President Obama announced today the members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in remarks made at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Some members were announced previously, but this is the first time the full council was presented publicly. Obama cited the distinguished council’s “diversity of experience and views,” and said the members would advise him on “national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation.” You can see the full list here.

Xconomy’s cities of Boston, Seattle, and San Diego are all represented prominently on the advisory council. Here’s a quick rundown:

Council members with strong ties to the Northwest include Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft; and Christine Cassel, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, who was previously dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Oregon Health & Science University. (Another presidential advisor with ties to Oregon—though she’s not on this council—is Jane Lubchenco, a professor at Oregon State University, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last month as under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, and the ninth administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

Not to be outdone, the Boston area contributes luminaries John Holdren (co-chair), director of the Office for Science and Technology Policy and former director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; Eric Lander (co-chair), director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Ernest J. Moniz, director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at MIT; Daniel Schrag, professor of geology and professor of environmental science and engineering at Harvard; and Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT.

And San Diego has Mario Molina, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Molina is a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and is also the director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City.

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“Robot coming through…Robot.”

That was the cry, heard throughout the day Saturday at Boston University’s Agganis Arena, scene of the Boston regional finals of the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition. The robots were constantly on the move as teams ushered them back and forth from the competition area—think basketball, with lots of twists for this year’s theme—to the staging area/work zones “backstage.”

As always, the finals were a wild affair with lots of screaming and yelling, blaring rock music, face paint galore, and costumes that would have done Rocky Horror fans proud (to give you a clue, the guy announcing all the teams wore a cape and skated around the floor on roller blades). I was there for much of the morning, speaking with competitors and planners and a few guests that included iRobot founders Helen Greiner (an Xconomist) and Colin Angle, human genome sequencer Craig Venter, Marc Hodosh (another Xconomist and chair of Boston FIRST), and FIRST National Advisor and MIT engineering professor Woodie Flowers, among others. (Flowers was lowered by cable from the rafters at last year’s FIRST event, to the tune of Mission Impossible. This year, he told me, “I came in through the back door.”) I didn’t speak to annual judge Steve Wozniak, a founder of Apple Computer, because he wasn’t there. The reason: he will compete on Dancing With the Stars, which airs tonight. The entire crowd, though, did a shout out to him at Friday night’s opening, crying out in unison: “GOOD LUCK WOZ!” (Hodosh says they are sending in the video to the TV show, in hopes it will air tonight.)

Some 53 teams, most, but not all (see below) from around New England, took part in the event. But that’s just a fraction of the entire competition. Last year, when you include all age groups taking part in FIRST, the organization drew more than 160,000 young people from 38 countries worldwide. What I saw was just a piece of the high-school category, which itself drew 1,500 teams last year—and should be even bigger this year.

The basic idea for the high-school event is that all teams must begin with the same core electronics and motors. They then can spend up to another $3,500, with no part costing more than $400, to fine-tune and evolve their robots, which enter into “coopetition”—both competing against and cooperating with—other teams in a series of ever-changing alliances.

This year’s game was called Lunacy. It was a basketball-type game played on a hockey rink-type floor (without the ice). As the game description goes, “Two three-team robot alliances …Next Page »

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Most of the teams that gathered at the San Diego Sports Arena last week came from the American Southwest—from places like Flagstaff, AZ, and El Centro, CA. One team came all the way from Pennsylvania. Another came from Brazil. But these teams didn’t come to the arena to play hockey, football, or some other sport.

They came to show that they could build a better robot. They came for the San Diego regional FIRST Robotics Competition. As a foreign visitor seeing this kind of competition for the first time, I was amazed and had incredible fun just watching it.

The sports arena was filled with strange-looking robots, cables, containers, bolts, joysticks, duct tape, rock music, cheering, and teen-agers—thousands of spirited, excited teen-agers. The San Diego event, which ended Saturday, is part of an annual high school engineering contest organized by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It drew dozens of high school teams for an event that requires students to spend six weeks building robots to scrimmage against each other in a game.

Miss Daisy was a regional winner

I work as a newspaper reporter in Finland, and I haven’t heard of anything like this in Europe. I was amazed by the passion and enthusiasm that FIRST has inspired among the high school students. These students help each other, love what they are doing, and show it.

