adopt a model that more closely resembled that of DARPA, which was "We want to see you at the next level fast, here is a check." They can't do that currently, nor can the SBIR program or other agencies do this.
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From page 81... ...
"All the really good collaborations happen where the action is. That is at the program officer level, where people are specifically looking for partnerships, such as groups at NCI, DOE, and ONR." He cautioned, however, that he sometimes "almost has to be careful about describing all the great collaborations" because of potential criticism from those who misunderstand collaboration as duplication.
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