Obama sets goal for largest R&D investment in US history

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Peter Harsha covered this a couple days ago at the CRA’s Policy Blog, but I managed to miss it then.

The President used a speech before the members of the National Academy of Sciences today to reiterate his commitment to boosting the U.S. investment in science and technology. In his remarks before the opening session of the National Academy’s annual meeting, Obama set a goal of seeing the U.S. invest 3 percent or more of its annual GDP in basic and applied scientific research funding. This level of investment would represent the largest investment in American history — an even larger share of GDP than the U.S. invested during the space race of the 1950s and 60s.

More (with links) in Peter’s post. Some key items to note are that Obama pledged to finish the 10 year doubling of funding for NIST, the DOE Office of Science, and the NSF and that he launched ARPAP-E, a DOE clone of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The President also announced the members of his President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST), including well-known names like Eric Schmidt (Google), Craig Mundie (MS), and David Shaw (D.E. Shaw). The PCAST, and PITAC before it, have traditionally been supporters of high end computing, and we certainly hope that continues with this latest incarnation.

Comments

  1. I guess the White House figures that as long as the deficits are running at over $1 trillion a year, what’s a little extra spending among friends… I pity the future generations who are going to have to pick up the tab for all this spending!