2001 Future Development of Polymer Science Kyoto

“Future Development of Polymer Science and Future Strategic Meeting”

Kyoto 2001 at the IUPAC PC2002 meeting

Kalle Levon, Professor,

Director of Herman F. Mark Polymer Research Institute

IUPAC PC2002 symposium presents effectively how the changes in the society reflect research and education. Resources for the physically based economy have been coal, oil and steel but the resources for the new, knowledge-based society are brainpower and the ability to acquire, deliver and process information effectively. Greatness will not arise from the resources or the factories, but from the people – people with ideas and skills.

The role of polymer science and engineering has shifted similarly. Globalization has moved the manufacturing of thermoplastics from localized regions to the global world, plant automation has changed the need for work-power and the needs for employment and for education have become broader. The knowledge-based economy, that we have now entered, makes education as the world’s most critical resource. The science of macromolecules has become the centerpiece in the interdisciplinary world of bio- and nanotechnology. As shown by the vast number of presentations in this symposium, macromolecules play important role today in the development of safe and healthy life with optimal energy usage.  Today we realize that polymeric light emitting diodes, and field effect transistors are important in modern electrical engineering, artificial actuators in mechanical engineering, environmental sensors in civil engineering and that polymers are also the centerpiece materials in modern energy production. In the health-related fields, polymers have important for instance in stem cell engineering, polyvalent drug design, DNA or protein identification.

As the polymers have become important in the knowledge-based economy for the retrieval of information, the roles have also become stronger in the traditional “vertical” paths of chemistry, physics and biology. The leadership in organic photonics and in cell differentiation as interdisciplinary examples confirm the central future role of education of macromolecules. It is our challenge to expand the interaction and collaboration to the people who have already achieved their education on other fields but who apply polymer science and engineering in their development efforts. We want them to come and give presentations on ligand engineering with polymers, development of protein array modifications with polymers and on molecular level catalysis in confined space controlled by polymer architecture.

The complexity is increasing, but the future can be viewed in an optimistic manner following Professor Herman F. Mark’s forecast: “Unexpected and surprising observations and ideas produce a sort of revolution which abruptly changes thinking and working and opens up new vistas and uses”.

2008 Decisive Math

Good afternoon all, I come from the chemical physical world: just working with immunoassays one learns to respect statistics and probability. Further, working in a multiplexed high throughput manner, data acquisition becomes shortly directed to algorithmic processing steps and away from the immediate human decision. Not to downsize the chemical and physical worlds, I need to remind you all that today sequencing is done simply by measuring pH during the DNA synthesis. Yes, using CMOS based computer chips but still measuring nothing else but a pH change.

So math and IT dominate the data processing, chemphys problems with nanosize precision give the info in quality format, the remaining tasks are within the genomic world: the medical doctors. The present medicine is based on evaluating symptoms, when compared to an average patient case. MDs like to discuss deviations from the average but dont realize how decisive an individual data change can be. For instance an observed weight change for an 80 yo person results in a cancer analysis but unfortunately often with the disease recognition too late. Weight change is still based on quite simple mathematical expression and be handled by MDalgebra so continuous monitoring would have revealed the information earlier.

The future relies on genomic evaluation, associations and comparison on population, culture and individual levels. A change analysis, within mutations and other single gene properties, pioneers to novel information access. Drug design as an immediate example, mutations along the cancer pathways, guide to optimal drug usage.

Last year in the Annual American Medical Society meeting nearly all doctors agreed on the importance of genetic information on health and medicine. But less that 10% of the doctors knew how to use the information for assigning prescriptions. The remaining link will be between decisive math and medical doctors, the assurance of data processing is not the only issue is thus guiding impact for proper used in the critical issue,

This can be solved by proper education mainly in the field of bioinformatics where creating the new knowledge is not the only goal but development of workforce for vat data procession will expand to novel types of employment in doctor’s office and to novel commercial efforts like eQuest.

The talk was given as a panelist at the Courant Institute’s 75^th anniversary.

2010 disorganized mind

so many people are afraid of not being organized like http://www.healthymagination.com/blog/organize-your-mind-to-organize-your-life-cnn-com/

but successful life with needed changes prefers disorder - 2nd Law of thermodynamics again. like stress is not bad, but unhappiness with stress is bad. good competition and risk taking is good with stress, change is important, and we ought to enjoy it.

