will come to order good afternoon and welcome to this research and science education subcommittee hearing on high risk high reward research before i start it's important to make clear that high risk high reward research is also known by many other names including high risk high payoff transformative pioneering and even high risk transformative research there is neither a distinct definition for each of those terms or a common definition for all of them we chose high risk high reward because the term used by the rise committee that is the advancing research in science and engineering committee whose report who we will be discussing today three years ago and now famous rising above the gathering storm report a distinguished national academies committee recommended that each federal research agency set aside eight percent of its budget for high risk high payoff research not long after that the national science board recommended the national science foundation establish a transformative research initiative both of those reports reflected a growing consensus in the research community that the peer review system has become too conservative in its funding decisions and that even the brightest in most creative scientists arnott's bothering to submit their more impish of proposals but both reports are also short on details that same year we are working on the america competes act a bill this century took every recommendation of the gathering storm report within the science and technology committee's jurisdiction and translated into law that is every recommendation except the one that says that eighty percent of every research agency for high risk  agreed there was an unmet need and the senate even made a commendable attempt to implement their recommendation in their bill but during conference we all agreed to put off implementing this recommendation until we could better answer these five questions first what exactly is high risk research second why a percent third why a set aside as opposed to reforming the peer review system fourth it doesn't really make sense for every federal research agency and fifth does this make sense professor agencies at all as we look ahead to our twenty ten reauthorization of america competes act and how we can address high risk research in that bill we turn to distinguish fantasy for us today into many expert colleagues in the community to help us answer these questions my colleagues and i appear on the dyess also have a political challenge whatever your choice of words or definitions high risk research means more failures in the short term and funding for failures is not easy to justify in an era of ballooning deficits it is hard enough to secure sustainable funding increases for basic research and is all too easy to cut science in appropriations battles as the energy and water appropriations subcommittee chair once said in response to concerns about cuts to d o a office of science floods kill people so oftentimes is not seen to be this type of funding is not seen to be at the highest end of priorities therefore i worry even more about the risk of creating a discretionary part of funding a priori assumes a large failure late great i say that to remind us all of the political context is the raw discussion this afternoon and i certainly welcome any thoughts dr lane may have opening statement thank you mr chairman and i agree with your assessment of the situation and your viewpoint on the excellent panel we have today will be hearing from a panel of experts testifying on the federal government funding it's risky and potentially rewarding research and i'll get back to that in just a few minutes tight agency research budgets and intense competition have established an environment of cautious incremental research proposal from many scientists seeking federal support ironically many of the greatest challenges faced by our nation in health care energy and national security may not be addressed in a timely manner because there are limited opportunities for promising ideas to be heard from funded simply because they are outside of the box with the national science for the national academies the american academy and others have identified the need to address transform to research in our basic research federal portfolio it is necessary to examine how to best facilitate the introduction and totally different proliferation of this type of research transformative discoveries of emerge from federally funded research in spite of a lack of dedicated programs for this purpose learning how we might adapt our federal funding system to listen more groundbreaking discoveries is a worthy goal and i look forward to hearing the insights on this topic from our witnesses today i also thank the chairman for instance instigating this particular hearing and it's i think that we need it one of the dimension i left to give to this and i addressed a panel of manufacturers yesterday and we discussed research they were concerned about the valley of death and so forth and i pointed out to them that they should be supporting basic research for the simple reason that they are dependent on it and they don't have the resources to do basic research because of the high risk factor you may be able to buy to borrow money to make the world's next best  widget but it's very difficult to bribe money when you say i don't know what i'm going to find but i think if i do research i'll probably find something good and i'll probably be able to make some money and i'll probably be able to pay back the loan you don't get loans that way and that is the point i'm simply trying to make they should be lobbying us to do the appropriate federal rate basic research at the federal level because the federal government has to take the high risk opportunities  can afford to miss a major discovery now and then but we should be trying concentrate to really bridge the gap and get rid of the valley of death do the basic research where we are taking risks where we don't even know what the result might be but if we do a hundred such projects we're likely to hit paydirt anywhere from two to ten which will more than pay for all the research and one of my favorite examples which i give to lay people is the laser which is today ubiquitous truly you could do this and yet it was started by some research some in russia some in the at that time it's probably not much more than certainly probably not much one million dollars ten million at the very most now you add together what the laser industry revenues are today and it's small time over time billions of dollars not only that it's as i said to you because device which is extremely helpful in many areas of life many areas of manufacturing and  just take it for granted without charlie townes and some federal money we might not have discovered it for another ten or twenty years that time different alone than the revenues generated during that ten twenty years more than enough to cover the budget for a number of years so i think it's it's self evident that the federal government has a very serious responsibility in supporting fundamental basic research because that's the us university professor at rice university he also holds appointments as senior fellow of the james a baker to third institute for public policy dr lane was a member of the american academy of arts and sciences committee that published the report arise advancing research in science and engineering dr james collins is the assistant director for biological sciences at the national science foundation dr richard mccall is a professor of chemistry and vice president a research is carnegie mellon university and finally dr gerald m reuben is vice president of the howard hughes medical institute and director of the genelia farm research campus  do you pronounce that very good i should stop myself right there then as our witnesses should know you will each have five minutes for your spoken testimony your written testimony will be included in the record for the hearing when