The student-built robots don’t look like something you’d see in a sci-fi movie. These robots are heavy plastic boxes, about four-feet tall, that whirl on wheels. Others look like modified shopping carts.

The robots in the 2009 competition were designed to play a game called Lunacy, which is played on a small court. The robots are supposed to scoop up “orbit balls” as if they are on the moon collecting moon rocks. During the first 15 seconds of each match, the robots play the game by themselves in autonomous mode. Six robots compete at a time, divided into two teams selected five minutes before …Next Page »

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Boston, Tuesday, January 20–I have been back from India for about two weeks and have had time to reflect on my trip and to view my hometown of Boston with a fresh pair of eyes. The front page news in India was about Satyam Computer Services’ $1 billion fraud and India’s impotence in stopping Pakistani-supported terrorism. Back in Boston the headlines have been been about Madoff’s $50 billion fraud and Israel’s Gaza war. The flat world indeed!

Satyam’s fraud is being compared to Enron, though it is likely that Satyam, with hundreds of Global 1000 customers, will survive. Ramalinga Raju, the former chairman of Satyam, and his brother are being held in jail; Madoff remains in his $7M apartment on bail. As I think about these two events, I am struck by one commonality: the ability of smart people to fleece others in their close communities.

In the case of Madoff, the global Jewish community is shocked at how he defrauded several Jewish philanthropies and individuals of billions of dollars. Raju comes from a tight community of Rajputs (the warrior class who are predominantly in northern India) who came to Hyderabad to serve the Nizam, or King, in pre-colonial times. Raju comes from a landowning farming family with strong connections to the state of Andhara Pradesh (AP), whose capital is Hyderabad. He has a web of connections to the business and political elite in AP, who will find it difficult to distance themselves. Likewise, I imagine the Jewish community is concerned about the negative image of the community as a result of Madoff’s misdeeds.

As is evident from all the strife around the world, humans are still drawn to their communities. The U.S. is increasingly settling into like-minded communities who overwhelmingly vote Democrat or Republican. Having just watched President Obama’s inauguration speech along with a couple of hundred people in the cradle of American democracy, the town library in Lexington, I am hopeful that the divide-and-conquer colonial era is drawing to a close. We have the first brown-skinned leader of a predominantly white-skinned country, son of a citizen of Kenya, a former British colony. In his inaugural speech Obama said “our patchwork heritage is strength not weakness,” and I truly believe that both the U.S. and India share this patchwork heritage. The Indian peninsula has seen inward migration from the first humans to leave Africa 60,000 years ago to Aryans from Central Asia, Muslims from Turkey, Jews from Spain, Zorastrians from Persia, and Christians from Europe. In spite of these migrations, or perhaps because of the relatively peaceful integration of these immigrants, for hundreds of years India was the richest region on the planet. The U.S. is now the richest country in the world, and the citizens of the U.S., in choosing Obama as President, have astonished people around the world, many of whom live in former European colonies.

Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to lead the U.S. and the world into a new transnational era, jumpstart a post-carbon economy, bring about free trade in goods, and solve major post-colonial border disputes (Kashmir, Palestine, several in Africa) that will go a long way to weakening the foundation of Muslim terrorists. Just as he energized a new U.S. generation by using the new person-to-person medium of the Internet to transmit his message, perhaps he will directly communicate to hundreds of millions opted-in cell phone users across the globe with a new message: “Let us build, not destroy.”

Boston and Massachusetts are at the center of this new transnational era. Many of Obama’s close advisors hail from universities and public institutions in the Boston area. The children of the political and business elite from many countries around the world come here to study, and whether they stay or return form bonds with native-born Americans that last a lifetime. A formal social network of Boston-area alumni would certainly span the world and keep Boston relevant in the 21st century…calling all entrepreneurs!

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By now you’ve seen the 2008 Milken Institute “State Technology and Science Index.” Washington ranks fifth, behind Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, and California. Not too shabby? Let’s take a look under the covers.

At the outset, it’s important to acknowledge that all such rankings have a huge bogosity quotient—they’re highly sensitive to the precise criteria that are evaluated, and they’re subject to gaming. Still, there are probably some things to be learned.

The Milken index has five components:

—Risk Capital and Entrepreneurial Infrastructure, where Washington ranks 4th.

