Tag Archives: Rob Annan

Canadian business triumphs again! US company acquires Cananano Technologies

As I have noted on more than one occasion, the ‘success’ model in Canadian technology-based businesses is predicated on a buy-out, i.e. develop and grow your business so you can sell it and retire. The news about Canadian Nano Technologies (Canano) fits very well into this model. From the Jan. 12, 2011 news item on Nanotechnology Now,

Arkansas-based NanoMech, Inc. announced today that it has acquired Canadian Nano Technologies, LLC (Canano).

Canano (www.CanadianNano.com) provides custom engineered nanopowders designed to solve unique problems, adding value to products that span multiple industries including electronics, agriculture, solar energy, and aerospace. The company was founded to develop and commercialize applications of pure metal nanopowders. Using a proprietary gas condensation process partially based on research carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Canano produces a wide variety of high-quality nanoparticles. Their proprietary process is unique and offers significant improvements over other nanoparticle production/collection processes.

NanoMech is a leading designer and manufacturer of nanoparticle-based additives, coatings and coating deposition systems.

…

Richard Tacker, Founder and CEO of Canano said, “Our customers have seen the value that our custom-engineered nanopowders bring to their products, and as a result the demand for our materials is growing rapidly. By joining NanoMech we can take advantage of their excellent management team, nanomanufacturing expertise, and scale up our production capacity to serve existing and future customers.”

The Canadian technology certainly has some interesting applications,

The nanopowder technology applications include advance methods of improving: nutrient replacement fertilizers and environmentally safe pesticides and conductive inks for printed circuit boards, RFID’s, photovoltaic printed solar cells, solar connectors, surface coatings, new generation ballistics, RF shielding, self-cleaning surfaces, solar heaters, condensers , silicon wafers, solid rocket fuels, and primers. Other applications include textiles, nano fabrics for clothing and car seat covers, odor free materials, cosmetics, sunscreens, deodorants, lip balm, cleansing products, surface protectants, cleaning chemicals, antibacterial coatings, scratch resistant surfaces, thermal barriers, super hydrophobic, dielectrics, wound dressings, lighter, stronger sports equipment, smart materials, air purifiers, water filtration and bio-aerosols, safety, sun and high definition glasses, non-reflective and smart shielding, odor free refrigerators and washing machines, automotive parts, chip resistant paints, non-corrosives, cement, concrete, and fuel savers, and much more.

Meanwhile, the discussion about innovation in Canada continues as we try to figure out why we aren’t better at innovating as per a Jan. 12, 2011 article by John Lorinc for University Affairs. (Thanks to Rob Annan for the tip via Twitter.) Lorinc notes in his article,

In its ninth report on the state of Ontario’s competitiveness, the task force headed by Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, argues that low productivity in the country’s manufacturing heartland has led to low prosperity, revealing an “innovation gap.” Professor Martin writes that public policy is more concerned with science-driven inventions that, while very important to society, won’t necessarily lead to products and services that consumers want – and thus products and services that could improve Ontario’s innovation capabilities. [emphasis mine]

I am not sure that a focus on ‘science-driven inventions’ is the big problem. Certainly our inventions seem attractive to large foreign companies and corporations as per the Canano experience and many others. The article even points out that Apple is currently pursuing RIM, which is, for now, the largest Canadian technology company.

The perspective from William Polushin from McGill is closer to my own,

For many years, William Polushin has taught a core international business undergraduate course at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. Each year Mr. Polushin (who’s also founding director of the Desautels program for international competitiveness, trade and innovation) polls his students about their attitudes towards entrepreneurship and innovation by asking whether they see themselves as the next Bill Gates – in other words, as individuals who will come up with an innovation that could be a game-changer. Year after year, the response rate is consistent: only about 10 percent say they see themselves in this kind of role. By comparison, at a recent conference on North American competitiveness in Mexico City, he asked the students in the audience to raise their hands if they saw themselves running their own businesses in the future. “Well over half put up their hands,” he says.

The results of his straw polls tell a story. Canada has not been especially successful at fostering an innovation mindset among successive generations of business grads and entrepreneurs. Mr. Polushin says, “We don’t have a strong risk orientation in our own country.” [emphasis mine] Most of his students aspire to work in large companies, even though the supply of Canadian-based multinationals continues to shrink due to consolidation. The result, he says, is that much R&D and innovation activity occurs elsewhere.

For a bit of contrast,

Although he’s based at the epicentre of Ottawa’s policy machinery, veteran Statistics Canada economist John Baldwin has a message that runs sharply counter to much of the conventional wisdom that emanates from the capital’s think tanks. “There’s an awful lot of innovation taking place,” says Dr. Baldwin, director of StatsCan’s economic analysis division. The problem is that Canadian policy doesn’t recognize it as such.

I think that’s true too and illustrates the point that discussion about innovation in Canada is complex and nuanced. I recommend reading Lorinc’s entire article.

Todd Babiuk’s article for the Edmonton Journal, Canada failing to create culture of innovation, provides an insider’s perspective from Peter Hackett,

He was, for five years, the president and CEO of a now-shuttered endowment fund called Alberta Ingenuity. The mandate of Alberta Ingenuity, devised to be independent of the provincial government, was to encourage and support innovation in science, technology and engineering. This innovation would lead to spinoff companies that would create fabulous wealth and opportunity for Albertans, attract talented people, and diversify the economy.

Then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t the president and CEO of an independent organization. Alberta Ingenuity has been replaced by Alberta Innovates, and it is operated by the department of Advanced Education and Technology.

“What I take from it, in terms of lessons, is it’s thrilling to watch a group of people take a great product to the market,” said Hackett, in his current office at the University of Alberta’s National Institute for Nanotechnology, where he is a fellow. Before he arrived in Alberta, Hackett did similar work at the National Research Council in Ottawa, spinning Canadian research into businesses.

“But in 15 years of an innovation agenda, honestly,” he said, “governments have accomplished nothing.”

…

On a YouTube video shot at the Canadian Science Policy Centre in late 2010, Hackett criticizes the Canadian government’s unhelpful and backward interventions into business, through the tax system.

“If you’re making a profit, we’re going to help you. But if you’re growing, we won’t. [emphasis mine] In the U.S., it’s completely the other way around. That’s why they have a lot of small companies that grow into big companies.”

In the same video he outlines, briefly and rather devastatingly, the problem with venture capital in Canada. “Government’s intervention into venture capital has ruined the ability for Canadian companies to grow,” he says.

… “We created a tax break for investing in venture capital,” he said, in his office. “So it was about the tax break, not this great company: Facebook, whatever you like. It’s absurd!”

Point well taken regarding the tax break for venture capital. As I recall, there were similar issues with film funding tax breaks. These were addressed and finally, real movies as opposed to ‘tax break’ movies got funded. Part of the problem with government tax programmes such as tax breaks for venture capital funding or film funding is the law of unintended (and counterproductive) consequences and the extraordinarily long time it takes to resolve them.