2004 BEST Incubator Welcome talk

Welcome Borough president Markowitz, it is an honor to have you here with us today, welcome ladies and gentlemen; faculty staff, students and guests. It is nice to see that we gather together to this important event, for Polytechnic University this represents a new time, new directions, and we are all excited. Director Saul Shapiro from NYC economic Development Corporation, you are also most welcome. Since the Boyh-Dole act came in effect in the 80’s giving the universities the ownership for the intellectual property arising from federally funded research projects, academia proved its importance on society as the recent estimate states that over 60,000 jobs have been created from the inventions coming from the federally funded research. Although it is exciting to hear sometimes how some unviersites receive $2-300M from a single patent, the more important aspect is the creation of jobs. And this is how we feel at Polytechnic University and that s why we are here today. We do want to teach our students so that they are not afraid of starting companies and creating jobs.

Polytechnic University is a technology university but today’s technology has started to be complex. The grandfathers can not anymore easily explain their grandchildren how the modern devices operate, and it is difficult even for us, it is difficult to see where the future technology takes us, it is difficult to see the future directions of technologies and it is also for us quite difficult to understand the needs in the educational content. But even if it is difficult to predict, we are able to prepare. So as the prediction is difficult, we can prepare the children in the society for the future.

For this reason we at Polytechnic University teach Information Technology, we teach Biotechnology and we teach Nanotechnology, all the important tools for our students in their future employment. We also teach about Energy, about Environment and about Health, the three cornerstones in the future Knowledge Based Society as manufacturing will become less and less important in USA due to financial and security factors. We base it on the Power of PolytThinking and we have started to take our experience in engineering to stem cell research, we have taken our expertise in wireless telecommunications to build sensor systems, all this provide healthier and safer society again showing how important the close relations between education and society are. So we bring the students to the frontiers of technology, bring them knowledge and security and confidence to face the future.

Focus on innovation is apparent for us, for the USA education as we have experience on diversity, we respect diversity and thus we innovate from diversity. Focus on innovation is also beneficial as innovation can not be outsourced. Innovation can not be outsourced as we base the atmosphere on our experience, behavior and the innovation then comes form the human minds, innovation stays here in our risk-loving country.

We shall change our education, we shall not anymore use one-directional teaching, we involve the students, we offer problem solving opportunities and we teach hands-on experiments. A good example is an undergraduate student who wanted research experience and staid in my lab for half a year. In the end of the semester he gave my a holiday card thanking for the experience and his statement “I never knew how exciting learning can be” really affected me in a motivational manner.

This is what our Brooklyn Enterprise on Science and Technology is for, we initiate curiosity, we initiate excitement, we teach students not to be afraid of new, not to be afraid of change and teach them to take risks and face the challenges their learning creates. We shall offer courses and workshops in patent process, business planning and fund raising. The BEST will have a create atmosphere. And in the end, I would like to emphasize that when we teach, the students learn more and they will know more. And the beauty of this is that when one knows more, one can dream more. When one knows more, one can dream more. And we want our students, when they graduate, to walk out out Poly with mind full of dreams, dreams which will build the companies and dreams that will create the jobs.

1997 Industry and Education - Change in Education

Industry and Education

Industry’s interest in education naturally lies in the need for the maximization of human brainpower. But how does one evaluate the productivity of human brainpower: with a short-term financial analysis, or with a long-term creation of curiosity, knowledge.

Downsizing has been a widely-used tool to achieve more economical, automated production lines. The management companies, who conduct these downsizing efforts and maximize the investment return, are more desirable than administrators who have technological and broad knowledge. As they have to show the effectiveness immediately, their vision is based on short-term actions.

Curiosity, broadening the knowledge is not part in today’s industry.

Decentralization is another tool from these management companies, who want to take away the power from those who have the curiosity, the broad overall view due to their background and experience. Decentralization down to business level assures that an investment in long-term research does not have the immediate return to the important investors and kills the human enthusiasm for novelty.

