Bill Gates testified before Congress today on the future of innovation and U.S. competitiveness.  His message to our nation’s leaders is that we have to act to address the shortage of scientists and engineers in the US.   As he stated, we are short on talent and American companies simply will not have the talent to innovate and compete in the future. 

“I know we all want the United States to continue to be the world’s center for innovation. But our position as the global leader in innovation is at risk,” Gates said. “If this nation is to continue to be the global center of innovation, Congress, the current administration and the next president must act decisively.”

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The Houston Chronicle’s science writer - Eric Berger, a supporter of the Gen Y outreach efforts - recently posted to his blog the answers Dr. Griffin gave him to questions about the “Gen-Y problem.”

http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/03/nasa_chief_addr_1.html

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So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can improve and promote communication at NASA, both internally and externally.  Well, ok, I’m not necessarily putting hours of thought into it, but I’m at least letting the thoughts meander around a little bit.

I thought that maybe I’d do a little research - you know, find some other huge government organization that stretches across the country, one that works on horribly complex technical projects while having an amazing reputation for fostering collaboration and teamwork… oh wait, does such a thing exist?

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The existing space-environment connection is not clear to a lot of people, both inside and outside of the agency. I absolutely think NASA should keep doing the “S”/ space in its name (that’s why I work at NASA!), but I also believe that its past and current work have directly aligned the agency with helping to understand and mitigate many environmental issues of today.

Some connections between NASA/ space and the environment:
• NASA launches and manages many Earth-observing satellites, which have provided data critical to understanding climate issues.
• Following on this previous point, NASA hosts the scientific talent to address many climate related issues of the day.
• NASA technologies used for spaceflight (solar panels, water recycling, many more) can have practical uses for terrestrial sustainability/ environmental/ climate problems.
• NASA’s system engineering approach has many parallels with the Earth Systems complexity of Spaceship Earth.
• The first whole, beautiful pictures of our Earth came from Apollo astronauts.

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As one of the members who helped put the Gen Y presentation together, it really has been amazing seeing the responses we’ve gotten since giving this for the first time and watching it bounce around to various circles throughout NASA and outside the agency as well. Thank you to everyone for the responses, both positive and negative.  

While the majority of responses have been largely very positive (as Nick’s “Small Steps” post can attest) some of the more interesting responses we’ve seen have actually been the negative ones. The picture we painted in the presentation did not necessarily place our generation in a completely positive light. Some have questioned who Gen Y thinks they are to want things to change for them. Some have pointed to the spoiled nature of a generation who has grown up expecting instant gratification and importance.   Read the rest of this entry »

We talk about encouraging young people to pursue science careers. But are we actually providing good incentives for them to do that? What opportunities are there for people to advance in careers are pure scientists at NASA? Look around you– who are the people in the senior positions? The “decision makers”? They may be people with scientific training, but they’re certainly not workaday scientists. When we ask “Where are all the scientists?”, it might do us good to look around and notice they’re all being promoted out of a job, and into management.

As a so-called young person trying to build a career in science, I’ve been told numerous times I’ll be doing so at the expense of more senior positions, and more pay. When I look around me for good examples, role models, mentors, I frankly have not one senior person in my professional life at NASA who has encouraged me in pursuing a path of pure science.

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