There was one other point in Hackett’s interview, “If you’re making a profit, we’re going to help you. But if you’re growing, we won’t,” which is well illustrated by Rob Annan’s Nov. 30, 2010 posting (on the Researcher Form blog) where he discusses this phenomenon in the context of Medicago,

Medicago is a Canadian company that produces vaccines in tobacco plants instead of using traditional egg-production techniques. This allows a much more rapid development and deployment of seasonal and pandemic vaccines. Their proprietary technology, currently in phase I and II clinical trials, was developed in Canada thanks in part to government funding …

They’ve been awarded numerous Canadian business and technology awards. They have translated these investments and successes into millions of dollars in private sector investment and a public listing on the TSX. Not bad for a company based out of Quebec City.

So what’s wrong with this obvious success story?

Medicago made the news this week because the US Department of Defense is investing $21-million to build a 90,000 sq ft state-of-the art production facility in North Carolina. The facility will be able to produce 120-million pandemic vaccine doses annually or 40-million seasonal vaccine doses annually. In a news release, the US government recognizes the company’s ability to bolster domestic vaccine supply, respond more rapidly than traditional methods, and bring “hundreds of good paying jobs” to the region.

The 90,000 sq ft facility in North Carolina will dwarf the current estimated 15,000 sq ft dedicated to production in Quebec City, and will inevitably shift the company’s focus south.

The Canadian government’s response?

According to CBC news, Health Canada remains committed to egg-based vaccines …

While it’s discouraging to read about, I like to find hope in the fact that innovation in Canada is being discussed and folks seem to be interested in finding ways to promote and nurture innovation in Canada.

Thoughts on the Canadian science blogging scene and on the FrogHeart blog

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I thought the timing was right for a review of the Canadian science blogging scene. At this point there seems to be about 12 of us. I found 4 new (to me) blogs this year:

The Bubble Chamber which is maintained by the History of Science programme students at the University of Toronto. As you might expect, it’s very academic at times. You might find a recent posting, How to pursue science from the humanities, an interesting read.

CMBR is maintained by Colin Schultz. He’s a science journalist. I haven’t read it often enough to be able to comment on it although I am intrigued by an item he has about science and the movies.

PARS3C is maintained by Elizabeth Lowell, a science journalist and editor. She focuses on space exploration (not a very strong interest of mine). Here’s her profile of Rocket Scientista, a PhD student in astrophysics who discusses, amongst other things, why she thinks science blogging is important.

Nicole Arbour, a science and innovation officer in the UK’s Foreign Office in Ottawa, blogs about the science in Ottawa and in Canada regularly on a site maintained by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. One of her latest is titled, Science Policy in Canada, and features a video of Mehrdad Hariri, Chair of the Canada Science Policy Conference, talking about plans to create a science policy centre in Canada.

Colleagues that have stimulated my thinking and opened new vistas include,

Rob Annan on a blog that seems to have changed its name recently (glory halleluiah!) to Researcher Forum. (Rob, I will change my blog roll soon.) It was a blog developed as a consequence of a protest letter written to Stephen Harper’s Conservative government a few years back when science budgets were affected. Months after its inception, Rob Annan was asked to take on the job of blogging regularly. His writing on Canadian science policy is always thoughtful and thought-provoking. Here’s his latest one on innovation in Canada and some of the problems. And, here’s one of my favourites from June 29, 2010, Public has a right to influence research policy. It’s about multiple sclerosis and the ‘surgery cure’ that has excited an enormous amount of interest.

The Black Hole is a blog about what happens once you graduate from university. It’s mostly aimed at those who have PhDs or Masters degrees although I think anyone could benefit from the insights that Beth Snow and David Kent provide. They certainly opened my eyes up to some of the issues in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. There’s a very interesting and humourous response to a current discussion taking place about whether or not there are too many people getting doctoral degrees, Professionals in High Demand. They ran a series during the summer about work that graduate students can aspire to and that doesn’t involve becoming a professor at a university.

Gregor Wolbring, a professor at the University of Calgary, maintains probably one of the longest-running and well-known Canadian science blogs, Nano and Nano- Bio, Info, Cogno, Neuro, Synbio, Geo, Chem…. He doesn’t blog that frequently these days; his site biography indicates that he must be screamingly busy. It’s worth taking a look at his blog as he often features material that no one else does.

Strictly speaking these aren’t science blogs as I think of them but this is a review of the ‘scene’ as much as anything else and these blogs definitely contribute,

Jeff Sharom maintains the Science Canada blog whose goal “is to highlight science policy issues in Canada’s political arena and media.” He doesn’t offer any commentary so this site functions more as an aggregator or reader but he picks up just about everything on Canadian science policy and it’s definitely worth a look if you want to know about the latest news.

RRResearch is maintained by Rosie Redfield at the University of British Columbia. As she notes, “This is a research blog, not a conventional science blog. Most posts are not about published research or science in the public domain, but about my lab’s day-to-day research into the mechanism, function and evolution of DNA uptake by Haemophilus influenzae and other bacteria.” She’s probably best known for her response to a recent science controversy over arsenic and bacteria.

The rest of these are blogs that haven’t been updated for a few months or more or don’t fit easily into the notion of being a Canadian science blog.

Je vote pour la science has been maintained by Pascal Lapointe and his colleague, Josée Nadia Drouin. There hasn’t been a new podcast (yes, a Canadian science podcast blog) since May 2010. These are expensive and time-consuming and both Pascal and his colleague work for Agence Science-Presse (which is being kept current). If you do have the French language skills I do encourage you to check out both sites.

David Ng is a professor at the University of British Columbia and he is a member of a group blog (his two partners are both from the US). One of Dr. Ng’s most recent postings at The World’s Fair was titled, Crickets chirping and Collider Whales. There’s more about Dr. Ng and his various projects here.

Jay Ingram, co-host of Discovery Planet, maintained a blog , which featured podcasts, until Oct. 2008. I wonder if he will start it up again now that he’s retiring from Discovery Planet.

As for FrogHeart, I had a banner year bloggingwise. January 2010 statistics (AW stats. package) show the site as have 4225 visits in total and this month the site has clocked over 25,000 visits.That’s an increase of over 600%. In fact, FrogHeart consistently showed over 20,000 visits per month in the last quarter. Based on this data, I’m going to make the claim that as far as I know, FrogHeart is the largest, independent Canadian science blog.

Nanocrystalline cellulose is the most searched topic on my blog this year. It may not be the top search in every month but it’s consistently in my top 10. I want to thank Peter Julian, Rainer Becker, Charles McGovern, Richard Berry, Forrest H Bennett III, Leon Chua, Blaise Mouttet, Fern Wickson, Betty J. Morris, and Teri W. Odom who kindly provided answers to my questions (some were full length interviews while others were quick e-mail questions).

Please do contact me if I’ve missed something or someone or got something wrong.

I think 2010 was a better year for Canadian science blogging if you consider the addition of a couple new blogs as evidence (and I do). Many of the bloggers are independent, i.e., they self-fund their blogs and that suggests a big commitment.

I think at this point I’d like to highlight a December 28, 2010 article from the Calgary Herald on how to pour champagne by Tom Spears (from the article),

It took six French scientists and a lot of free samples to prove this, but the official word says you should pour Champagne down the side of a tall glass to preserve the fizz and the flavour.