Market Driven Research for Quality Enhancement is money-making process in today’s industry. As a consequence from the above, market dominates the field and research and development is clearly market driven. Twenty years ago scientists created products and marketing department was established to find a market for these exciting findings. Today, the marketing specialists have technical background and they forward information to the scientists about possibilities in market expansion with improves properties. Men’s underwear has never been so elastic as it is today and lipstick allows kissing for all day due the stabilizing polymeric additives. The ideas originate from market changes, involve technology transfer concepts and leave no room for creation: the use of human characteristics: curiosity.

Market Expansion is a similar global industrial trend: the goal is immediate investment return and not visual for future research, which, done by others, may dominate the expanded market by the new products. Technology transfer is a major tool in this part along with the internationalization. We all have become like the Japanese in the 50’s: just copy others and sell.

And further globalization clearly is the future: the increased international market is based on the modern management of innovation: the processes in technological areas are complex, product cycles shorter and the sources more dispersed, thus alliances between the companies are needed. Technologies diffuse between boarders, international investment becomes necessary and external sources for expertise’s are searched. Production systems and technology developments become global especially for the commodity products.

Mission Driven Research in Government Offices shows that their trend is similar to that earlier explained for industry. Whether the research is related to defense, energy, health or space, the description is mission driven: commercially oriented, innovative research is partnership based with complex alliances. Final product is the only clear goal. The time from Vannevar Bush’s great achievements have passed, today the 18 billion R&D budget includes 9000 companies and has increased from 40 to 60% in the last twenty years.

One might conclude from of the above that there is not anything fundamental anymore to investigate: But the earlier example, Global Warming, is a good one to analyze. Earth’s climate is too vast and complex for an accurate analysis, but an obvious fact still is that the chemistry of atmosphere is changing. It all keeps having an increasing influence on our agriculture and possible other areas. One source for this is the use of fossil fuel and the past meeting only focused in the regulation of the past, the meeting did not touch alternative methods without byproducts: fuel cells, biomass/ethanol, hydrogen storage, enzymatic production of hydrogen and nuclear waste. But the present trend is not to respect fundamental science, not to invest in long-term future processes, while others, like Japan and European Community, are increasingly establishing interdisciplinary research programs for fundamental research.

Research-based universities, the American fame, have faced maximum competition: state universities are increasing their quality, high tuition in private universities will not be well justified, especially as the salary-differences are increasing and the middle/lower class will face lower and lower income levels. Thus we should focus on national education: continue our immigration-based success, but now based intramigration, utilization the human power from our own resources.

And the competition gets global. Industry has contacted professors, who may be our former students, in the overseas countries and conducts research with them: They need maximum return on their specialists needs, and it is also cheaper, possible with modern electronic communication, and easier to control than the demanding American Professors.

Government follows: grants are given based on the specific expertise, and not on the geographic location. The budget though has been based on the US demands without knowing that in Japan, tuition and scholarship are paid by the parents, and thus the Japanese professors can travel in first class to US-meetings on the expense of US government. Globalization is the word.

Lester Thurow predicts (The Future of Capitalism, Penguin Book) that American Industry will employ foreigners, as students from former communist countries, as these students are cheaper, have broad education and wide career expectations. And American students have started to go to Europe and other foreign countries as the tuition is lower and stipends are available (New York Times, November 1997).

How strong are we? From 1975 to 1995, in twenty years the number of academic patenting offices has increased from 25 to 200. The number of patents similarly from 177 to 1500, and the capital to 300$mill (although 70% in CA in 5 patents). In addition USA is still the leader in innovation covering >50% of the international patents.

Chemicals are the keystone in US manufacturing, essential building block for food, shelter, clothing, health, transportation. US production has grown in 20 years from 330 to 749 billion dollars (16% foreign) and to >$100 billion abroad. Foreign market is the revenue of future, commodity products are first global, as specialty chemicals still dominate in USA.

Federal Funding in Chemical Sciences is still $300 millions, which is internationally the largest amount, and as high quality does not respect volume we should not complain. A 5% decrease in individual funding would neither affect the high quality research.

The problems with the dominant American industry, the large Government Laboratories and the special SBIR programs should be able to support us if only we maintain the high quality. Obviously number of publications is not anymore the only measure of quality.

We have to keep doing our main responsibility: to serve the society: We have to train workforce with knowledge based skills in a way which satisfies our industry.

