. "Ensuring That the United States Is at the Forefront in Critical Fields of Science and Technology." Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007.
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Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
Possible options for federal action include the following:
Make coordinated, fundamental, structural changes that affirm the integral role of computational science in addressing the 21st century’s most important problems, which are predominantly multidisciplinary, multiagency, multisector, and collaborative. To initiate the required transformation, the federal government, in partnership with academe and industry, must create and execute a multidecade roadmap directing coordinated advances in computational science and its applications in science and engineering disciplines.
Commission the National Academies to convene one or more task forces to develop and maintain a multidecade roadmap for computational science and the fields that require it, with a goal of ensuring continuing US leadership in science, engineering, the social sciences, and the humanities.
Direct NSF to establish and lead a large-scale, interagency, and internationally coordinated Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Program to create, deploy, and apply cyberinfrastructure in ways that radically empower all scientific and engineering research and allied education. Sustained new NSF funding of $1 billion per year is required to achieve “critical mass” and to leverage the necessary coordinated coinvestment from other federal agencies, universities, industry, and international sources required to empower a revolution.40
MANUFACTURING AND INNOVATION EXTENSION
The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program of NIST was established in 1989 and now comprises about 350 nonprofit MEP centers that collectively receive a little over $100 million annually from NIST.41 The centers have been successful in attracting support from states, industry, and other entities.
Several recent recommendations for federal action are related to manufacturing technology and extension services:
Establish a program of Innovation Extension Centers to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to become first-tier manufacturing partners.42
Create centers for production excellence that include shared facilities and consortia.43