Bubbles also last longer when your Champagne is really cold — about 4 C.

I wish a great 2011 for everyone and an even more active year for Canadian science blogging.

ETA Jan.19.11: I found another Canadian science blogger: Nassif Ghoussou, a professor of mathematics at the University of British Columbia. His blog is called Piece of Mind. Thanks to Rob Annan’s blog, Researcher Forum, for this find.

ETA Jan. 24.11: This is great. I found Cool Science today. The blogger, a science communicator and parent located in Ontario, focuses on something called ‘science parenting. From the blog’s About page,

This site is about raising a creative rationalist in an age of nonsense. It is about parents getting excited about science, learning and critical thinking. It is about smart parents raising smart kids who can think for themselves, make good decisions and discern the credible from the incredible.

Are there any other Canadian science bloggers I can add to this list? Please, do let me know.

Thoughts on nanotechnology and national science convos in Canada

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I was asked two weeks ago (via twitter in late October by @ Connexscience) this question, “What do you think is there value in bringing Nano types together with others?” in the context of my Oct. 28,2010 posting about the newly announced public engagement effort, Connex Science (CS). CS is soliciting comments and participation from the greater Canadian ‘science’ community to a create a national online science community (working title: HUB).

I use the word ‘greater’ to indicate that this intended to engage not just working scientists but students of all stripes, science teachers, engineers, citizen scientists, science communications personnel, science journalists, science museums, artists whose work (in one fashion or another) is oriented to or based in science, science writers (fiction and non fiction), science librarians, etc.

Getting back to the question about nano types and others, I answered, “Yes, there is value.” Then, I started thinking about it. The question itself assumes a nano community of sorts and that’s an interesting proposition.

First off, Canada unlike the US hasn’t created a nanotechnology community as such. The US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has acted as a hub or organizing principle in a way that Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) has not. From the NNI’s About page,

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is the program established in fiscal year 2001 to coordinate Federal nanotechnology research and development.

The NNI provides a vision of the long-term opportunities and benefits of nanotechnology. By serving as a central locus for communication, cooperation, and collaboration for all Federal agencies that wish to participate, the NNI brings together the expertise needed to guide and support the advancement of this broad and complex field.

The NNI creates a framework for a comprehensive nanotechnology R&D program by establishing shared goals, priorities, and strategies, and it provides avenues for each individual agency to leverage the resources of all participating agencies.

Today the NNI consists of the individual and cooperative nanotechnology-related activities of 25 Federal agencies with a range of research and regulatory roles and responsibilities. Thirteen of the participating agencies have R&D budgets that relate to nanotechnology, with the reported NNI budget representing the collective sum of these. The NNI as a program does not fund research; however, it informs and influences the Federal budget and planning processes through its member agencies.

The enterprise here in Canada has been much more fragmented despite NINT’s existence.From NINT’s About page,

The National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) is an integrated, multi-disciplinary institution involving researchers in physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, informatics, pharmacy and medicine. Established in 2001, it is operated as a partnership between the National Research Council and the University of Alberta, and is jointly funded by the Government of Canada, the Government of Alberta and the university.

NINT researchers are focused on the revolutionary work being done at the nano-scale, the world of individual atoms or molecules. The main focus of nanotechnology research is the integration of nano-scale devices and materials into complex nanosystems that are connected to the outside world. The long-term objective is to discover ‘design rules’ for nanotechnology, and develop platforms for building nanosystems and materials that can be constructed and programmed for a particular application.

NINT’s Business Development Office will assist Edmonton-based nanotechnology firms. The goal is to develop a cluster of nanotechnology companies using and producing nanotech. NINT will be the nexus of this cluster by fostering collaboration, providing access to the facility and researcher expertise, and assisting companies with commercialization, licensing and other business activities.

Located in Edmonton, Alberta on the University of Alberta campus, NINT’s 20,000 square-metre building is one of the world’s most technologically advanced research facilities and houses the quietest laboratory space in Canada.

NINT is one of many institutes associated with the National Research Council as opposed to the NNI which sits by itself. Rob Annan in his April 7, 2010 posting at ‘Don’t leave Canada behind’ offers a history and a lively analysis of the organization at large. Here’s an excerpt,

Last week, the Government announced John McDougall’s appointment as the new President of the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada. His appointment provides an opportunity to point something out:

The NRC is a mess.

And the mess of the NRC neatly encapsulates much that’s wrong with Canadian science policy. No direction, no cohesion, multiple conflicting purposes.

What is the NRC?

The NRC was founded more than 90 years ago to advise the government on matters related to science and technology. It evolved into a federal research laboratory with the construction of the Sussex Dr. [Drive] labs in the 1930s, and was the focus of Canada’s research efforts during WWII. Post-war, the NRC expanded and was a major source of Canadian research success, with notable achievements like the invention of the pacemaker, development of Canola and the crash position indicator.

The last time (about 2 years ago) I checked, the NINT (located in Edmonton) was funded 50% federally through the NRC and 50% by the province of Alberta. I’ve tried a number of times to get more information about NINT (I chased Martha Piper, one of the board members, for 2 years and I chased Nils Petersen, director general, for about 4 months and was never able to get a response to my questions about NINT). I mention this because the information I’ve received has come from the province of Alberta naturally, this makes it very Alberta-centric). That situation has changed in the last few months and there’s been slightly more information of general interest (a few twitter messages and one news release, this represents all of the public communication in 2010 so far) coming from NINT.

As far as I can tell, national communication efforts are close to nonexistent and, if there’s no communication, there’s no community. Pushing this further, f you don’t have a community, then you can’t mix with other communities.

There are meetings and conferences but they attract nanotechnology experts who focus on specific areas (such as biocomposites) and any networks that arise are very loose and informal—the kind of thing that tends to die quickly due to lack of attention.

There are a few provincial networks, notably in Alberta, Ontario, and Québec. They usually include businesses, academics (the majority membership), and venture capitalists and are heavily focussed on commercialization.

Amongst academic scientists, there are nanoscientists (sometimes they describe themselves as working in nanotechnology) in Canada but they are often part of a longer-standing academic department, e.g. physics or chemistry or engineering.

Funding for nanotechnology (other than NINT’s) is a grab bag of monies from different ministries and the tricouncil funding agencies (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council). I received a copy(from MP Peter Julian’s office) of the government’s response to his request for information about federal funding for nanotechnology. It’s some 80 pages of data organized in some fashion that I don’t entirely fathom.

This scattered approach to the nanotechnology enterprise may or may not be a good strategy. It’s possible that ‘nanoscience’ or ‘nanotechnology’ will fade into physics or chemistry or engineering as a specialization within the discipline rather than emerging as a distinct specialty. I’ve already seen some discussion along those lines as per this October 3, 2010 entry on Richard Jones’s Soft Machines blog,

Last week I spent a couple of days in Darmstadt, at the second meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET). This is a relatively informal group of scholars in the field of Science and Technology Studies from Europe, the USA and some other countries like Brazil and India, coming together from disciplines like philosophy, political science, law, innovation studies and sociology.