—Technology and Science Work Force, where Washington ranks 4th.

—Research and Development Inputs, where Washington ranks 8th.

—Technology Concentration and Dynamism, where Washington ranks 8th.

—Human Capital Investment, where Washington ranks 16th.

Each of these, in turn, has between 10 and 21 sub-components, listed at the bottom of the Web pages. There’s a huge wealth of detail available—I urge you to take a detailed look.

For now, though, let’s not spend any time on the first and second components, where Washington ranks 4th among the states (in both cases, up several notches from the most recent previous ranking, carried out in 2004). Or even on the third and fourth, where we rank 8th.

Instead, let’s focus at the other end—”Human Capital Investment”—where we rank 16th, by far our worst performance.

Don’t take solace in the fact that we’re in the top third of the states. Yes, we beat out North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arkansas. But that’s not the competition. Every state that you’d think of as a tech competitor—and many that you wouldn’t—dominated us.

Here is our ranking on a few of the sub-components:

—Average Math SAT Scores: 25th among the states
—Average Verbal SAT Scores: 25th among the states
—Recent degrees awarded in science and engineering per 1,000 civilian workers: 35th among the states

Here’s the message, in a nutshell: Our state is doing an outstanding job at competing nationally and globally in the 21st century economy. But we’re doing it by importing talent from elsewhere. This includes me, and it probably includes you.

Our K-12 system is failing our kids—it’s not preparing them for, or teaching them to aspire to, 21st century careers. And our higher education system also is failing our kids—there is insufficient investment in bachelors-level education, and even within that, insufficient investment in science and engineering.

In other words, we’re failing our kids. We’re creating 21st century jobs, and they’re going to other people’s kids.

Ask your state legislator what he or she is planning to do about this. If you don’t, who will?

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As if its sports teams’ bragging rights weren’t enough, Massachusetts has now topped the state rankings in science and technology prowess. Meanwhile, Washington placed a respectable #5.

That’s the word today from the California-based Milken Institute’s 2008 State Technology and Science Index. The rankings are based on 77 indicators across five broad categories: R&D inputs, risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure, human capital investment, technology and science work force, and tech concentration and dynamism. (You can get the full state list here, and the full report here.)

A whopping four New England states placed in the top 10, with Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island also represented—and all three have improved their positions from 2004, the year of Milken’s last state survey. Washington is up one spot from sixth place, while Massachusetts maintained its dominance at the #1 position.

The report notes that Massachusetts scores “well ahead” of the competition, and attributes this to its world-class research institutions, cutting-edge firms, and ability to attract and retain a highly skilled work force.

Everyone loves a Top 10 list, so here it is, with notable changes in parentheses. The release said these states are “in the best position to succeed in the technology-led information age.”

1. Massachusetts (held position since 2004)
2. Maryland (up 2 spots)
3. Colorado
4. California (down 2)
5. Washington (up 1)
6. Virginia
7. Connecticut (up 3)
8. Utah
9. New Hampshire (up 3)
10. Rhode Island (up 1)

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(A commencement address to graduates of Eberly College of Science, Penn State University, delivered on May 17, 2008)

It is an honor to be asked to address you on this wonderful day of promise for an exciting future. As a Professor for the past 35 years, I understand the important achievement this day represents for this graduating class of Eberly College of Science. Led by a dedicated faculty, you have worked hard for four years and now are leaving this nurturing place for new challenges. This is fortunate, as the country intensely needs new graduates in science and mathematics. We are faced with major challenges about energy and the environment, continued advances in healthcare and its availability, and the increasing international interdependence of the world’s economies and wellbeing that only young people with your talents and training can surmount.

I do not want to give you the impression that you are through learning. You have just attained the tools to begin to learn. Almost all of the knowledge you use throughout your life, you will learn on your own in the future. Whether this occurs in graduate or professional schools or out in the marketplace, you will have to continue to acquire new knowledge and skills. Finding environments that provide opportunities and people who stimulate these learning processes is a major part of decision-making in your immediate future.

