Tag: technology

National day of action speeches, Lara Estroff

The April 17 National Day of Action had a great turnout at Cornell. We had speakers from across the university, in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, and the law school. We reprint some of these here.

My name is Lara Estroff.  I am speaking to you today as a Materials Science and Engineering Professor.

For longer than any of us has been a student or a faculty member, there has been a thriving partnership between American universities and the United States government, committed to educating and training generations of scientists and engineers who have gone on to impactful careers that have made America a healthier, safer, and more technologically advanced society. This partnership has led to innovations that have resulted in faster, more compact consumer electronics, safer airplanes, life-saving vaccines, and more sustainable energy production.

This educational ecosystem is a shining example on the international stage and we attract students from all over the world who want to come and be trained at American universities. 

Today, this partnership is threatened because one of the partners, the United States government, is threatening to withdraw. Disruption to this partnership will hurt not only current students and faculty at this and many other great universities, but it also threatens to damage our future as a country.

Now, I want to help us all understand how the money awarded to faculty in grants and contracts from federal funding agencies is actually used. The budgets for these grants have roughly three parts to them: funds to cover the educational costs for our graduate students; the materials and supplies associated with doing this cutting-edge research; and the indirect costs, called “facilities and administrative” or F&A costs, that go to the university.

These F&A costs are what we’ve heard about both in the news and in the emails from President Kotlikof and Provost Bala in regard to recent illegal actions taken by both the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy aimed at significantly reducing the F&A rate we can include in our budgets.  Cornell has played an essential role in helping to halt both of these actions from being implemented through court-ordered injunctions, but the fight is not over!

At the end of World War II, when the partnership between universities and the government was forged, there was a realization that universities, as engines of innovation, were the ideal place to be training the scientists and engineers the US needed to have scientific and technological leadership in the world. But in order to do so, the infrastructure at these universities would need to be expanded to enable and support fundamental scientific and engineering research.

These may not be “sexy things” but they are incredibly important for doing our work: like laboratories with fume hoods and biosafety equipment, libraries with up-to-date and well-curated collections, cleanrooms for microelectronics fabrication like CNF, chemical and biological waste handling and disposal facilities, and state-of-the-art characterization facilities like CHESS. This infrastructure is expensive to develop and maintain; we’re talking about utility bills and technicians to service the equipment.  We’re also talking about the administration costs related to ensuring research integrity and ethical performance of studies involving animals and humans, and much more. All of these costs are substantial and necessary; and require a continuous, rather than a one time, investment.

Without these funds coming into the university, our very mission is threatened. We will be unable to train the next generation of scientists and engineers who are going to be at the forefront of discovery in the coming decades; we will be unable to perform the fundamental research that will lead to innovative new therapies for disease, cleaner drinking water, and more sustainable construction materials for our built environment.

My colleagues and I are speaking with one voice. Some of us identify as Republicans, some as Independents, some as Democrats but we ALL recognize that standing up to the Trump administration is going to come with very real economic impact on our labs and our students.  We are ready to take on these sacrifices to ensure that our academic freedoms, our ability to hire faculty and admit students according to our values and our educational mission, is not taken away and put under government oversight as we might expect from some other countries but NEVER in the United States of America!  Cornell’s founding principal of “any person, any study” has endured and been a guiding light for 170 years.  It is worth far more than $1 Billion.  It will not be extinguished on our watch.

We are ready to fight and we are ready to make these sacrifices, but we need to do this together.

Lara Estroff is Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry

National day of action speeches, Alyssa Apsel

The April 17 National Day of Action had a great turnout at Cornell. We had speakers from across the university, in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, and the law school. We reprint some of these here.

My name is Alyssa Apsel.

I am speaking to you today as an Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor.  Over in the Engineering school we take our roles as teachers and researchers very seriously.  Most of us would much rather be in the lab then out here talking about public policy.

We like to indoctrinate our students with things like

  • Kirchoff’s current laws
  • Digital Logic
  • Stochastic Processes
  • Computer Architecture
  • Charge transport models

As well as numerous other highly polarizing topics. 

So last week we, along with many other departments in the college of engineering received stop work orders on tens of millions of dollars of research contracts with the department of defense.  Across the college of Engineering, these contracts were awarded to conduct research on things including:

  • The design of advanced systems to control electromagnetic emission and absorption with implications for 1) stealth technology (radar detection) 2)thermal management (cooling) 3) efficient electricity generation from photovoltaics
  • Materials for high voltage and high temperature electronics to support things like propulsion systems.
  • Modeling of quantum mechanical systems to enable development of complex quantum computers.
  • Development of novel propellants for space crafts
  • As well as grants training workers to build satellites

Each of these research topics makes the US more secure, drives economic growth, and positions us in a research leadership position. 

It’s notable that US universities perform roughly half of the basic research done in the US.  Eliminating research from US universities will strictly weaken the US, both economically, and as a respected knowledge leader.  We will be less competitive globally and have less technology readiness.  This will probably make China and Russia quite happy. 

Beyond this, it is important to realize that University Research IS education. 

Our undergraduate programs can exist without federal research dollars, but graduate education in the sciences and engineering cannot and will not. 

Federal Contracts pay these students.  Period. 

This administration trying to wipe out both sciences today but also the next generation of scientists and decimate engineering research for decades to come. 

This is not hyperbole.  The top students will not stay in a country that does not welcome and support them.  They will go to Europe, or Asia, or whatever greener pasture welcomes them and the US will lose leadership status.

It really is that simple.

And on the topic of trade deficits, you know what our highest domestic export is? Education.  Not soybeans, or corn or natural gas, it’s education.  This is what these morons are trying to destroy. 

So, you wonder, given that we are teaching students math and science and physics, why would Trump and his cronies want to destroy us? 

Because truth is inherently political with this administration, and therefor dangerous.

If you are in the business of trying to convince people that up is down and left is right, you can’t have some professor showing up with data about gravity.

You can’t have an engineer showing that alternative power sources are actually feasible, or that lead in the pipes might cause disease and brain damage. You just can’t.  That’s dangerous.  They fear it.  So now they want us to be scared.   

So we can’t be.  We need to stand up, speak out, and organize.  They fear us because we have power.  We need to use that power. 

The folks attacking us, speak out of two sides of their mouths.  They hate us, but they also desperately want us to educate their kids.  That’s power.

They Ivy league and other large universities have a large base of alumni with resources.  They can work together and reconsider a joint plan of action.  That is power. 

We need to support each other because otherwise it does not end well for us.  What great research comes out of Hungary, I ask you?

Ordinarily and engineering prof like myself would much rather be in the lab then out here, but this, this is existential.  And I promise that like me, others are up for this fight.

Thank you. 

Alyssa Apsel is the Ellis L. Phillips Sr. Director of Electrical and Computer Engineering and IBM Professor of Engineering