Arie Rip (president of the society, and to many the doyen of European science and technology studies) kicked things off with the assertion that nanotechnology is, above all, a socio-political project, and the warning that this object of study was in the process of disappearing (a theme that recurred throughout the conference). [emphasis mine] Not to be worried by this prospect, Arie observed that their society could keep its acronym and rename itself the Society for the Study of Newly Emerging Technologies.

Getting back to the question about ‘nano types getting together with other science types’, for me, has a subtext: how do we identify and reach out to the various science communities in Canada and what value would they see in connecting with each other in a national conversation? I’m going to add another question here, can we get them to use social media publicly? [Note the emphasis] As far as I can tell there is only a very small Canadian science community in the public blogosphere (at the most, there are about one dozen blogs) or on Twitter (am not sure about other social media).

The social media issue is an interesting one. Here’s an excerpt from an article about government agencies (where much science is practiced) and social media by Stephanie Levitz in the Winnipeg Free Press,

For bureaucrats used to filling out forms in triplicate and waiting days for approval to open their mouths, freedom in the form of 140 characters was a novelty.

But then the Clerk of the Privy Council started tweeting.

Since Wayne Wouters began using the social messaging site, his online presence has been taken as a call to thumbs by the public service.

Tweeted one user: “When the Clerk is tweeting, it shows the rest of (the Government of Canada) that it’s ok for the rest of us.”

Well, not quite.

As government departments rush to embrace social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to connect with the public, there are different rules for individual public servants.

Interestingly given the concerns about their scientists being muzzled (my Sept. 16 2010 posting), Natural Resources Canada, amongst federal agencies, is considered a model for using social media,

Many departments are taking their lead from Natural Resources Canada.

The department is widely held up as the gold standard for how, and why, public servants need access to the web.

They started with a wiki, an online site that allows people to post and edit content, with the goal of getting 101 users over 101 days as a test of whether people were interested in using the technology.

At the end of their 101 days, they had 270 users and several hundred pages of content, said Peter Cowan, director of enterprise information management for Natural Resources.

Now they have internal blogs and an internal video channel, all of which helped break down barriers between different sectors of the department. [emphasis mine]

Yes, it’s all internal communication for Natural Resources Canada. So the social media are being embraced from within which begs the question: can scientists and other staff from Natural Resources Canada and other departments, such as Environment Canada and Health Canada said to have muzzles, participate in a public national science convo?

All of that said, I do see signs of life with scientists organizing a science policy conference for themselves two years in a row; interest in citizen scientists; and a Canadian science blogosphere which has recently attracted some new members. I am hopeful this HUB idea will enrich these efforts and allow them to develop deep roots.

As for my speculations about the Canadian nanotechnology scene, if your mileage varies about that or anything else I’ve got here and you feel inclined to comment, please do.

Canadian R & D funding review and intellectual property as the Coalition for Action on Innovation in Canada

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Rob Annan at the Don’t leave Canada behind blog has issued kudos along with some measured comments about the government’s Oct. 14, 2010 announcement of an expert panel to discuss ideas for greater Canadian business innovation and to review Canada’s research and development (R&D) funding for business,

“Through this panel, our government is taking action to improve its support for innovation and to ensure that investments are effective for Canadian businesses and workers,” said Minister of State Goodyear. “We are committed to helping Canadian businesses acquire the tools they need to grow and create new jobs; this panel will help achieve that goal.”

…

“Canadian business spends less per capita on research and development, innovation and commercialization than most other industrialized countries, despite the Government of Canada investing more than $7 billion annually to encourage business R&D,” said Minister Blackburn [Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Minister of Veteran Affairs and Minister of State Agriculture (Quebec)]. “This review will help provide recommendations on how the government can bolster Canadian businesses, create jobs and bring new ideas into the market place for the benefit of all Canadians.”

The panel will conduct a comprehensive review of all existing federal support for business R&D to see how this support could be enhanced to make sure federal investments are effective and delivering maximum results for Canadians.

The Research and Development Review Expert Panel is composed of six eminent Canadians chosen for their experience in business, academia and government as well as their knowledge of R&D and innovation practices and policies.

The panel’s chair, Thomas Jenkins, is Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of Open Text. The other panel members are Dr. Bev Dahlby of the University of Alberta, Dr. Arvind Gupta of the University of British Columbia, Mrs. Monique F. Leroux of the Desjardins Group, Dr. David Naylor of the University of Toronto and Mrs. Nobina Robinson of Polytechnics Canada.

I’m not familiar with anyone on the panel although I have heard of Open Text and the Desjardins Group.

Rob notes, a type of research which has been excluded from the review, in his Oct. 15, 2010 posting,

So, basic research funding through the tricouncil will be untouched by the review. Which is good, since that isn’t where the problems in our innovation pipeline are to be found (there may well be all sorts of problems with basic research funding, but that’s a task for another panel…). It’s in effective knowledge transfer and business R&D where the problems seem to lie. [emphases mine]

As per Don’t leave Canada behind, a group of business people headed up by John Manley and Paul Lucas, Coalition for Action on Innovation in Canada, announced on October 14, 2010 (the same day as the expert panel was announced) a plan with recommendations to achieve the same goals. (You can download the plan from here.) From Rob’s posting,

A coalition of Canadian business leaders and high-profile academic administrators is working to frame the discussion. The blue-chip membership released a set of recommendations yesterday (the timing not coincidental) for how it wants the government to act. My sense is that their plan includes too much of “more of the same” recommendations – expanding SRED, expanding tax credits for innovation investment – rather than any really innovative ideas.

Like Rob, I too took a very quick look at the plan. I agree that there’s a lot of the ‘same old, same old’ recommendations and what popped out for me was the insistence on this,

Adopt the world’s strongest intellectual property regime.

A robust climate for innovation is only possible if Canada’s regulatory processes encourage the development and launch of innovative products and if our laws ensure that inventors and those who invest in their ideas can fairly reap the rewards of their work. Canada should aim for a reputation as the best place in the world in which to research, develop and bring to market new products and processes. To achieve that goal, it is imperative that Canada seize current opportunities to improve its protection of intellectual property and thereby create a more attractive environment for investment in innovation. Beyond legal and regulatory changes, businesses need consistent, timely and relevant treatment of intellectual property developed at post-secondary institutions. IP policies at institutions and granting agencies, including those dealing with disclosure and licensing, must facilitate collaborative research and encourage innovation. The business and academic sectors should launch a national dialogue aimed at creating a clear and consistent framework for IP agreements between individual companies and institutions.

The word ‘strongest’ in these contexts tends to be a synonym for control by whichever interest holds the patent. Heavy (strong?) control over IP (intellectual property) will mean less innovation and competition. Take for example India and its anti-retroviral drugs (my posting of Oct. 1, 2010 featuring an excerpt from Jenara Nerenberg’s article on the Fast Company website),

… The massive, low-cost ARV [anti-retrovirus] production industry in India has been made possible by the country’s patent laws. “Indian laws did not grant patents on a product, but only on a process to make it, which helped its drug firms to make cheaper versions and improved formulations using alternative methods,” SciDev.net reports.

