Posts Tagged ‘NSF’

Science and Engineering Indicators 2010

Posted by John Hunter on January 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

The National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 gives a comprehensive picture of the rise of developing nations in Asia, with China as the main engine, and gradual erosion of U.S. leadership. Examples:

  • North America’s share of world R&D activity between 1996 and 2007 dropped from 40% to 35% and the European Union’s share from 31% to 28%. The Asia-Pacific share increased from 24% to 31% “even with Japan’s comparatively low growth.”
  • American multinationals are shifting the R&D they conduct overseas from Europe to emerging Asian markets, whose share grew from 5% in 1995 to 14% in 2006.
  • China’s domestically earned natural science and engineering doctorates have shot up more than tenfold since the early 1990s, approaching the number awarded in the United States.
  • The share of U.S. engineering doctorates awarded to temporary and permanent visa holders rose from 51% in 1999 to 68% in 2007. Nearly three-fourths of these foreign Ph.D recipients were from East Asia or India.
  • From 1995 to 2008, the U.S. and E.U.’s combined share of world scholarly articles dropped from 69% to 59%, while Asia’s expanded from 14% to 23%. Over the past 20 years, the number of engineering research articles in the United States has grown by less than 2% annually. China’s engineering article output grew by close to 16% annually.
  • The share of patents granted to U.S.-based inventions by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is shrinking, from 55% in 1995 to 49% in 2008. In 1997, 34% of high-value patents had U.S. inventors; by 2006, this had slipped to 30%.

    • Related: NSB Report on Improving Engineering Education – Country H-index Rank for Science Publications – Science and Engineering Indicators – Workforce (2006) – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data (2004 report)

    Filed under Research, The National Interest | Tags: , , ,


    NSF Graduate Research Fellows

    Posted by John Hunter on April 25th, 2008 | No Comments »

    photo of Julia Kamenetzky

    The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program aims to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and to reinforce its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.

    This year NSF awarded 913 fellowships: which come with a stipend of $30,000 and $10,500 cost of education allowance. On our Science and Engineering Fellowship blog we are highlighting awardees including: Julia Kamenetzky (in photo), physics major at Cornell College; Andrej Lenert, mechanical engineering major at the University of Iowa; Jennifer Robinson, computer science major at North Carolina State; Jeremy Freeman, neuroscience major at Swarthmore; and Mariela Zeledón, biological sciences major at Carnegie Mellon University.

    Fellows from previous years include: Sergey Brin, Burton Richter, Steven Levitt and Frank Wilczek.

    Filed under Education, Future, Research, The National Interest, Work | Tags: ,


    NSF Graduate Research Fellows Profiles

    Posted by John Hunter on August 15th, 2007 | No Comments »

    On our National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program site we have added a section onprofiles of past NSF Graduate Research Fellows. We started with probably the most famous fellow, and certainly the richest: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin.

    “Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.”

    Sergey Brin, Co-Founder of Google, graduated from University of Maryland with high honors in mathematics and computer science in 1993 and, as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, went on to Stanford to further study Computer Science. Early in his graduate studies, he showed interest in the Internet, specifically data-mining and pattern extraction. He also wrote software to ease the conversion of information into HTML format.

    In 1995, he began collaborating with Larry Page, another Stanford graduate student on a more efficient search engine than previously available – Google – in The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, and soon began to attract public interest.

    In his short executive biography, Brin lists the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship that supported him while at Stanford among his top achievements. Like NSF, Brin understands the importance of research in innovation, and sponsors it in part through Google’s “20% time” program – all engineers at Google are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them.

    Read the full NSF Fellow profile of Sergey Brin.

    Filed under Work | Tags: , , , , ,


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