IT experts offer tech advice to the next president

The presidential election is nearing the finish line, with science and technology taking a back seat to many other pressing issues. But Computerworld.com asked some high-tech luminaries to offer their advice to the next U.S. president, and they received a wide range of answers.

> Henry Chesbrough, the executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, said innovation must be at the forefront of the economic policies of the new administration. He said there must be support for start-ups and small businesses, universities and national labs must be allowed to engage with industry on translating research results into commercial products, and more money must be appropriated for basic research.

> Judy Estrin, CEO, JLabs LLC and author of Closing the Innovation Gap, said the most crucial role of the next administration will be to foster the right environment for innovation through wise funding and smart policy.

> Vinton Cerf, Internet pioneer and chief Internet evangelist for Google Inc., said the U.S. must take a global leadership role on energy and global warming, focus our national R&D capacity on developing renewable energy at costs competitive with coal, and continue work on clean coal and restart nuclear power development.

> David Farber, professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, said a new president must re-establish the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee to get advice from technology leaders.

> Leonard Kleinrock, professor of Computer Science at University of California in Los Angeles said long-term, high-risk, high-payoff, well-funded and visionary research has been replaced with a focus on short-term, low-risk, low-payoff, poorly funded and pragmatic objectives. This must change, he said. "I urge the next president to return to the generous government funding of long-term advanced and innovative research projects for our universities and research centers,'' he said.

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- check out this Computerworld.com article

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