1997 Change in Education

Change in Education

Education can not anymore be one-directional teaching without the outcome assessment but has to be based on learning with quantitative measures of individual learning. One teacher has taught a group of students in past, in future a group of teachers will teach one student because of the revolution in educational tools.

Educational market has grown exponentially if one follows the growth of population. 1952 there were 2.7 billion people, this year we hit the six billion mark. Similar steep increase has occurred in the speed of information exchange.

Electronic Education will influence the present methods and will also create more competition in education. Reports, term papers are being downloaded from the net, originality can not be confirmed, evaluation will be more and more based on oral communication skills.

But the revolution will occur with educational material. Highly visual digital medium will increase the Quality of the educational material, it can be accessed globally, the students will request it, the professors have to follow, improve their own material which will not anymore be professor’s property, but also in the control of educational leadership.

This educational form will just be a new type of a book. Tim Berner-Lee, the inventor of the web (when at CERN Physics Lab, Geneva), wanted along his idealism to make the web as a public resource. Course libraries will be available in educational alliances.

Professors will start to work together to optimize educational material, similarly as the coaches optimize their evaluation in sports, and with the share of the educational material share, eventually the lecture preparation time will decrease and the time for personal education will increase.

Electronic book is strongly visual and effectively highlighted, and this easy access will finally increase the possibilities to read before hand and prepare student for the actual learning process.

Hyperlinked education will connect easily to any material needed for optimal learning. Thus, for instance mathematics can be taught logically with chemistry as the problem appears in the chemistry education.

Teaching will proceed more effectively than writing on blackboard and the feed back for the learning process can be evaluated properly.

Online discussion groups and chat rooms will improve global team concept will offer opportunities for effective tutoring. Even the shy ones finally get personal education (internet finally offers even the Finns an opportunity to discuss with each other).

Before one teacher for a group of students, now a group of teachers for one student, and this education will form a stable basis for life-long learning. Professor Ifay Chang has created a I-CARE-program for conferencing and virtual class rooms and will be the basis for Poly-education in the future.

Education of instrumentation, characterization methods can be learned while being at home, as the simulation experiments will provide the access to the instrument. Digitized information in the computer controlled instrumentation is already available.

Virtual chemistry laboratories are simulated laboratory experiments which will be used during the lectures in stead of examples. Student will do pH titration in this simulated manner and will be exposed to a vast variety of parameter control in an effective period. This conceptual learning is unique for those who do not have access to experimental laboratories such as urban high school students and handicapped students.

Remote-Access Teleoperated Experiments will not be virtual but actual Robot-Assisted Experiments which can be internet-operated. The familiarity in the experimental setup and data-analysis will also maximize the quality aspect in real experiment, which now can be designed to focus on high quality result.

1997 Global Competition - Change in Education

A Vision: Global Competition in Education

At Annual PRI-meeting

December, 1997

Kalle Levon

Director of Herman F. Mark Polymer Research Institute,

Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering,

Chemistry and Materials Science

Polytechnic University

The world leaders met in Kyoto on the issues of global warming, debates concerning environmental chemistry. The focus was in the international regulation of emissions based on existing technology, alternative energy issues for better future as fuel cells, enzymatic hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, biomass, nuclear waste were not among the topics of interest.

People do not seem to believe in innovation in chemistry? People do not seem to have curiosity?

We, the people involved in chemical sciences, do not have a good image in today’s world: we have created the environmental damages, we are the evil with the chemical warfare, and if nothing else, at least we are the nerds in all the movies. Chemists develop all the wonderful medicines, although often the medical doctors, who hardly can distinguish a ketone group from a carboxylic acid group, get the credit.

The origin of this distancing from chemistry lies in the basic education. People so often refer chemistry as the most disliked subject, they hated the various names, groups, substituents, nomenclature. We have been teaching the same way for all these years, we have been teaching chemistry as all the students are chemistry majors, we have been teaching chemistry incorrectly forcing students to learn by remembering all the formulas by heart.

We are not creating curiosity, the basic nucleus for learning and the main measure of learning.