you all have completed lipinski and ranking member elders members of the committee i greatly appreciate the opportunity to testified today on behalf of the american academy of arts and sciences on high risk high reward research i commend the subcommittee for holding a hearing on this topic which i believe is vital to the future progress of american science and technology innovation last year as you noted mr chairman the american academy released a report called arise which stands for advancing research and science  engineering my comments today are drawn largely from the findings and recommendations of that report i was privileged to serve on the rise committee which was chaired by nobel laureate and former howard hughes medical institute president thomas check many studies have focused on the need to increase the level of funding for science and technology research and i'm not here to argue against that proposition but the academy committee took on a different question regardless of the levels of overall federal funding what are the things that all stakeholders government universities foundations must do to ensure the most efficient and effective use of those federal funds and considering this question the committee identified two issues that we felt were central to the vitality of america's research enterprise one was the support of early career investigators and the second was the need to encourage high risk high reward sometimes called transformative research the two issues are of course related since many fresh new ideas come from researchers who are in the early stages of their career the rise report recommends several policy actions that we believe will strengthen the opportunities for early career investigators and those recommendations are detailed in my written statement with regard to high risk high reward research our committee concluded that across virtually all government agencies and departments that fund science and engineering research short term low risk and measurable results tend to dominate the funding decisions while the current system does a very good job of identifying meritorious proposals using peer review some potentially path breaking research is not being funded because it just looks too risky so there's a lot of truth to the often heard advice don't put it in your grant proposal as you know it will work some agencies recognize the problem and are taking steps to address it indeed n s f and its national science board highlighted the issue some time ago and we're encouraged by the statements of the director and demand and the inclusion in the president's two thousand and ten and s f budget request of ninety two million dollars specifically to foster transformative research are just this subcommittee and the congress to build on these commitments by the administration and specific the academy's arise report recommends that n s f and the other agencies of support science and engineering research take the following steps first establish and strengthen policy policies programs and targeted funding mechanisms designed to foster potentially transformative research to provide high risk high reward research programs with sufficient support to allow funding of a significant portion of applicants three establish appropriate metrics with which to evaluate the success of targeted research programs for adopt funding mechanisms and policies that nurture transformative research in all of ward programs not just those targeted at high risk high reward research five strengthen application and review processes high risk research proposals face an even greater challenge in a stress peer review system that's not equipped to appreciate them six strengthen investments in the career development of agency program officers who are indispensable to the vitality and productivity of the entire research enterprise let me just comment on the last recommendation supporting program officers of the agencies as a former n s f director and actually back in the late seventies i was an s f physics division director as a rotator i experienced firsthand the commitment to quality dedication of these program officers and i've seen their workload increase and their support decrease they must have the resources to be in touch with their communities and must be viewed as leaders in the science and engineering research community make the site visits that are necessary so the not only are they staying current in their field but the field itself recognizes and has credibility in their decision making a key recommendation of the arise report is the creation of targeted grant programs specifically aimed at high risk high reward research there are several advantages to creation of targeted grant programs and some challenges which we could go into in the question session committee also considered institutions other than federal agencies vital to the enterprise particularly universities and foundations and has offered recommendations helpful to them finally a final point the cademy is going to have a look now at a second phase of this project at the impact of these modes of federal funding on the universities themselves what's it doing about the curriculum what's it doing to the nature of the faculty culture are there some lessons to be learned from that if the subcommittee has interest in that issue has concerns that you would like us to address we'd be pleased to hear from you thank you m in for the last four years i have served as assistant director for biological sciences at the national science foundation and i'm on leave from arizona state university or in virginia moment professor in the school of life sciences and in this capacity i maintain a research lab so i understand this intersection this deep and important or section between basic research in the university environment and the sort of policy issues that are work here in terms of the federal government today i will discuss high risk high reward research in the context of germs formative science at the national science foundation the u s national science foundation is first and foremost an innovation agency and is that has a long history of success in supporting research with far reaching and parks on the u economy and the well being of all americans since one thousand nine hundred fifty this excess has relied on first the close partnership with america's colleges and universities second on america review system based in the scientific community and third on a continuously refresh college refresh college or a program officers or stewards of the nation's investment in basic scientific research and education unlike industry who's to bickley shorter term goals and proprietary results are aimed at the marketplace and s f investments are both short and long term and most importantly its results are public it is sometimes mistakenly assumed that research investments that are scientifically successful in the short run can produce similar short term economic gains and that this outcome is the only valid measure of success in fact the transformative impacts of the knowledge and technologies that result from successful scientific investments on subsequent scientific research the economy and society are often realized only many years later research in the history philosophy and social studies of science teaches us that attempts to predict the individual ideas or projects that will be transformative are imprecise at best the process of scientific discovery is a community endeavor this endeavor takes time and is by design cumulative skeptical and critical of new results transformative discoveries happen because of these qualities that assess seeks to advance the transformative science by encouraging high risk high reward research in the context of the structures programs and policies of an innovation agency transformative society is supported by institutions designed to foster such research and n s f is just such an institution you know sef merit review process which is based in the scientific