From the course: DJ Patil: Ask Me Anything

How are you advocating for science?

From the course: DJ Patil: Ask Me Anything

Start my 1-month free trial

How are you advocating for science?

“

(upbeat music) - [Interviewer] As someone who has political say in the White House, what are some things that are going on in your world, where you're advocating for science? And I don't mean just data science. I mean science and math and general. - Thanks to President Obama, really, science got returned to it's rightful place. At that, leading and driving the country forward. That's something that we had a challenge of during the Bush administration. And historically, if we look at the unbelievable innovations that have powered the United State forward, and, is the envy of almost every other country, is the fact that we invest so aggressively in science. We aggressively invest in the people who produce good science. The United States is the only country that has been able to have an object that has been created, from the, from earth, visit every planet. It's the only country. Nobody's even close. We've been to Pluto, we've been to Saturn, we've been, you name it, all of them. What does that look like, if we don't do that? You know, right now, there's a race. There's a race for the next generation of pharmaceuticals. There's a race, for how to leverage machine learning, AI, and data, in new ways. There's a race for innovation around electric vehicles. There's a race to go to space. And, who's going to lead that? Is it the United States? Is it China? Is it the European Union? I think one of the challenges is, we've gotten complacent as a country. We've been riding the wave, of so many greats that have done this. We have, as a society, invested massively in this. And, the returns are disproportionate. If you look at how many dollars were invested in sequencing DNA of a human, the first, in the projects that Francis Collins led, and you look at the return on that investment, it's a no brainer. So, that's why President Obama created so many programs, like the Brain Initiative, to understand the brain, Precision Medicine, to develop tailored genomic treatments, the Cancer Moonshot. But, so many others, and manufacturing, and, other ideas around science. That those profound ideas, and we think, "Ah, that's just some esoteric science-ing, "that's unnoted," and think, those things come back. And, when they come back, they add ridiculous benefits. Nanotechnology and all of those things. And so, we have to continue to push to do that. Because, if we don't, we don't get the innovation. Somebody may else get the innovation that we may be jealous of at some point. But, we should really take that very aggressively. We have the crown jewels right now. We should not give them up.

Contents