Over 40 years ago, I stood in a similar position as you are standing today. I had just obtained my PhD degree in theoretical chemistry from the University of Illinois and was faced with a career decision. I decided, after reading many journals and textbooks, that I wanted to become a scientist studying the then-new field of molecular biology. I had essentially no training in biology, but I did find a mentor at Caltech, Professor Norman Davidson, who was also making the transition from chemistry to molecular biology—and in that environment, I was able to rapidly learn the essentials. Since then, I have done research in cancer biology, virology, cell biology, immunology, and RNA chemistry, not to mention interactions with biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. In each of these cases, I had to again become a student, learning the essentials of the new field. There is nothing I enjoy more than learning something new and sharing this new knowledge with colleagues. When people ask me about the secret to my success, I answer that it is my curiosity that drives me to learn something new and use this knowledge to create something useful.

You are at a transition where decisions that influence the course of your career are about to be made. I have been advising students at MIT for many years, and each coming year seniors wander into my office seeking advice about possible career paths. We talk about possibilities. but I make it a rule not to ever strongly influence their decision on career choices. This decision has to be their own. I believe young students have a more valid vision of the future than I do. This philosophy, from the perspective of the student, is similar to a popular reframe during the 1960s: “never trust anyone over thirty with important decisions about your life.”

However, there is one aspect about the future that I do emphasize. Most people, particularly young people, underestimate the rate of change of society and science that will occur over the course of their career. Thus, in face of this uncertainty, how can one try to make wise decisions? The answer is that though the rate of change may be difficult to judge, you probably can see the major forces that will drive change globally over the next decades. These include the challenges mentioned above—increasing cost of energy, climate change, increasing demands for medical care—but I would add to these the rapid advances in technology and science, and particularly life sciences. These forces are important to recognize since they indicate where change will occur, and wherever there is “change” there is the opportunity to become the leader of this change.

As a means of illustrating the rate of change in science and technology, it is interesting to remember that a little over 50 years ago, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, thus founding the field of molecular biology. Thirty years ago, we discovered how to synthesize new genes and use recombinant DNA to engineer organisms that could produce human insulin and other pharmaceuticals. A great alumnus of Penn State, and a personal friend, Professor Paul Berg of Stanford University, largely led this advancement in science. I had the pleasure a few years ago to present the inaugural lecture in the Berg Auditorium on your campus. Paul was present that day, making it special.

A great challenge of the next decade is managing the cost and availability of healthcare while encouraging …Next Page »

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Saturday’s regional high school robotics competition held at Boston University’s Agganis Arena event set records for attendance, mayoral wowing, and sci-tech luminary gazing. Two teams from Massachusetts, one from New Hampshire, and one from New York state were among the big winners.

That’s the report from Xconomist Marc Hodosh, chair of Boston FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). On Saturday, I posted a short account of my visit to the (extremely loud) event—and of emcee Woodie Flowers’s spectacular arrival, which you can now see on YouTube. But I had to leave before it wrapped up, and so I asked Hodosh for an update on the winners and his take-home thoughts from the competition. It turns out the top prize, called the chairman’s award, went to Agawam High School of Agawam, MA. The award recognizes not the winner of the competition, but “the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST,” according to the FIRST website. In order of their finish, the three winners of the competition, meanwhile, were Shenendehowa High School, of Clifton Park, NY; Trinity High School, Manchester, NH; and Tewksbury Memorial High School, Tewksbury, MA. All will join Agawam at the finals in Atlanta this April, along with Rookie All Star award winner Watertown (MA) High School and Engineering Inspiration prize winner, Leominster (MA) High.

For a list of other award winners, go here. Following are some highlights from Hodosh’s report:

—Boston FIRST Regional attracted 7,200 spectators this year, on Saturday alone. Blue Man Group was spectacular and really helped draw in the public and expose them to FIRST.

—We tried to mimic major sports, we know that works…and had ‘entertainment’ just like the Superbowl has a special half-time show…We had Blue Man Group, which ultimately climaxed into featuring Woodie Flowers, well-known professor/engineer, who descended from rafters using robotic rope climbing device from Atlas Devices (used for military usually). The 1st year, we introduced our emcee via the water tank inside a Zamboni. 2nd year we introduced the emcee via an autonomous Kiva Systems robot (our head ref, Benge Ambrogi, works there), 3rd year… Woodie Flowers descends from the rafters after an amazing performance by Blue Man Group…. 4th year… WHO KNOWS!… but it WILL be bigger and better!