community is a form of what is now called crowdsourcing it uses the collaborative wisdom of the crowd to identify the best research and s f merit review done by convening groups of experts creates a special role for n evaluations and promote them in their own scientific venues establishing and sustaining interactions among n s f reviewers program officers applicants and awardees has shaped the culture of american science and is at the heart of the process of discovery in u s science and s f program officers are stewards of the nation's investment in research and science education in addition to merit review they manage awards they mentor post doctoral fellows and early career scientists they facilitate national and international connections within an across fields and engaging outreach to promote broader participation in education for a knowledge economy but as a research enterprise accelerates and becomes more into disciplinary the demands a proposal an award management or becoming overwhelming time for just thinking about a problem interacting with researchers and imagining creative new ways to find and find the best research is decreasing as an asef experiments with new methods of review and funding directed at enabling transformative science program officers will experience even greater demands on their time and attention in order to manage these innovative prophecies like other funding is like other federal funding agencies as a fix to describe itself in terms of its research awards however and searching for more meaningful assessments and assesses exploring new methods and measures to understand the transformative contributions of new scientific knowledge the economic and social outcomes to inform future investments and to give a this information to policymakers and the public for nearly sixty years n s f has been forward looking in its management  nation's scientific enterprise our challenge for the future is this is to sustain a culture of creativity and innovation that pair pervades n s f and guides our decisions and s f must continue to innovate even in the midst  thank you very much chairman lipinski ranking member congressman ehlers members of the committee ladies and gentlemen it's a distinct honor to be before you today testifying about investing in high risk high reward research i'm the vice president at carnegie mellon has been noted and i'm also an active researcher i'm still a funded researcher and have a lab of many graduate students also taken in assess funding to generate innovation in my lab which is turned into a company that employs seventy people so i understand high risk research from the beginning all the way through the cycle so i think i can speak with it in a special way today i really want to give you a report from the frontline the trenches perspective on high risk high reward research and i want to sort of let you know that when a researcher comes up with an idea that researcher is faced with how to fund the idea often they see it as a high risk proposal but they don't necessarily understand whether it's a high reward or transformative idea so often they turn to very few sources they have to fund this idea one needs to get plenty were policemen or results in order to go to the standard funding agencies like unicef or in h to get your proposal funded but there's no funds to fund the graduate students or postdocs i actually do the war so that you can show that you have plenty of results so that you can actually have those proposals funded whereas there are programs least perceived and in our university we only have one such high risk high reward proposal that's been funded in the whole entire universe cns at the end assessments for sixty six thousand dollars so most people go to the new standard proposal mechanism to get their research funded so it's a chicken and egg problem in that they don't the funds to get started and so they have to find funds either within their existing grants or within the university or sometimes with foundations to be able to get these projects going so that they can get the reward of a grant at the n s c or the n i a so that they can move this this this project forward we have many examples which have included in my testimony i won't walk through all of those today but some of the most striking examples of high risk high reward research are where a computer scientist who is an expert in data mining has comes together with a person who does brain imaging and the two of them  can combine high output brain imaging scans and data mining together to be able to tell what people are thinking now you may be scared of that in some respects but it's really important for brain research traumatic brain injury for  soldiers and things like this that we can understand how people can heal this proposal wasn't funded two times by the n s f because all the panel people said that it was way too high risk it hadn't been proven and i have many other examples like that so the system itself  has some failings it's not the program officers there are a fault they're just faced with very very difficult challenge of lots of proposals that they have to find including often determining whether someone has is going to get tenure or not or whether they're going to remove the funding from one of the an established research or so i have a few recommendations that i'll make to you today one is i think high risk high reward research has to be funded i think it has to be a set aside so that no company fission within the agencies to direct those funds into normal proposals which i think are low risk and not necessarily innovative i think there needs to be a process of guidance about said reviewed or reviewers with  language written in these high risk programs it says and what they expect these proposals to actually be that may be clearing results are not needed we can't depend completely on the program officers because often these areas are so interdisciplinary and so broad that it's impossible to expect one person to be able to make that decision alone so i think panels special panels with special guidance are important i would recommend for funding a milestone proof of concept where there where the you can apply for high risk high reward research where you get one hundred to one thousand dollars to work on that project and then if you show that you can get proof of concept then then you can get further payments down the line so that these turn into  high risk with no reward but high risk so they can be put into the system in a normal way another recommendation that i would make is that there should be a mechanism for basic research to be that becomes transformative often great discoveries are made that we don't know they're going to happen until they happen but when they become transformative there ought to be mechanisms for accelerator funds from these agencies that a person can go to and say i've made this amazing discovery please help me take this and make it transformative and there right now there's no mechanism to do that except to work off the back of these proposals so thank you very much for the opportunity to tell you what's going on the front lines financial capital to see growth and change foster fresh thinking here's your my biomedical research philosophy can be summarized in three words people not projects by appointing scientists a or my investigators rather than awarding research grants the institute provides long term flexible funding that enables its researchers to pursue their scientific interests wherever they lead the institute flagship research program i investigator program karriem employs three hundred forty six researchers selected to rigorous national competitions who direct institute laboratories on the campuses of seventy two universities and other research organizations throughout the united states ages you're my scientist include mathematicians physicists engineers physicians chemists and classically trained molecular unsolved biology of the success of ages or mice