…

But not everyone in the world sees those laissez faire patent laws as a good thing. India is in ongoing discussions with the World Trade Organization and the EU, but there is fear that increased patent requirements may dismantle the country’s thriving ARV production industry.

Note the difference between ‘strong’ and ‘laissez faire’ and the results in India. Personally, I’d like to see the world’s most balanced and flexible IP regime. If you have ideas about what you’d like to see considered in the review or recommendations of your own, check out Rob’s blog and contribute to his comments section where you’ll find some of my comments (once they’re moderated).

Grassroots science organizing in the UK

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There’s a lot of concern about impending cuts for funding science in the UK as signaled by Vince Cable’s (UK Secretary of State – Department for Business Innovation & Skills Sept, 8, 2010 speech), excerpted from Cable’s speech Science, Research and Innovation on the Dept. for Business Innovation & Skills webpage,

Over the next few weeks and months, major decisions will be made on Government spending priorities as part of a wider move to stabilise the country’s finances and rebalance the economy. They will help to define what we value as a nation and the direction in which we want to head. Investing in science and research is a critical part of that. I cannot prejudge the outcome but I know that my colleagues, including at the Treasury, value the contribution of UK science.

I have been arguing for years my concern over the way the British economy was distorted. Money borrowed for property speculation rather than productive investment and innovation. Too many top performing graduates heading straight for high finance rather than science and engineering.

It was clear to me and my colleagues that the British economy was becoming increasingly unbalanced in the short term, as the mountain of household debt built up. We were also unprepared for a long-term future where we need to earn our living in the world through high-tech, high-skills and innovation.

…

There is a school of thought which says that Government commitment to science and technology is measured by how much money we spend. Money is important both for the quality and quantity. But it is an input, not an output, measure. The question I have to address is can we achieve more with less?

In deciding priorities, there is a limit to how much I can dictate the course of events. Nor do I wish to. Research priorities and technical priorities are set at arms length from Government, and through peer review. That is right. Yet the Government spends £6bn a year supporting science and research and it is right that I should speak about strategic priorities.

I feel I should start by registering a personal interest when it comes to science. I’m one of few MPs to have at least started a science degree – well, it began as natural science and ended up as economics.

My constituency, Twickenham, is one of the major centres of scientific enquiry. It contains the National Physical Laboratory, a world-leading centre; the Laboratory of the Government Chemist; and a wide variety of companies involved in science, research and innovation.

I recently discovered one accidentally as a result of a parking dispute with local residents: FT Technologies which is one of two major companies in the world making wind monitoring and airflow measurement applications, much of its production being exported to China.

And one of my constituents is inventor Trevor Bayliss, best known for inventing the wind-up radio. He constantly reminds me of the parlous status and minimal support given to inventors whose ideas so often fail to find commercial application in the UK but are used overseas.

I would add that my youngest son, Hugo, is a very theoretical quantum physicist – based in Singapore.

You could say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But I am familiar with the language of science and the sorts of difficulties faced by scientists, researchers and inventors.

…

My preference is to ration research funding by excellence and back research teams of international quality – and screen out mediocrity – regardless of where they are and what they do.

Its is worth noting in the last RAE 54 per cent of submitted work was defined as world class and that is the area where funding should be concentrated.

Even a rationing of this kind presents problems. How do we allow room for new, unknown but bright people? How do we reduce, not increase, the time spent on applying for funding in a more competitive market?

There is a separate but critically important question of how we maximise the contribution of Government supported research to wealth creation.

I support, of course, top class “blue skies” research, but there is no justification for taxpayers money being used to support research which is neither commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding. [emphasis mine]

As I said earlier, it would be wrong to measure this in monetary terms alone. [emphasis mine] There are wider questions, regarding the UK’s openness as a society and its attractiveness as a destination for the brightest scientists, researchers and engineers from all over the world.

….

The Hauser review suggested a sensible approach – establishing a network of Technology and Innovation Centres, based on international models such as the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany. Both science minister David Willetts and I agree that it is a good way forward, and I am looking closely at the recommendations in the review and the value of investing in these in the context of the Spending Review.

But we should not simply be copying overseas models. The key point is that what works are business driven high technology clusters with academic links. [emphasis mine] We already have several: such as the Research Council campus at Harwell, and others such as Cambridge and potentially St Pancras – and we are working at how to develop this model further.

Despite Cable’s protests to the contrary and his attempts to ally himself with the scientific community, the focus here is on the bottom line and how science should be made to contribute. The reference to ‘blue skies research’ is notable as a way of diminishing it while simultaneously claiming its importance. Plus, it’s not just any ‘blue skies’ research, it must be ‘top class’. Unfortunately history, including science history, is littered with stories about theoretical work that was so far ahead of its time that it was dismissed by contemporaries.

I do understand that the UK’s economy is seriously troubled at this time, hard decisions will have to be made, and that scientists will not be happy with any cuts so I can appreciate why Cable has tried to present himself as ‘almost’ a scientist and mention his ‘support’ of blue skies research. He had to know that no matter how he phrased things there’d be some sort of response from the UK’s scientific community, From Jennifer Rohn’s guest post for The Lay Scientist (Guardian Blog),

…

When you deal with science on a daily basis, it is difficult to take its fruits for granted. Science gives most people the luxury to forget, at least for a while, that the world can be a brutal and dangerous place. On a planet fraught with dwindling resources, burgeoning population, emerging disease and uncertain climate, we abandon science at our peril.

It is with this backdrop that a new chapter in my life began: Science Is Vital, a grassroots campaign to support UK research. I’d like to tell you that I thought long and hard about it, but the truth is that it was an almost instantaneous reaction: I read Vince Cable’s now infamous speech signalling crippling cuts to science funding, dashed off an angry blog post, and proposed marching in the streets on Twitter all in the space of about 15 minutes.

…

Science is vital. And it’s not just scientists who think so: our petition, which has more than ten thousand contributors and rising, has been signed by a wonderfully diverse array of people, from artists, social workers and builders to ministers, legal secretaries, and fire fighters, even a self-professed “house hubby”. Our campaign, in partnership with the Campaign for Science and Engineering, has been endorsed by groups such as the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK and many scientific societies.

If you agree, please sign our petition, write to your MP , consider joining us on our Parliamentary Lobby on Tuesday 12 October, and above all, come to our rally this Saturday 9 October in central London – we’re expecting thousands.

Think of it: scientists and their supporters, massing in the streets! We’d like as many people as possible visibly displaying their pride in science, whether it is by wearing their white coat, T-shirts with their favorite scientific image or wielding scientific objects and placards.

As a Canadian, I’m fascinated that the scientific community in the UK is organizing a public rally. When Canada’s Conservative government effectively cut scientific funding in a budget a few years ago, the Canadian science community responded months later with a letter carrying 2000 signatures. A blog evolved from that letter, Don’t leave Canada behind which is now run by Rob Annan. I believe that was the sum total of the public grassroots organizing in the face of a perceived crisis.

I realize that Canadian geography and population density do not lend themselves to centrally located or even regionally located public rallies. Distance and population numbers are always a problem.Although, I have to admit that I sometimes think that we use these problems as excuses for doing very little at all.