—2008 Boston FIRST regional was largest attended FIRST regional event…ever.

—51 teams in total, most MA, but also other states including Ohio, CT, ME, NH, RI

—Mayor Menino was pleasantly surprised… staying longer than expected. He visited all the Boston area teams that were competing in the pits and addressed the attendees.

—Special judges, luminaries in their field included: Woz (Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple), Colin Angle (co-founder and CEO of iRobot—and budding movie star), Bob Metcalfe (co-inventor of the Ethernet)

—Special guests/VIPs who attended include: John Abele (founder of Boston Scientific and chair of FIRST), George Church (Harvard biologist), Marvin Minsky (MIT artificial intelligence pioneer), Henri Termeer (CEO of Genzyme), Paul Sagan (CEO of Akamai), Dennis Berkey (President of WPI), Jeff Shames (Chairman, Berklee School of Music), Ken Zolot (MIT), Anne Swift (founder, Young Inventors International), Ihor Lys (founder Color Kinetics) & Fritz Morgan (CTO Color Kinetics), Michael Hawley (formerly of Media Lab), and Bob Frankston (co-creator of VisiCalc).

—We are running out of room to hold people, the arena is at capacity and we are looking at options. It’s amazing that “Science and technology” can attract so many people in a competitive environment that is stimulating kids to learn and solve problems… and recognizing “true’” heroes of society.

—I feel great synergy between FIRST and my work at X PRIZE. These FIRST kids are the “future” competitors in X PRIZE competitions! We need them! It is very likely that some of them will land on Mars, solve the cure for cancer, learn the keys about human aging, etc.

FIRST founder Dean Kamen very much wanted to attend, Hodosh reports. But he “needed to be at the launch of the inaugural Hawaiian Regional, organized by the Governor of Hawaii.”

Let’s see, Boston in March or Hawaii…we understand, Dean.

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I have to admit the sight of legendary MIT engineering prof Woodie Flowers being lowered from the Agganis Arena ceiling over a sea of robots and screaming fans as the Mission Impossible theme song blared was pretty cool.

That was just part of the gala kickoff of today’s Boston regional finals of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition—Flowers was the emcee—held before a packed house at Boston University’s swank gym. It was a wild and wooly event that drew 51 high school robot-building teams from around New England. Before Flowers descended on us, we were treated to a special performance by the Blue Man Group and a welcome from Boston mayor Tom Menino (The Blue Men were a tad more exciting, but the mayor kept it short.)

I went over this morning, joining a crowd of folks who included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (a judge), and Xconomists Marc Hodosh (chair of Boston FIRST), John Abele (chair of FIRST and Boston Scientific co-founder and chairman), George Church, Ken Zolot, and Anne Swift. It was fun going down into the pits, where the teams were tuning up, making repairs, and hammering out strategy during the preliminary rounds that thinned out the ranks to some 24 teams for the afternoon finals.

You can read all about FIRST, which was dreamed up by inventor Dean Kamen, and the robot competition here. The basics are that teams all start with the same core motors and electronics. They can then spend up to $3000 to build their robot, which must compete against—and with—other teams.

This year’s game was called Overdrive, which took place on a small, carpeted oval track. Two alliances of three teams each played at the same time. The goal was to knock giant balls off a rack, then to race around the circuit. Alliances scored points for each lap they completed, as well as for moving balls across the finish line or over the rack.

It’s all done to blaring music and lots of cheering. Abele explained at a private luncheon that the fact the teams compete in different alliances over multiple rounds gives them incentives to mentor and work with other teams even as they compete: “coopetition.” Kamen, also an Xconomist, blogged about the motivation behind the event in You Get What You Celebrate.

I had to leave before the event finished—but I will be sure to update you on the winners, who will go on to the finals at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta from April 17-19.

But it really doesn’t matter who wins. The real point, of course, is to build excitement about science, engineering, and technology, as well as to teach cooperation and “gracious professionalism,” which was a theme of the event. Partly to that end, the judges were busy handing out a slew of awards, not for scoring points but for things like respect and collaboration, mentorship, design elegance, engineering features, spirit, and more. As Woz told me at the buffet line, “We have a lot of awards. Only one is for winning.”