people not project philosophy can be seen in the high productivity and breakthrough insights generated by a hit you're my investigators for example a judge or my investigators have been warded nobel prizes and nine of the past eleven years and fourteen investigators are all have received the nobel prize gesture my demands creativity and innovation investigators are expected to work at the front ears of the chosen field to ask fundamental questions and to take risks although these dude already had the highly successful agent you're my investigator program the leadership continue to explore new ways to support the research of some of this nation's most creative scientists these discussions led to the establishment of a gesture mice nearly found research campus in northern virginia which opened in two thousand and six the blueprint  an acknowledgement by a teacher i leadership that almost by medical problems i handled well in the university setting there are some that are better addressed in a place where small groups of researchers with different skills can work together without the barriers typically in counted a university i described earlier far more fully in my written testimony but it's the time we like to conclude by giving my personal perspective on the federal support for innovative research the central question i've been asked to address is what is the best mechanism that federal funding agencies can use to support high risk high reward research were to god to finding my own personal belief backed up by as you might know a thirty year experiment is that in the long run high reward research comes from focusing on people not projects and today's funding environment research is a compelled to define in advance the goals masses and what the outcomes of the research project in a detailed grant application while this funding model is appropriate for some types of biomedical research has two major limitations first proposals for higher risk projects even those that may have enormous impact a successful had traditionally failed pollie second the ability to move quickly to take advantage of unforeseen targets of opportunity it's a fairly constrained how can a scientist capitalize on a flash of insight if he is she must first write a grant proposal and then wait a year even if the grant is application successful for the funding to test the idea federal funding and sees need to do a better job of providing research support on the terms of a mid rapid changes in research direction and courage taking on challenging research problems even if the chance of short term success is low i think these changes could bring more innovation per do two thousand and three i was asked to join the task force convened by dr elias zerhouni and as director of the time the group was charged with recommending new ways to find high risk high impact research the primary recommendation of our panel was to establish a new set of awards to researchers based on their track record of innovation in fact the journal science covered the panel's recommendation in a new story headlined quote and i h two what people not project that headline nicely summed up our recommendations but practice the n h came up short in carrying out this initiative take the n i m h director's pioneer award for example which and specifically its stimulating highly innovative research and supporting promising new investigators our passports recommended  ten percent of it's our one grants which would equate to roughly seven hundred grants per year on a people not project basis in two thousand for the first year the wars were made the n h s collected only nine tying their war recipients from among the total number of these awards however still fall far short of the two thousand and three recommendation even with these new awards the n h s still heavily weighted towards project or in research with ninety eight percent of grants going to projects as i stated earlier i strongly believe that giving money to scientists of exceptional and demonstrating creativity and allowing them to follow their instincts is a better way to promote innovation in my opinion even a modest shift in the federal research for follow going from perhaps ninety eight percent  ninety percent project oriented could make a big difference in producing innovative and potentially transformative research results i'd like to end with a quotation from nobel prize winner max perutz who directed the medical research council laboratory of molecular biology in england for more than twenty years quote creativity in science as in the arts cannot be organized it arises spontaneously from individual talent well run laboratories can foster it by hierarchal organization inflexible bureaucratic rules and mounds of futile paperwork can kill it governments cannot be planned they pop up like pock an unexpected cause thank you mr chairman thank you dr rubin and they call our witnesses for a testimony and at this point we have began our first round of questions and the chair will recognize mr taco thank you mr chair dr lane you're probably as familiar as anyone in this room with the annual budget process and the challenges that accompany that in these very difficult budget times what advice can you give rise to defending the dedicating of a pot of money  in those tough times when the there is a high probability of failure almost almost a taco i think appreciate the question on the rise report didn't answer that specific question so i'll give you my best take on it based in part on the discussions of the academy committee but also my own experience i think there's a there's a problem with the terminology here my sense is that even the most even the highest risk ideas proposed to our agencies by by researchers who have strong reputations and track records  not likely to fail it's quite possible that the that the particular goal that's put forward in the research proposal might not might not pan out but in the meantime young people are  educated often technologies are developed at this is an experimental process so i think even though the arise report recommended in terms of the mirror review system focusing differently on high risk high reward research from the normal grant program i think in both cases one should look at the potential for transforming the field a major breakthrough and at the same time  other other outcomes other aspects of the research that that are almost assured to come to come out i don't think we have to tell the public and your colleagues here on the hill that we're going to spend more money on research that has a high probability of failing i think i think the research that we invest in here is likely to see down many dimensions even though it might not actually reach the conclusion that the research  hopes for or create the device that the researcher wants an example might be the like o project laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory kel tec significant funding hasn't yet seen a gravitational waves far as i know but out of that has come to have come spend a company's new technologies lots of educated young people so i think we need a new we need to talk about what's a better way to articulate what we're doing here i think there is a good story to be told and maybe we haven't worked hard enough on doing that or might there be a way for some of these projects to prove themselves before they become a target is there i think the issue is  that one of the issues is one of funding sometimes it's rather expensive to try this idea it can't really do it on the cheap sometimes so we've proposed seed funding for example to allow an investigator with the with the wild idea let's say to explore to get enough data enough experience that you can convince the peer reviewers that that this has a higher probability of success i think that's process that relates to these proposals at an s f but it's colleagues from the research universities that are oftentimes the reviewers serving on these panels is there any