Futuristic Focus
The technology industry may be mired in recession, but a sense of optimism still pervades the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The scientists and engineers on MIT’s campus in Cambridge, Mass., aren’t paying much attention to the current tech slump. Instead, they’re looking decades ahead.
“This is an incredibly exciting period of science and technology ahead of us,” said Charles M. Vest, who has been president of the famed engineering school since 1990.
Though Vest acknowledges the shortcomings of technology, his experience as a mechanical engineer has taught him not to dwell on problems and instead to focus on solutions. Vest describes his vision for the future and MIT’s role in creating it.
Question: What’s the next frontier in technology?
Answer: There is a tremendous amount of work across MIT and other leading science and technology schools in all things that involve nanoscale science and technology. This is an area where government funding has increased--and ought to increase--because really bright young people are asking themselves how they can take advantage of our new capabilities in manipulating matter, structuring it and organizing it right down to the level of individual atoms.
We just won a competition to set up something for the Army called the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology. Some people think it’s science fiction, but this program is built around designing soft materials, like fabrics. We want to reduce the amount of weight a soldier has to carry from about 150 pounds to around 45 pounds.
Q: Why 45 pounds?
A: That’s what a Roman centurion used to wear. One of the ways of doing this is to design materials that have multiple functions, such as a material that suddenly becomes rigid by passing electric current to it. If you break your arm, you’ve got an instant cast. Then there are materials that sense biological agents, or things that can change color so you have a chameleon-like camouflage.
Q: What other areas do you see as key?
A: A second area that we believe is a great scientific adventure for the next several decades is understanding the human brain. We now have a very detailed understanding of how cells function. Simultaneously, we have this great advance in functional magnetic resonance imaging. You get detailed looks into what’s going on chemically in the brain as it reacts to various stimuli. That could help us understand diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s. On top of this come the enormous capabilities in computing power and our increasing understanding of how you think about complex systems. If it all works, hopefully we can get the same kinds of advances for emotional illnesses that we have made in the last 20 or 30 years for more physical kinds of illness.
There are two more areas I’d like to point out. After the sequencing of the human genome, there’s a whole new world of biology and biotechnology. It’s made possible by the combination of truly massive computing power and our ability to understand biology down to the level of proteins. It’s going to lead to new mechanisms for drug discovery and so forth.
The last thing I would point to is the area of energy and the environment and what sustainable development means to society. That’s going to be very, very important. We’re trying to get away from the remediation view of the environment and do a better job of stewarding our resources while still enabling countries to climb up the economic ladder.
Q: What do you think is the cause of the chronic shortage of scientists and engineers in the U.S.?
A: I think we’re at a kind of shift in social values that does not encourage people to go into areas such as science and engineering. In my generation, you had people growing up wanting to be part of the space program and sending people to the moon. Today, there are fewer and fewer young people who want to devote themselves to anything that takes long years of intense work to accomplish.
When we first started seeing so many young people taking technical and scientific degrees and then going to work on Wall Street, I started to talk to them. When you get right down to it, the bottom line is instant gratification. They want to do things where reaction follows action really quickly. Of course money has a lot to do with it. But I honestly believe the ability to see results happen so quickly is at least as big a factor.
Q: There’s also been a hue and cry over the shortage of technology managers. Is there something fundamentally flawed with technology that requires this much labor?
A: The basic answer is yes. Everything is simply too complicated. I think on the whole, technology’s been rather good to society. But the need to educate people to manage technology is something that universities by and large have not been doing. The primary reason is that business schools and engineering schools have not talked to each other.
Q: One of the best-known institutions at MIT is the Media Lab, which helped give birth to things such as multimedia. But one of the great criticisms of the Media Lab is that it develops stuff that is not related to the real world. Are you moving away from that?
A: It’s returning closer to the original vision. You have a lot more actual physics and focus on devices, with people doing work on things like quantum computing. In the next few years, there’s going to be some growth in the emphasis on the arts. There’s always been a lot of emphasis on educational issues, and that group is picking up.
Like all good science and technology, some of our projects have moved off into unanticipated directions. A good example is the work that started around musical instruments that respond to body motions. It ended up being directly applied in car seat safety by Ford Motor Co. The sensor technology that they used could tell whether you’re big or small and how you’re moving. It has begun to be built into a “smart” car seat that can respond appropriately to who’s in it and what the situation is.
Q: You’ve worked to increase research funds from corporations and individuals. Do you think the research will be affected by their agendas?
A: Anything that broadens the range of who sponsors research is generally good. Back in the 1960s, over 90% of our sponsored research was funded by the federal government, and the government has always had an agenda.
We’ve worked hard to reach industry in new and different ways, and now a little over 20% of our research is sponsored by industry. We have a corporate partnership with [biotech firm] Amgen doing basic biology. We have another one with Merrill Lynch in financial technologies, and we’re working with [chemical manufacturer] DuPont on biologically developed materials processing.
Q: Is this research you’d be doing anyway?
A: Yes. If the faculty isn’t finding things they want to work on, then we won’t do it. Are there dangers if schools lean too much on industry? Yes. But I think the bigger threats come from [faculty] starting small companies and being distracted.
Q: Is this less of a concern now that tech companies are in a slump?
A: Yes. But anybody who thinks the dot-com bust eliminated the entrepreneurial spirit is crazy. It’s now a part of us, and it ought to be a part of us. It’s going to move into these new areas, and hopefully it’ll be more productive. Entrepreneurship is still very, very important.
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AT A GLANCE
Name: Charles Marstiller Vest
Born: Sept. 9, 1941, in Morgantown, W. Va.
Personal: Married to Rebecca McCue Vest since 1963. They live in Cambridge, Mass.
Salary: $355,000 in 2000
Education: Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University, 1963; master’s and doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively.
Career: Joined the mechanical engineering faculty at the University of Michigan in 1968; dean of engineering in 1986 and provost in 1989. He became MIT’s president in 1990.