I hope that the folks in the UK are able to find a means of meaningful dialogue in the face of some very difficult circumstances. As for the Canadian scientific community, I imagine they are watching and waiting as they ponder future moves by the Canadian government (after all, there is a 2011 budget to look forward to).

University of Alberta, research money, nanotechnology, and those recent Chairs of Excellence

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While I’m well aware of their work in nanotechnology research, I did not realize that the University of Alberta was becoming “one of Canada’s powerhouse research centres.” Here’s more from the Globe & Mail article by Josh Wingrove,

It started last week, with Industry Minister Tony Clement flying in, making a joke about football, announcing $500,000 in funding for nanotechnology research, and promptly leaving. [mentioned in my Aug. 17, 2010 posting]

A week later, a prestigious gathering of 50 delegates from leading Chinese and Canadian research institutions arrived, as well as an announcement Thursday of $200-million in federal research money.

It would be a busy two weeks for any school. But the delegates didn’t attend McGill University, the University of Toronto or the University of British Columbia, typically regarded as Canada’s top-ranked institutions.

Instead, they came to Edmonton’s University of Alberta, which has quickly become one of Canada’s powerhouse research centres. The U of A ranks second in total research funding, behind only U of T and up from fifth in 2006. This year, the U of A will spend $514-million on research, more than double its total from a decade ago.

The university has decided to spend more on research at a time when other departments on campus are experiencing budget cutbacks.

“From a societal point of view of course, research is increasingly conducted as applied research. It’s meant to solve problems,” she [Britta Baron, vice-provost] said. “The more selfish answer from the point of view of the individual university is your prestige, your ranking, depends mostly on the quality of your research. If you want to push yourself up, you need to invest in your research.”

The U of A is home to four of the nation’s 19 Canada Excellence Chairs announced three months ago, more than any other university. [emphasis mine]

I did post about the Canada Excellence Chairs May 20, 2010 when they were first announced and was recently alerted (thanks to Joel Burford of Alberta Innovates Technology Futures) to a youtube interview with one of the new U of A Canada Excellence Chairs, Thomas Thundat. His area of interest is oil sands molecular engineering,

I’m not really sure what to make of all this other than the fact that competition amongst the universities in Canada seems to be heating up. I recall there was some outcry after a 2009 article by Paul Wells for MacLean’s where representatives from the ‘big five’ Canadian universities claimed they should get the lion’s share of funding for science research and postgraduates while Canada’s other universities should focus on undergraduate education. About 10 days later the other universities replied in an article by Cathy Gulli for MacLean’s. (Rob Annan at Don’t leave Canada behind commented on the controversy here and here.)

I would imagine these latest developments are a matter of some satisfaction for the folks at the U of A. It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out especially if there should be a federal election. Let’s not forget that Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper is from Alberta.

Random (but profound) ramblings on science, politics, and decision-making

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The rambling and randomness is mine; the profundity belongs to others. First off, big props to Rob Annan at Don’t leave Canada behind for his kickbutt analysis of the long form census outrage (first mentioned in my July 20, 2010 posting). As for why the decision to suspend mandatory long form census completion matters so much (from Rob’s July 26, 2010 posting),

… The long form census is the best data we have in this country, and is essential to understanding our society. But relying on data encourages – indeed, should necessitate – evidence-based decision making. But data can be inconvenient, and may contradict our assumptions (just ask any disappointed graduate student). Instead of changing assumptions, epistemological populism encourages our prejudices and assumes that the data is wrong – we can just believe our guts. And that allows a government to do whatever it feels is right.

As a modern democracy, we must expect better from the government. We should be beyond governing by hunch and feel. Science policy works in two directions. This blog is mostly about policy for science, but science for policy is also essential. Ignoring the data when crafting policy is unconscionable. Eliminating the data altogether is unforgivable.

Very briefly, epistemological populism is a theory of knowledge where data and expert advice are rejected in favour of general beliefs and feelings ascribed to either the whole populace or a significant portion of it. There’s a much better definition in Rob’s posting along with a whole lot more.

As a collection of societies sharing this planet, all countries have an obligation to be as thoughtful in their deliberations as possible and this decision to cancel Canada’s mandatory long form censustaking does not fall in that category.

On a somewhat parallel track, although the focus is decision-making with regard to science and technology, Richard Jones at Soft Machines in his July 7, 2010 posting notes,

The reality is that there are very many places in which decisions and choices are made about the directions of science and technology. These include the implicit decisions made by the (international) scientific community, as a result of which the fashionable and timely topics of the day acquire momentum, much more explicit choices made by funding agencies in what areas they attach funding priority to, as well as preferences expressed by a variety of actors in the private sector, whether those are the beliefs that inform investment decisions by venture capitalists or the strategic decisions made by multinational companies. It’s obvious that these decisions are not always informed by perfect information and rationality – they will blend informed but necessarily fallible judgements about how the future might unfold with sectional interests, and will be underpinned by ideology. [emphases mine]

Jones goes on to discuss public engagement and its role in the science and technology decision-making process,

… the big outstanding question is how the rest of the population can have some influence. Of course, research councils are aware of the broader societal contexts that surround the research they fund; and the scientists and industry people providing advice will be asked to incorporate these broader issues in their thinking. The danger is that these people are not well equipped to make some judgements. In a phrase of Arie Rip, it’s likely that they will be using “folk social science” – a set of preconceptions and prejudices, unsupported by evidence, about what the wider population thinks about science and technology (one very common example of this in the UK is the proposition that one can gauge probable public reactions to science by reading the Daily Mail [UK newspaper]). [emphases mine]

I find it amusing that Jones includes scientists in his list of groups possibly practicing “folk social science” and, perhaps, it could be said that they too are practicing epistemological populism. Later in the posting he describes a public engagement exercise that yielded some unexpected results,

The outcome of the public engagement provided rich insights that in some cases surprised the expert advisors. [emphasis mine] These insights included both specific commentaries on the proposed areas of research that were being considered (such as the use of nanotechnology enabled surfaces to control pathogens) and a more general filter – the idea that a key issue in deciding people’s response to a proposed technology was the degree to which it gave or took away control and empowerment from the individual. Of course, people were concerned about issues of risk and regulation, but the form of the engagement was such that much broader questions than the simple question “is it safe” were discussed.

(Jones’ discussion about science, decision-making, and public engagement is more far ranging and nuanced that I’ve been able to represent here, so I encourage you to read his posting.)

For a completely different perspective on the importance of data, I found David Bruggeman’s (Pasco Phronesis) July 26, 2010 commentary on citizen science and politics quite illuminating,

According to Greenwire (via The New York Times and SEFORA), [James] Moran [chair of US House of Representatives Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee] characterized a number of efforts as civic activism, including (at least by implication) programs that supported elementary schools collecting water samples from nearby sources and testing for pollution. [emphasis mine] While much of what Moran discussed could be considered activism – getting the message out campaigns for pollution and climate change on par with anti-smoking or HIV prevention efforts – I’m not as sanguine about describing a neighborhood research project as political activity.

David suggests, by implication, an interesting conundrum (which he answers for himself in the posting).