sort of import or encouragement that could be provided these colleagues because they're scoring these these given situations and you know get very impacted by these tough times economic times is there some sort of encouragement or training that can be provided to the colleagues one of the reasons i think it would be good to have a set aside and direct  agencies that we want to fund things that are a bit more high risk high reward if you will proposals with sort of specific guidelines i think the way it happens now is high risk high reward research is is often sort of a checkbox that means that the proposal should not be funded because it's not been proven yet there's no proof of concept for those proposals and so i think having sort of a mechanism by which the panels or  chair people or guided outside reviewers are guided in a special program and not leaving it up to the the unfortunate program officers who are really struggling to try to fund proposals that are  very very highly rated already so in a sense it's a it's a cultural change that we need to incorporate into the review process is it is getting just perhaps requiring that a certain high risk projects be be looked at and maybe taking the the top threshold of those projects with in my opinion my personal opinion yes because if you look at the testimony that i've written you'll see examples of five or six projects that we have the university that are just unbelievably spectacular that we've really struggled to try to fund them internally through foundations for voting those seed funds and as i was saying earlier in my spoken testimony i think providing funds as you suggested where you could get and dr lane suggested so that we can provide seed funding so people can get the projects off the ground and then if they don't show proof of concept then they can maybe get follow on funds so it's less of a risk as you were indicating if we had some sort of limit on the initial funds but then the ability to open a gate for them to to bring these things and deliver on the high reward transformative nature of the research programs which are why i just ask one more question the relationship with venture capitalists but i'm often told that venture capitalists will walk away from some of these high risk situations but is there a way is there a threshold of involvement from the public sector that might be incorporated with a venture capitalists funding that might maximize what we c here i think one of the things that we're doing at carnegie mellon and directing is something called an innovation eco system and what we're trying to do is create funds within the universities so that once these projects get to the research phase that we can find funding mechanisms to deliver on on the using proof of concept in a different way now the proof of concept for commercial situations and so to create pre commercial research and take it to the proof of concept for commercial reasons there's funds like that that are not available but we're trying to raise those privately work with venture capital funds angel like cetera to try to keep things from approaching the valley of death and these concepts so that  can have higher probability for these research ideas to end up creating jobs and help us to be leaders in technology innovation i think those are that is i think that is an absolutely critical thing is a person who has a startup company i've lived through this and this is these are the kinds of funds that we're trying to do within our university and work with other agencies and foundations to try to create to any of the other three of our witnesses have anything they want to say on that partnership that can be had with venture capitalists in the high risk area yes dr collins well i'll let me make two points mr taco first with respect to the  notion of failure of a project i would build on on dr lane's remarks and actually what something that you said in that it would be a mistake to focus on an individual project and think about it slowly  succeeding or failing and that's the reason why do not it states invest in the basic research enterprise for me the united states invests in a basic research enterprise in order to sustain what is an innovation ecosystem as far as the united states is concerned some projects will succeed some projects will fail but the point is that you have individuals constantly trying to think about where the next steps are with respect to the whole process of discovery and i think a great example and this we saw recently with the netflix competition which had to do with a better algorithm for picking movies as far as netflix conversation was concerned the interesting thing about the analysis of that that appeared in new york times was that there was a prize for the winner and they were of course quite happy about that but when the second place individual was interviewed that company they said we gained as much by participating in this in this competition even though we did not win because the very fact of trying to think through these problems affected the culture of our institution it seems to me that's what you can do with federal research dollars you can give our institutions the freedom to take those kinds of risks that's the reason we do it we fund institutions in order that we can do this kind of work so your phrase is exactly right it's a cultural issue it's a cultural issue within our universities and within our research institutes and as a cultural issue within a funding agency unlike the united states like the national science foundation you're absolutely right again that what we do is we direct the panels we direct the program officers we direct our senior managers to discuss with the faculty members with the reviewers what it means to think about transformative research and risky research and we ask him to take that into consideration when we look at these proposed when they look at these proposals coming in it seems to me that's where you put your finger on the issue in fostering a combination of a culture and institutions that are open to these kinds of issues thank you may i just comment to mr kon dr collins come i think it's important i think to make the point that high risk high payoff research is not always just basic research it can certainly be research that's towards some directed to hope for gold very much on the practical side of the transistor came because it was an effort at bell labs to find a replacement for a vacuum to try out well rest is history so there is great opportunity i think for agencies like the n s f to work with the private sector largely through the partnership with the universities as it does with its engineering research centers anderson university cooperative research centers the s p r grants that are made directly to industry one might have a look at those mechanisms some of which have longer term time horizon it's on them to see whether there's not an opportunity to do more to address the high high risk high payoff goals that we're talking about today through some of those the a little far afield to some extent talking about bringing private funding bad i think it's a critical question and because it's something i'm interested in a broader sense of how we best not that nothing is interesting in the comments about people not projects and i'd like to pursue that with each of you i haven't also learned they don't necessarily make the best investigators there's a big difference between thinking of the idea and carrying it out and so i guess i'm asking for comments from all of you because i think the concept is good i wonder how it can be executed well in practice i just give you one example it could be a problem there are others th bright and has done very well but had terrible time getting his first and assessed grant and because he wasn't well known even to the extent that an idea he had which he had discussed with another researcher at another university that person picked up on it and submitted a proposal and got it funded