Without federal support for curiosity-driven research, the innovation and talent pipeline that has helped ensure our nation’s prosperity and security could dry up, warned President Sally Kornbluth. Washington Post live event.
A panel discussion conducted during “The Next Generation” Washington Post Reporter Zachary Goldfarb The Washington Post’At the “Building America Summit,” Kornbluth and Arizona State University (ASU) President Michael Crow joined for a spirited discussion on the importance of curiosity-driven research, examining how universities are preparing the next generation of scientists to lead in America’s rapidly changing technological landscape.
Kornbluth stressed, “There are a lot of things in our everyday lives, whether they’re medical advances, technological advances, a lot of these things have come from 30, 40, 50 years of scientists trying to figure out how things work.”
Kornbluth pointed to MIT’s curriculum that focuses on teaching foundational skills that can be applied to myriad technological advancements, skills that will be indispensable to leading in an AI-enabled world.
“I don’t think any of our traditional subjects are out of date anymore [by AI]. It’s how you approach them,” Kornbluth said. ”In our new curriculum, we are not only leaning toward basic STEM areas. We really feel that we have to revive some of the old, moral and civic and ethical educational goals more strongly because we want all these kids who are learning to be leading technologists to come from a moral, civic and ethical perspective.
artificial intelligence
Key to Kornbluth’s mission is to maintain a human-centered approach to AI. Inspired by MIT’s motto, “Mens et Manus” (mind and hands), he shared: “We really want students to be able to use physical AI. We want our students to still be able to create things, but use AI as an enrichment tool.”
Kornbluth expressed the importance of teaching interested faculty and students how to best use AI as a tool and his commitment to increasing student collaboration.
“We are putting a big emphasis on things like teamwork. So, [students] There is a need to be able to use these tools and come together toward goals, as you can imagine a situation where AI becomes your friend instead of your study group. We really don’t want that to happen,” Kornbluth said.
Using AI effectively requires writing strong signals. Kornbluth discussed how foundational knowledge in areas such as mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry, along with teaching students to write and communicate clearly and effectively, enables students to use AI responsibly when it comes to applying these new technologies in scientific research.
“Students need to be able to take that knowledge and think about how they can best use AI and also learn how to write the correct prompts,” Kornbluth said.
Kornbluth noted the unique role of the MIT Sloan School of Management in AI exploration. “That’s because all the students are coming in with business experience and the demand for them in this field to have really strong AI knowledge is very high,” he said.
effect of frozen money
Federal funding promotes curiosity-driven research – the basis of medical, technological, and countless scientific breakthroughs.
Kornbluth said, “It’s very difficult to make a groundbreaking discovery that revolutionizes human life because you want to do it. You have to really figure out how things work and traditionally in this country this kind of research has been funded by the government because it doesn’t have an immediate return.”
Discussing federal funding issues, Kornbluth said that although money has been appropriated for universities, it has not been released to them on a large scale.
“We’re really trying to figure out what the funding stream is going to be going forward,” Kornbluth said.
Asked about the consequences of these frozen funds, Kornbluth pointed to the long timelines needed to develop life-saving treatments.
As an example, Kornbluth pointed to the treatment of diabetes.
“[Treatments] It started with insulin injections that saved lives, and now it’s automated pumps and CGMs. [Continuous Glucose Monitors],” Kornbluth said. ”The next step is going to be a real functional cure, which is stem cell transplantation – masking the cells so they’re not rejected by the immune system. But it takes a lot of groundwork to be able to get there.”
“He [diabetes] There is only one area. You can connect it to cancer therapy,” Kornbluth said.
Investment in basic research could advance treatments such as immunotherapy.
“Immunotherapy is still in its infancy – it doesn’t work in every possible type of cancer at this time. But all the modifications that are being made now in basic science laboratories through drug companies and biotech are making it more and more widely applicable so that pancreatic cancer is no longer exactly a death sentence,” Kornbluth emphasized.
national impact
Beyond research and AI, the president concluded by highlighting the strengths of MIT’s student body, programs, and spinouts.
Kornbluth underlined the importance of an MIT education to students and the larger economy.
Twenty percent of MIT’s Class of 2029 were first-generation students. Kornbluth said “education is the best path to economic mobility.”
He added: “MIT has driven 30,000 companies out of the North. MIT has an economic impact on this country equal to 14 companies.”th World’s largest GDP. “We are making a huge impact on the economy and we are creating the next generation of talent.”
Although MIT is highly selective, Kornbluth said it is financially accessible through its free tuition program for students with parental incomes under $200,000. He also highlighted MIT for America, an initiative that expands access to calculus, a required course at institutions like MIT, in under-resourced high schools across the country.
Kornbluth and Crowe concluded the panel by highlighting how their respective universities learn from each other.
“What we [ASU] Learn from MIT where the cutting edge of technology is” The crow said. “We learn how master technologists and master scientists work in small groups.” For ASU, which has a student population of more than 150,000, “learning and then doing things on a different scale and in a different way is instructive. There’s a lot of back and forth,” he said.
Kornbluth expressed his hope for MIT to continue its long-standing tradition of research and education over the next 250 years of service to the nation.
“As a small private institution, we are having a much stronger impact on how we can impact people beyond the walls of MIT,” Kornbluth said, “while simultaneously having a scientific impact on society through our discoveries.”