Here’s the conundrum as I understand it, f a neighbourhood research project can be described as political activity then, can all science research be described as such? I think the answer is yes and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. As flawed as it is, this is the scientific process. We gather data and refine our understanding as best we can. This holds true for the census, for public engagement, and for citizen science.

Comments on the Golden Triangle workshop for PCAST’s PITAC

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I didn’t catch the entire webcast as it was live streaming but what I caught was fascinating to observe. For those who don’t know, PCAST is the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and PITAC is the President’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee. This morning they held a workshop mentioned in yesterday’s posting here that was focused on innovation in the US regarding information technology, nanotechnology, and biotechnology (the Golden Triangle). You can go to the PCAST website for information about this morning’s workshop and hopefully find a copy of the webcast once they’ve posted it.

A few items from the webcast caught my attention such as a comment by Judith Estrin (invitee and business woman). She talked about a laboratory gap (aka valley of death) while referencing the loss of large industrial labs such as the Bell Labs where as of Aug. 2008 the focus shifted from basic science to more easily commercialized applications.

I think there’s a significant difference between doing basic research in an academic environment and doing it in an industrial environment. I believe what Estrin is referencing is the support an industrial laboratory can offer a scientist who wants to pursue an avenue of basic research which might not find initial support within the academic structure and/or ongoing support as it makes its arduous way to commercialization.

With the loss of a number of large laboratories, start-up companies are under pressure to fill the gap but they have a big problem trying to support that interstitial space between basic research and applied research as they don’t have sufficient capitalization.

The similarity to the Canadian situation with its lack of industrial laboratories really caught my attention.

Franco Vitiliano, President and CEO of ExQor Technologies Inc., reiterated a point made earlier and afterwards about the interdisciplinary nature of the work and difficulty of operating in a business environment that is suspicious and/or fails to understand that kind of work. I was captivated by his story about bio-nanolasers and how these were developed from an observations made about water drops.

Anita Goel, Chairman and CEO of Nanobiosym Inc., noted that another problem with financing lies with the current financial models which are increasingly focused on the short-term and are risk-averse. As well, the current venture capital model is designed to support one technology application for one market. This presents a problem with the interdisciplinary nature of the work in the biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology fields currently taking place with its applications being considered for multiple markets.

There were many astute and interesting speakers. I can’t always remember who said what and sometimes I couldn’t see the person’s placard so I apologize if I’ve wrongly attributed some of the comments. If someone could correct me, I’d be more than happy to edit the changes in.

I was suprised that there were no individuals from the venture capital community or representatives from some of the large companies such as HP Labs, IBM, etc. Most of the start-ups represented at the meeting came from the biomedical sector. I did not hear anyone discuss energy, clean water, site remediation, or other such applications. As far as I could tell there weren’t any nongovernmental agencies present either. Nonetheless, it was a very crowded table and I imagine that more people would have necessitated a much longer session.

I found the webcast was stimulating but the acid test for this meeting and others of its type is always whether or not action is taken.

As for the Canadian situation with it’s ‘innovation gap’, there’s more in Rob Annan’s posting, Research policy odds and sods, where he highlights a number of recent articles about Canadian innovation laced with some of his observations. It’s a good roundup of the latest and I encourage you to check it out.

ETA June 23 2010: Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast offers his thoughts on the webcast and notes that while the promotional material suggested a discussion about public engagement, the workshop itself was focused on the ‘innovation gap’. He highlights comments from speakers I did not mention, as well as some of the questions received via Facebook and Twitter. For someone who doesn’t have the time to sit through the webcast, I strongly suggest that you check out Dexter’s posting as he adds insight borne of more intimate knowledge than mine of the US situation.

Poetry, molecular biophysics and innovation in Canada

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There’s an interesting story by Karen Hopkin (Carpe Datum) in the latest The Scientist newsletter about Gregory Petsko, a would-be student of epic poetry who changed his field of studies to molecular biophysics as he made his way to a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford. From Carpe Datum,

With his heart set on the study of epic poetry, Petsko arranged to work with Maurice Bowra, a preeminent classicist, and set sail for England. “Back then, all the Rhodes scholars traveled over on the Queen Elizabeth, which took 8 days,” he says. “And sometime while I was out over the Atlantic, Maurice Bowra died.” Not sure how to proceed, Petsko phoned Princeton and spoke to the head of the lab where he’d worked part-time to earn a few bucks. “He told me to go over to David Phillips’s lab and get a degree in molecular biophysics,” says Petsko. “And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

…

“For me, structure is just a means to an end. That end is function. I care about function,” he says. “I want to know how things work.”

“Greg never loses sight of the big picture. For him, it’s ultimately about the biology,” says former postdoc Ann Stock, an HHMI investigator at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “In the field of structural biology, that hasn’t always been true. In the early years, many structural biologists focused mostly on the nuts-and-bolts technical aspects of solving three-dimensional structures.” Petsko is proficient when it comes to nuts and bolts, she says, “but he sees them as tools that allow him to explore the biology of proteins.”

I find it interesting that Petsko is well grounded in the humanities as there is a longstanding argument that an education in the humanities and/or liberal arts is a “big picture” education. Petsko’s discoveries include the TIM barrel,

“It’s like an alpha helix or a beta-pleated sheet: the TIM barrel is a protein fold that basically implies function,” says [Jan] Westpheling [geneticist at University of Georgia]. “And Greg discovered it. This was a profound contribution in the days when people were just beginning to understand the three-dimensional structure of proteins.”

If you’re interested in more about how scientists think and work, please do read Hopkin’s story as I’m now switching gears to Rob Annan’s (Don’t leave Canada behind blog) latest post, Innovation isn’t just about science funding.

Rob raises a number of points about innovation in Canada, along with this one (from the post),

Expecting researchers to produce innovative research and to translate it into the broader world is unrealistic. And giving more money to researchers isn’t going to change that.

Much of the discussion about Canada’s lack of innovation is focused on how money can be made from research. Scientists are quite innovative in their research; the problem, from the government’s perspective, lies in bringing the research to market. Back to Rob,

… Unlike scientific research, social and commercial innovation isn’t a relatively linear process you can lay out in five year funding applications. It doesn’t require a highly-specialized skill set. It requires a broad skill set that involves creative thinking, communication skills, problem-solving, critical thinking, and cultural and civic understanding – all of which need to be applied to the varied stages of innovation development.

These are the attributes of successful entrepreneurs. These are also the attributes of a liberal arts and science education.

You might say that Petsko embodies “the attributes of a liberal arts and science education,” although as far as I know he’s not an entrepreneur. Rob expands on the notion of “big picture” education,

Even a who’s-who of Canadian high-tech CEOs have made an explicit case for the importance of liberal arts and science graduates in their industries.

Yes, we need to fund scientific research to ensure that we have a deep pool of innovation from which to draw. But translating this research into world-leading social or commercial innovation won’t happen if we leave it strictly to the scientists. Individuals trained in the social sciences and humanities bring an essential skill set to the process, and we neglect funding these areas at our competitive peril.

Thank you, Rob. It’s always good when someone who’s a scientist makes these kinds of comments as someone with a liberal arts/social science/humanities background could be accused of being self-serving.