whereas the young person who thought they submitted prefer so which didn't get funded so i would just like open discussion say at the beginning i don't think you could convert the entire research enterprise to a people not projects and i certainly wouldn't suggest that as i said in my verbal remarks i'm talking going from two percent to ten percent of the grants awarded recognizing people based on their track record for innovation and success so this does create a problem for people who are just starting but our experience at howard hughes medical institute is we would have no trouble identifying people who had an independent faculty position at a university for four or five years at that point it's pretty clear who the innovative creative individuals are and  that past performance is a better indicator of future success than any written proposal will ever be and then people who have a ability and desire to be innovative in a willing to go uncharted territory that's a personality trait which carries over and you can identify such people and the least in our experience we do much better by saying to someone we're going to give you generous funding for your research for five years you better do something with it doesn't five years ago look what we did and if we don't like it we're not going to you any more money but we're not going to tell you what to do with the money we're doing we were betting on you as an individual and we're going to win or lose our bad i would say that our experiment that we've done could make a very good case that betting on those plays the bass in that way is a give you a higher rate of success than placing your bets by reading a stack of research proposals because in research proposals you often reward the people who are very articulate and can write very good research proposals rather than the people who have the good ideas are going to be able to execute if you give them the the money so it's just an alternative and i think a portfolio of a diversified way of funding research is always better than putting all your eggs in one basket and i just think that we're out of balance nolen the way we fund research let me just get back to  creative best scientists under the age of thirty five or something like that and i'm sure they have twenty or thirty very good nominees for that i would think the n s f could use the n s f budget would be to say these twenty people who are nominated for this awa all outstanding let's just give them each ten million dollars to fund their whatever they want to do in science and that's five years and stead of reviewing a lot of programs i think they would get more output in research dollars i mean i'm making these numbers off that y that they already have a mechanism in place to do that it would require very little x or person power to implement a policy like that suggesting the cursor approach or something along along that you know that elk i think to a certain amount of this is this pro chaz limitations but i do think that the most creative innovative ideas come from when you give innovative creative people some money and you don't try to tell them what they should do about it because then in by definition innovative transformative idea and someone can write it down in their proposal and submit it to you it is not an innovative transport formative idea almost by definition by my definition of those  know the rarefied group of people at the top who get funded probably are amazing we have a macarthur genius at our place and he's just you know this world and idea all the time but you know for those of us who w community college and you know peak later in life and you know some of the examples of colleagues at my university one in particular i think of who came from poland and after you became professor  although you know it's not necessarily the rule but it is now for the second the most cited chemist in the world and as often as you mentioned is a nobel prize candidate so i think and i know that dr rubin is not suggesting that we change the whole program to to bet on horses in the d o d world they often do this in terms of funding they'll find someone who they like and they can work within the bet on that professor and then they'll fund that professor and they get off and locked into the system i think that there's pitfalls with that approach and one has to be worried about funding people you know there is also the aspect beyond the proposal you know you meet people at conferences they hear you talk there is access and especially for young researchers i think that it's sometimes very difficult to see who is going to be the greatest innovators so i think that there is a role and i'm not disagreeing with dr ruben but i also believe that it's important to for those who peak later in life to doesn't mean that they're not going to be innovative i do agree with the rise report that the most creative ideas often come from brand new faculty members are really thinking out of the box so i think that that's that's an area of concern you  know i'm still waiting for myself to reach my peak although i have to my or the creativity of some of my colleagues particularly when they've done something wrong and they're explaining it to the press i think yeah i think just being able to think and think up an idea and be able to carry out that idea it suggests that high times you do want to be taking chances as far as individuals are concerned and i'll come back to your point also about young investigators and we can tie those two things together across for example the program managers at the national science foundation where as indicated in my oral testimony and opened up in the written testimony these individuals not only manage awards but they work and mentor postdocs they facilitate connections dain gaijin this outreach they really do work with the individuals and we summarize that on to the single word of stewardship it's the notion that these programs officers are not only just processing paper but they really are deeply engaged in scientific process itself in an ongoing conversation and this is the heart of the enterprise and it's what we need to continue to foster in terms of something that is being challenged right now with the terrific workload that's coming as far as in a step is concerned i might mention and i h as well so you do want to evaluate individuals and indeed that's what happens and we do take chances on young people so for example the career program you know i'm funs on average about four hundred fifty individuals a year this year because of the art of funding that was able to go up to seven hundred individuals and those then in turn into a relationship with our program officers where they work with these young investigators and they as well as well as they work with senior investigators in terms of stewardship now the senior investigators also young investigators can also call up their program officer and say i do have this great idea i had this great idea three o'clock in the morning and we now have the eager mechanist mechanism where that individual can get up to three hundred thousand dollars for a couple years to begin to pursue that idea and get the preliminary data that's needed in order to move that ideal along to a proposal furthermore program officers once again have the prerogative for a successful program or a program that's moving along they can call up that investigator and discuss a creativity extension where there's a minimal application needed in order to continue that funding for another couple of years or three years so they're variety of mechanisms that are in the hands of the program officers and it goes back to my point earlier on of having a culture of an institution that's willing to make these kinds of engagements and these kinds of investments over time so that you can use past performance as an indicator but you can also work with young people in order to take the risks that are needed to begin to build up the infrastructure within the country and