快猫短视频

What鈥檚 the difference between working under Barack Obama and under George W. Bush?

Pace and intensity. The Obama administration understands the role of science in dealing with national problems. It鈥檚 built into their priorities and the people they鈥檝e appointed to get the agenda moving.

You鈥檝e received a huge sum of money to help get the economy going, but basic research takes years to turn into products. How is that one-off sum going to help the economy?

Long term, there is a recurring return as postdocs and researchers use the knowledge they have acquired during their research. Education keeps paying us back, and these people will help us to move out of recession.

How are you going to use that $3 billion?

We haven鈥檛 had the money in the past to fund all our good research proposals. This gives us a one-time opportunity to clear the backlog.

Won鈥檛 this give you a headache in three years鈥� time, when the grants you award run out?

If we plan well, this will not be a major factor. President Obama has plans for a big increase in National Science Foundation (NSF) funding in 2012. By integrating our usual budget increases with the stimulus money, we will make this work.

One pot of money being highlighted by the NSF is $92 million extra for 鈥渙ut-of-the-box鈥� research ideas. What鈥檚 that about?

We want our grants to be transformative. We鈥檙e now looking beyond the frontier of knowledge where it鈥檚 murkier and more difficult to see what is ahead. We want to seek out new paradigms and create new fields of research. We are challenging the community to be less conservative and to think more laterally. We want to take more risks. That鈥檚 in keeping with the rate of change of science, which is much faster than it was in the past. We have to be more nimble. One of the risks may create the next internet: just think about that.

鈥淚n the polls 72% of Americans think that scientific research will improve their quality of life, compared with 6 per cent who disagree鈥