While the Petsko story doesn’t perfectly illustrate Rob’s points, it does hint at the importance of broad-based thinking for breakthroughs and, ultimately, innovation. I’d add one item to Rob’s list of skills, risktaking.

I do have a few questions but I’m going to take those to Rob’s comments section.

Nano’s social dimensions; science funding in Canada, kaput?; Cheryl Jones got it right

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There’s a new book, Nano Meets Macro, by Fern Wickson and Kamilla Lein Kjølberg, according to a news item on Nanowerk,

Nano goes Macro is designed especially for use in interdisciplinary teaching and discussions about nanoethics with natural science students, but the richness of issues and perspectives makes it of interest to all researchers, practitioners and non-academics wanting an introduction to the social perspectives on nanosciences and technologies. To stimulate a thorough discussion the book includes pieces of science fiction and visual arts, as well as questions for reflection after each chapter. The book contains chapters by prominent scholars and commentators in the field, such as Alfred Nordmann, Rob Doubleday, Lynn Frewer and Friends of the Earth.

Ooops! Whoever wrote the news release made a small mistake with the book title. Ah well, I’ve made my share of those kinds of mistakes, usually when I’m stressed and pressed for time. As for including science fiction and visual art as part of this book, bravo.

I have two other comments. First, I’m not familiar with any of the commentators other than Friends of the Earth which is a group rather than an individual. Is there no individual authorship or attribution for that group’s contribution? I ask because my feelings towards this group are conflicted. On the one hand, they have omitted (by accident or by design?) citing research that conflicts with their perspective on nanotechnology (I posted about this on Nov.25.09) and on the other hand, there was this thoughtful essay by Georgia Miller on Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog (from the entry),

Technological choices have a key part to play in achieving urgently needed environmental and social change. Making the best choices that we can has never been so important. This requires us to look beyond safety to ask bigger questions about new technologies.

We must ask what is required to achieve our most critical social and environmental objectives, and be willing to accept that new technology is not always the answer. We must also ask what is required to ensure that those most affected by the outcomes of technology decision making have a voice in that decision making process.

For my second comment, Nano Meets Macro brought to mind a new publishing development at Macmillan Publishers. From a Fast Company article (Macmillan’s New Digital Textbooks Let Profs Reorder, Rewrite, And Stick It to Rival Academics) by Dan Nosowitz,

Macmillan’s newly announced DynamicBooks textbooks are a huge change for the stodgy, ultra-conservative world of academic writing. The digital textbooks give professors the power to reorder chapters, insert extra reading, delete irrelevant passages, rewrite individual sentences, and scribble in the margins. Oh, and they’ll cost half the price of physical textbooks.

The inherent question here is whether professors should actually have the right to alter textbooks as they see fit–but the fact of the matter is, they’ll do that anyway. Today’s college classes often require a textbook, of which only half the content is relevant and which costs over a hundred dollars, as well as a coursepack or smattering of disorganized articles to supplement it. These DynamicBooks would allow profs to simply streamline their existing syllabus into a single digital file–essentially, allowing them to do what they already do, and better.

Theoretically, if Nano Meets Macro were being published by Macmillan as part of its DynamicBooks series, chapters could be rearranged or excised or rewritten or new chapters written or material from elsewhere included. From my writer’s perspective, this is a bit disconcerting and yet it is similar to what I do here daily.

On a less introspective but related note, a news item on Nanowerk about Arizona State University’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society(CNS-ASU) and Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes (CSPO-ASU) notes a couple of special projects,

Under the umbrella of CNS and CSPO, [Jonathan] Posner [assistant professor of mechanical and chemical engineering] is working with ASU colleagues to develop a course entitled Societal and Ethical Implications of Scientific Research, which examines nanotechnology issues. His collaborators, Jameson Wetmore, an assistant professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Ira Bennett, an associate research professor with CSPO, have also developed Science Outside the Lab, a workshop on science policy and culture to be held in the nation’s capitol. Posner is encouraging his students to participate in the workshop.

If you want more information about the workshop, you can download the PDF from here. On a local note, Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, Vancouver, and Surrey, Canada) has or had a similar program called the Leonardo Institute.

A noncredit program for doctoral students that examines the risks, uncertainties, ethics, and art of science applied.

Leonardo Da Vinci made a living as an applied scientist but was remembered for his vision and his art. The Faculty of Applied Sciences offers a number of programs under the Leonardo name, including a speaker series, a biennial summer institute for graduate students and an annual competition to attend a technology management and policy conference.

Their deadline for applying to the 2009 programme was at the end of March 2009. There is no mention of a 2010 programme. I wonder if this is fallout from the School Communication’s move from the Faculty of Applied Science to the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT). (I did ask the new dean, Cheryl Geisler, about any impact from the move and wrote up her response in part of 2 of the interview here.)

On a completely other note, Rob Annan at his Don’t leave Canada behind blog, has written up a posting that discusses a preview of the new federal budget (due Mar.4.10) and its likely impact on science funding. From Research Funding at Risk,

So what does this mean for research? First, despite insistent arguments from policy analysts and economists which suggest strong investment in R&D is a cornerstone of economic recovery and global competitiveness, research funding was not included among the “sacred cows” of health, education, and pensions. This means that, at best, research funding will have its growth “curbed” – no new spending, no new programs, and a real loss in funding in terms of inflation and overall government spending.

Second, by announcing that there would be “no new spending”, the government has suggested it will implement the research spending cuts outlined in the 2009 budget. These include $147.9-million in budget cuts to the tricouncil funding agencies, $167.8-million in cuts to Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and $27.7-million in cuts to the National Research Council. And these cuts presumably don’t include widely rumoured cuts to the federal civil service, which includes employees at many federal research institutes. It also suggests that Genome Canada, whose funding was cut in 2009, will be left to wither on the vine, administering programs it began in 2007 and 2008, but without money to launch anything new or renew expiring projects.

I strongly suggest reading Rob’s essay for his incisive comments on the situation.

Following on Rob’s comments, I can state that after almost three years of researching, I haven’t come across anything which resembles a policy for nanotechnology research or funding in Canada, which means that in an environment where science gets very little specific attention and when the economy is in trouble, the nanotechnology situation is likely to worsen. This contrasts mightily with the US and many, many other countries. Andrew Maynard on his 2020 Science blog, recently noted this about funding for nanotechnology safety initiatives,

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) budget for nanotechnology safety research is set to double, going from an estimated $3.6 million in 2010 to a requested $7.3 million in 2011. The agency will target its nanotechnology safety program to measuring the dynamic physico-chemical and toxicological properties of key nanomaterials and the release of these nanomaterials during manufacturing processes and from products throughout full product life cycles.

The full posting (US government kicks nanotechnology safety research up a gear) is here. Meanwhile, the Australians are putting money into the National Enabling Technology Strategy (nanotechnology is often described as an enabling technology). Here is where I get to apologize for being snarky about an Australian Academy of Science report that I couldn’t find. It was as, Cheryl Jones reported, released on Feb.22.10. I will make the correction to my posting on that date, here. I apologize for failing to check the site properly and being unwarrantedly snarky. A PDF of the report can be downloaded from here.