i was taken by this week with the nobel prizes and assaf molecular and cellular biology had funded two of the individuals who receive nobel prizes this week and they funded them early in their careers it means that the program officers twenty years ago twenty five years ago were prescient enough to be able to look at that group of applicants and say this is someone to find twenty five thirty years later you see the fruits of that labor and you also see it as a result of a relationship between the funding agencies in the united states where the n s f got these in the vigil started and in one instance is still finding out individual but the individual refund received support from other kinds of funding agencies so it speaks to the need for a diversity of institutions diversity of institutions not only a diversity of approaches that give you really breath of support for an innovation enterprise as far as the country is concerned ok i think we'll have to cut this off here is just one use too much time read we may get back to you later new you just a comment i forget who mentioned accelerator funds i think that's a great idea dr mccullough did when you find something and i've been in that situation are you doing some research and you find something really great and you want to pursue that it's nice to have a mechanism to do that the other comment i want to make is i don't like the term transformed to research these very high risk doesn't go to come up with something like a nascar research says the point of a nascar is you take some very high risks in the hopes of winning that's exactly what you're doing here so you're taking the nascar approach let's fund this stuff that we think is really going to pay off and we know there's some risk attached to it just as there is to driving a car at two hundred miles an hour or whatever but the rewards can be great and public can cl while we're while this research is being done and maybe that will you know that could work colorful cars and other things like that or if to keep people interested in the  et in the race while it's going on not just the final perhaps we can ask them to contribute to a down payment from the first trip to a dark room that's a pretty safe general not recognize and sell for for five minutes and i have a lot of questions let's try to limit a little bit but if we could limit the dry limit our responses  a little bit might be good i'm glad it doctor others went down the road of the sacrament i talked about the people not projects and we talked a little bit about that i know a couple years ago secretary t i sit here is a former political scientist maybe i still am up local scientist but i wonder does this work better in you know one may have any strong opinions on this it's lots but i sit here thinking does this work better for some disciplines and others in some different scientific areas disciplines would  not work as well do you not see as much possibility or does this question not really pertain is anyone have any any thoughts on that dr lane i don't have any wisdom on and i have a thought it connects a little bit with my earlier observation that i think high or high risk you already said in your opening statement mr chairman that there's there's still a remaining question about what is this that we're talking about high risk high reward research and i wanted to make the point that it doesn't just have to be basic research can also be research that is that is being done with some particular outcome  in mind i think that if we go field by field and my colleagues can help me in many of these fields but my sense is this this question is apt in all fields that i know anything about for a couple reasons one reason is that breakthroughs often occur as total surprise us so the research that was being done maybe strike us as somewhat routine somewhat dull whoever is funding it and suddenly there's a funny blip on the screen there's a number that is unexpected and there's some surprise that comes out of the research and the ability to pursue those surprises the flexibility the freedom the investigator to pursue such a surprise it's extremely important first of all it has to be a kind of person who's so curious and so driven that he or she wants to do that but then the environment the funding the organisation the institution has to be willing to go with that so that we had bell labs a really good example so you know it not too long ago they had seven log seven nobel prizes to their alumni must be ten or a dozen or something like that now there was an environment in which funding was available people were being bet on and when they found surprises they were able to pursue them including the observation of black body of background like body radiation from the origin from the first big bang in the universe so i i i would i would think that in any field that one can think of there's an opportunity for these kind of breakthroughs and therefore the question is at least apt whether one is properly addressing the issue of high risk hi reward research anyone else or well i agree that in any field you need a broad range of research projects so inside biology one of our most successful projects recently was the human genome project which was a very well defined project with a clear goal and could be measured and that's i wouldn't call that it was only high reward it was not high risk on the other hand you have other projects which are high high higher risk are more unpredictable it's a word i would prefer but i just want to emphasize what dr length said about flexibility in being able to alter the goals that you're working on to pursue a  new take advantage of some unexpected result i don't think that the way the funding agencies work non logic is a problem of peer review are very good at  rewarding people for not pursuing what they originally said they were going to do but to take advantage of something much more interesting or important that came up as an unexpected result within that so anything that we can do to change the culture to support individuals being having more freedom i think would be a good thing that's come mr chairman i would i would agree with dr lane i don't think this is a discipline  limited issue and in fact i would even limited to to the sciences i think there are high risk activities in the humanities in the arts as well were individuals take chances and they take risk and sometimes it works and sometimes sometimes it doesn't breakthroughs indeed do come as a result of the surprises that are present there inherent in the research enterprise itself after all that's why we call it research and we don't call it demonstration it's something we're involved in  don't propose anything that you don't already know lee answer for and so that sort of goes counter to their research that is sort of wide and you know you can discuss it still possible discover other things but that narrows it down much much more and i tend to think we're we're not going to stay here all afternoon in the next few weeks talking here so i'm not going to open th the culture issues are certainly also very important but please don't start talking about that because we'll be here will be here forever but what is something else you want to well and so i would agree that i think the culture is important and that's why on this on this issue of surprises and breakthroughs the program officers have the flexibility to work with the investigator at that point that's why we give grants we don't do contracts and it's that flexibility that's inherent in the process as far as in itself is concerned one thing going eventually worked got that into the energy bill that we passed a couple years ago the idea of prizes i just wanted to throw that out there and that's one way to avoid the political issues associated with high rate of failures you put out a prize worth something specific age prize for advances and use of hydrogen for transportation but you also have examples of prizes promoting basic research for