At the recent annual meeting of Council of Chemical Research in St. Louis, (CCR, an association for national department heads and industrial research leaders) it was often emphasized that we are facing a revolution in education and especially a revolution in the education of chemistry. Interestingly, according to recent international questionnaire conducted by Professor Julio Ottino with CCR, academic faculty did see hardly any reason for any change, technical industrial people and academic leaders saw a moderate motivation and the CEO level requested for a major need for the change in education. Academic professors are further away from the present industrial needs and the from broad overall vision of the CEO’s.

During the last twenty years, the compounded average price of a car has increased about 5%, at the same the tuition in a private university close to 10%. The automobile customers have received added vehicle content including safety, emissions and higher level of standard equipment, what improvements were done in education?

The Herman F. Mark Polymer Research has initiated the formation of a Global Alliance with various Universities all over the World. With this initiative we shall maximize the quality of the educational material, widen the course selection and provide Global Human Resources.

Industry has already started to compete with us in education, (IBM advertisement: real students-virtual classrooms), but we have to strengthen our position as we have the advantage, all of the above is just a tool: We are the true educators, and the highest quality only comes through personal communication and a hybrid format with electronic educational material.

And computational methods are introducing new concepts in chemistry: databases, datamining, search engines, bioinformatics. Computational chemistry will give the prediction for the new complex products which are difficult for a human mind to master, intelligent combinatorial chemistry with high-speed screening based on function and robotic manipulation are already here. Do we have to smell anymore in the future, today’s artificial noses are already now more selective than our nose.

Thus an effective organic chemistry web-book with hyperlinks (databases, information libraries, intelligent search engines, computerized reaction route selections) will be like a calculator.

And in the laboratory, computers will be voice activated, lab notebook will thus be “verbal”, no keyboards have to used in a wet lab due to the availability of sensing devices.

It is like the Athens flea market, a described by Michael Dertouzos, the Director of MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in his book “What Will Be”

I already earlier connected the education to research: in this network we shall have virtual poster sessions, student conferences, we can share at least digital information form experiments through internet and we can even control devices through internet and form global shared experiments.

We have had period of innovation driven research, we have had period of fundamental research, we are presently having the period of market driven research and we are now entering the new period: imagination driven research. We can increase the brain power through network communication, we shall come closer and closer to imagination driven research, in which we use computer databases, search engines, and artificial intelligence to maximize or materialize our dreams and thus build up complexity and dynamics.

Our research is based on the heritage which Professor Herman F. Mark created here at Poly and which Professors Eli Pearce and Herbert Morawetz have successfully continued. Polymer science started with the concept of Plastics, which Dustin Hoffman well knows. Today, plastic are everywhere: cosmetics, pulp&paper, pharmaceutics, food and sports industries. Polymer science as a pure science has established its position, mainly through the systematic control of diffusive properties which bring us closer to the non-equilibrium complex processes of nature.

We here at Poly are building our program first of all closer to industry by establishing our research opportunities for industry to do long-term research and avoid permanent hires. We shall work with industry in order to get closer and bring industry closer to our education.

We shall also bring a bridge between high technology and our social urban problems. Professor Abraham Ulman is leading our efforts by forming a core technology in polymer technology for infrastructure, in collaboration with our civil engineering department. Anticorrosion, Concrete adhesion, Recycled Plastics as examples, he connects these problems to his National Center on Engineered Surfaces.

And from the urban problems we also provide the connection to future and fundamental science, Professors Balsara and Myerson heading our program on Nucleation, very fundamental unsolved problem but related to concentration fluctuations and to far-away-from equilibrium almost chaotic processes.

Now coming closer to nature, we have started to bring polymers into biology. As most of the polymer scientists in this field are concentrating on inert, implant materials, we are looking for interactions with and within cell wall and other biological components. Gene therapy today is one of the key areas (beyond the present achievements in drug design and delivery), genes penetrate cell walls only with the assistance of cationic synthetic polymers. And we can bring our polymers which recognize biological molecules to provide novel functions such as coating cancer with plastics.

Although education is facing new problems, or at least unpredictable, success always follows if one proceeds in the far front with novelty, courage and quality. As Mark Messier said as the Rangers captain in 1994 when winning the Stanley-cup: we had to work beyond the zone, beyond the zone of any conscious understanding. That’s our goal, too: to be there in the front with quality.