Good Morning everyone and welcome to the Yale Engineering Sesquicentennial Forum On Challenges to Innovation in the 21st Century. Our purposes today is twofold- first, to mark the beginning of Yale’s second 150 years of excellence in Engineering education and research and, second, to bring together leaders from the key sectors of our society in an interactive format to consider an issue of critical importance for the success of that society in the future- namely the continued health of the technology innovation engine which has during the 20th century been the major means of creating new wealth and improving the human condition. In this room this morning are experts on every aspect of this complicated issue. The aggregate understanding of the challenges and ideas for solutions extant here at this hour should-if we are successful- increase significantly by the end of the day. The extent to which that occurs will depend on our interacting seriously and exchanging ideas is some nonlinear fashion so that the resulting whole exceeds the sum of the parts. The framework for these interactions is provided by the outstanding set of speakers, panelists and moderators who have graciously agreed to join us. Of course the glue which will bind these elements together is the entire assembled group. I am confident that you will all do your part to ensure lively and productive discussions. Let me call your attention to the program and the biographical sketches of our speakers. As you see they are a most accomplished and distinguished group. I have asked the moderators to keep their introductions brief so as to leave the maximum time for presentation and discussion of the speakers’ remarks. This year of 2002 does indeed mark the 150th anniversary of engineering at Yale- a fact that may surprise many of you, but a fact none-the-less. It all started in 1852 with William Norton’s course in civil engineering. Yale awarded the nations very first PhD in Engineering in 1863- to J. Willard Gibbs, the father of thermodynamics and one of the greatest scientists this country has ever produced. For decades thereafter the Yale engineering program was one of the nation’s largest and best known. Despite this proud tradition and the many accomplishments associated with the Sheffield Scientific School and the Yale School of Engineering during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this university in more recent times has often seemed not to know how to deal with its science and engineering. There have been some rough periods indeed, particularly during the middle of the last century. All that changed dramatically with the election in 1993 of Richard C. Levin as Yale’s 22nd President. A world renowned economist with his Ph.D. from Yale and earlier degrees from Stanford and Oxford, and with experience as an academic department chair and graduate dean, Rick Levin fully and firmly grasps the central importance of science and technology to a modern liberal education and to the life of society and its citizens. One of his quotes which I use as a screen saver on my computer goes like this: “Yale is firmly committed to doing whatever is necessary to ensure that Yale’s science and engineering departments will in the future share the excellence and international visibility that Yale Humanities Departments have long enjoyed.” Rick Levin has consistently backed up these words with strategies and actions- appointing Allan Bromley as Yale’s first Dean of Engineering in nearly three decades, and later announcing a bold commitment on behalf of the university to investing $1B in constructing and improving the infrastructure for the sciences and engineering and for medical research. He as done much more- but I will keep this introduction brief as promised. In addition to being an inspired and inspiring leader and President, Dr. Levin is a scholar of the very first rank. Fortunately for us his field of personal research in economics concerns the technological basis of economic growth. So it is with particular pleasure that I ask you to join me in welcoming Yale’s President Richard Levin who will enlighten us on “The American Research University as a Engine of Economic Growth.” |