example one million dollar million prizes offered by a clay mathematics institute so what extent do you think that prizes can motivate transform into research will go i think that they do play a major role if i can point to the darpa urban grand challenge is a situation where they ask for autonomy to vehicles to drive within an urban situation there was a challenge and universities came together to accomplish this course i bring it up because we won at carnegie melon but if there was a million dollar prize carnegie mellon and private and private groups and companies invested in this and much technology came out of these things to create the autonomous vehicles there's nothing like a good competition to get people's juices flowing and actually create something and bring teams of people together that maybe normally don't work so i think it's an it's a very interesting idea and i think it certainly plays a role as it plays a role like many other funding mechanisms but i think it's a very interesting one won and if it's if it's high reward research that's going to show it's worth and twenty years or fifteen years then it's a somewhat different category so i think i think there are several ways apologize i had to come in late i was in some other meetings but i had a chance to look at some of the written testimony and want to take lee asked mr collins you cited an article by  who stated quote the kind of pure research that led to the invention of the transistor on the internet has steadily declined as companies bow to the pressure for quarterly and annual results will during this year's energy and water appropriations i along with several other colleagues pressed appropriators to fund secretary choose request for energy innovation hubs three were funded out of the eight requested these hubs as you know are modeled after the research labs involved in the manhattan project labs lincoln labs at mit and eighty until the bell labs to develop a transistor each invasion would embrace within its topical areas the goals of both understanding and hearing is focused on suggestions moving forward for funding high risk high reward research would you qualify the energy innovation hubs as models that other agencies should employ and are these good models for government  to fund but not necessarily institutions like n s f dot com continuing continuing on from really the last conversation and on the last question the real key it seems to me as far as concern especially within the structure of the federal agencies is to have a diversity of different kinds of approaches across different agencies in fact because back to the point about competition that in and of itself can be affected but even within an institution to have different ways in which one would go about this whole process of discovery whether you're using individual applications whether you're looking your groups whether you're using centers it's sometimes the science and technology centers for example as far as the stuff is concerned the thing you have to be careful about is this intersection between basic and applied you have to know what you're going for especially if you're going to use something like a prize and the danger here in terms of basic research is to have a metric that's too short so basic research sometimes takes quite a bit of time manhattan project can be a pretty good example for some kinds of things if it's a pretty straightforward engineering solution that you're looking  for the path forward we're perfectly clear we wouldn't call it basic research and we would need to have that time that's needed in order to discover the fundamental issues that are at work in order to then come up with the application so it's early this mix of things that are that's needed both within and between institutions in order to move ahead and the as dr lane if you would comment as well thank you very much mr carnahan for the question first thing i should say is this particular issue was not addressed in the arise report so i don't want to answer with the thought that i'm reflecting on the however steve chu secretary chu was a member of our committee so he probably had it in these mind at the time just adding to what dr collins about diversity the department of energy of course has a rich experience in not only funding university research high quality university research but also laboratories national laboratories and the advantage of a laboratory whether it's one of these new hubs or the existing national labs if you have a card or a talented people there who can fairly quickly if needed work together in different ways to address a major national need like energy for example and i think i don't know what steve what secretary chu has specifically in mind here but they look a little bit like little bell laboratories having that ability to focus on the quality of people quality of innovative idea move rapidly not be judged too much on short term timelines and such matters and so that it's a very thoughtful concept and it seems to me it's appropriate for a department of energy it's not the way academic research works in universities it's not so easy to quickly put together large teams of researchers around a single goal so i think the diversity issue spoke to is his the right way to think about it and i personally am very pleased to hear your support for secretary choose ideas but was not something we addressed in the rise report any other comment i would just give you one ancillary effect of these innovation hubs which is really very positive by having these very large programs what happens is groups of people start teaming together across universities and companies and national labs forming groups that would never be formed in any other situation and often there's there's a great benefit for these teams to be for trying to chase after this sort of money that's around the innovation hubs but there's great things that come out of that because people who would normally not come together find each other and start to collaborate and find other sources of going after funds so these kinds of programs and the diversity of these programs are really important to get people's attention to bring them together so i think there's a great effect beyond what you'll see just out of the program you'll see other groups that will be formed that will not be funded and chairman and i really want to thank you mr chairman for excellent panel good cross section of people to deal with this topic and i've learned a great deal here so i thank you for coming and thank you for your comments and your answers of the national science foundation because they were going to fund game theory research and ems and that's you know that's what was in the that came up and that is now they're just pointing out that game theory was not what they thought it was a very important part of theoretical physics and also the a t m that they were ridiculing  my colleague said you know the banks use a t m s let them pay for the research and i said i'm sorry but it stands for asynchronous transfer mode and we did some research on that so you can make the internet better i think has a really wide appeal here but it's it's critically important and how we best do this we know to keep the united states at the forefront of technology we have to be doing this research and have to be doing this research that is whatever you want to call it you know if we get the high rewards i think that's very critical and as we move into early next year the subcommittee will be working on writing the and s f reauthorization this is something that be looking closely at and as the full committee works  america competes to next year also this will be certainly be a part of what we're working on and doing so i get i think all the witnesses for their testimony the record will remain open for two weeks for additional statements from the members and for answers to any file questions the committee may ask of the witnesses that the witnesses are used in the hearing is now