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People think we have an education crisis, and that fixing some or all of the elements of “supply”—more teachers, more computers, more books, more standards, more tests, etc.— will solve the problem. My view is that we don’t have an education crisis, and we don’t have a supply crisis—we have a “demand” crisis. We need to create demand among kids to make science, technology, and engineering every bit as appealing and rewarding as bouncing a basketball or performing on a stage. Surely, that would better leverage the hundreds of billions of dollars that we already spend annually on the “supply” side of education.

On Saturday morning January 5th, the kickoff of the 2008 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition will be held in Manchester, NH, and broadcast worldwide by NASA. FIRST’s goal is to “change our culture.” FIRST is about inspiring kids. It’s about connecting them with mentors from the technical community, the genuine role models and heroes who have created our standard of living and quality of life. In the FIRST environment, kids see science, technology, and innovation as being every bit as accessible, rewarding, and fun as any sport or other general activity.

FIRST is succeeding. I’m happy to report that this year we already have more than 13,000 schools signed up. From our Junior Lego League to our mid-level Tech Challenge competition to our most advanced FIRST Robotics Competition, we engage students from elementary through high school. Our March Madness regional competitions will be hosted in 41 cities, mostly across the U.S., from Boston to Honolulu, but including a few in Canada, one in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and one in Tel Aviv, Israel. On April 17-19, the 2008 FIRST finals will be hosted in the 72,000-seat home of the 1996 Olympics, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

So demand is growing. Just as high school basketball impacts significantly more than just the team members, FIRST is impacting the larger community. In fact, FIRST is having an impact beyond the schools. Sponsoring companies, mentors, parents, and a broad range of spectators are exposed to the exciting world of technology. But there’s a lot more to do. Our goal is to make FIRST programs accessible to all students.

I started planning and organizing FIRST in 1989-90; our first competition was held in ‘92. Why did we start it? Simple. In a free culture, you get what you celebrate. And in America, we celebrate primarily two activities that create almost all the role models in our culture—entertainment and sports.

Kids who are now growing up in an entirely media-driven culture are really at risk of missing the point. Sports and entertainment are not the cause of our wealth and our success; they’re the result of it. And sports and entertainment are not likely to be the place where kids will make a great contribution to society or derive successful careers for themselves. Many kids spend an inordinate amount of their “magic decade” between 7 and 17 bouncing a ball or dreaming about Hollywood and not developing the skills they will need to succeed in the 21st century.

More kids in our culture are obsessed with Shaquille O’Neal, Britney Spears, or Paris Hilton than are interested in science and technology. This is particularly true among women and minorities. By the time they are 10 years old, many have been convinced that science and technology are beyond their capabilities and that engineering is boring and only the domain of “nerds.” These kids are victims of a culture that promotes the idea that everything should be easy and should offer instant gratification.

Who says to these kids, “You know, the number of people who will actually make money in professional sports is minuscule compared to the number of people who will have great careers in science and engineering”? Nobody ever tells these kids that there are more black surgeons than there are professional basketball players. And that’s really sad.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is screaming toward 100 percent literacy and focused on the mastery of mathematics, science, and technology. A world where all kids are smart and productive will produce a safer, more sustainable, and exciting environment for all of us. But in the United States, it’s not happening. The way to combat this problem is to start celebrating the right things…hard work, technical excellence, and innovation.

I think FIRST is doing just that. FIRST is about volunteers, as some 61,000 engineers and technical people have already signed up to mentor and support our programs this year. I am confident that they each benefit as much from FIRST as the kids do. FIRST is truly a win-win opportunity for all its stakeholders: schools, corporate sponsors, mentors, universities, parents…the whole community.

But we need more participation. As a company, you could supply resources. As an individual, you could become a participant or enthusiastic spectator. There wouldn’t be a Boston Red Sox if they didn’t have fans. Click on this link and see if there’s a robotics program in your neighborhood. The Boston FIRST Regional will be held on March 28th and 29th, with more than 50 teams participating at the Boston University Agganis Arena.

If we get these kids to celebrate science, technology, and innovation, this country will continue to be the envy of the world. If we don’t do that, we’ll get what we deserve. And we won’t be celebrating.

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