The global race is heating up to create the next generation of miracle drugs, the technology that will put electric cars in every garage and ultra-fast computers to tackle complex problems such as climate change.
President Barack Obama has called for increased total U.S. spending on scientific research and development, which is currently at about $375 billion a year. Much of it would go into clean-energy research, but also into biotechnology, nanotechnology and other fields where competition from China and other Asian nations is on the rise.
“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” Obama said in his State of the Union address on Jan. 25, referring to the Soviet satellite that beat the U.S. to space and launched the space race.
“After investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs,” he said. “We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.”
An important measure of innovation is funding for research and development. The U.S. government and private sector invested 2.7 percent of gross domestic product in R&D in 2007, compared with China’s 1.4 percent, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. China’s leaders have vowed to increase R&D spending to 2.5 percent of GDP. Other Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, already have passed the U.S. in this measure.
“Everybody is investing like mad in technology as a way to fuel economic growth, and the U.S. needs to be doing the same,” said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “It is clear these countries have figured out the relationship between innovation and economic growth, and they’re making the investments necessary.”
The Denver Post examined five key areas of research and future innovation and assessed where the U.S. stands and how the competition is shaping up.
Advanced batteries
Perhaps nowhere has Obama set a more ambitious goal for U.S. innovation than in the development of better batteries. Advances there could unlock the potential for electric cars to compete with gasoline vehicles on price and performance and could pay dividends in other areas such as solar and wind power.
“A lot of countries have identified advanced batteries and the industries that could benefit from them as a clutch of products that could provide the foundation for real economic growth for decades to come,” said Steve LeVine, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and an expert in global energy and security issues.
In 2008, the U.S. made just 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries. The administration gave $2.4 billion in stimulus funding to battery companies in 2009, the latest in a string of incentives for the industry, with the aim of jump-starting U.S. production and reaching 40 percent of global capacity by 2015.
The market for lithium-ion batteries is expected to grow dramatically as countries push for greater production of electric cars. Pike Research, a Boulder clean-technology consulting firm, predicts the global market for automotive lithium-ion batteries will expand from $877 million in 2010 to $8 billion by 2015.
Japan is the market leader, followed by South Korea. China is investing heavily in electric-car manufacturing for its domestic market, and its advanced-battery production is expected to surge.
The key for a handful of U.S. battery startups is to develop cutting-edge batteries at a cost to compete with or beat Asian makers. Overall, lithium- ion batteries are still too expensive and limited in performance to make electric cars competitive with gas-powered cars. Innovation and increasing volumes could cut that gap by more than half over the next four years, according to Pike Research.
But the winner of this race may not be determined for decades, LeVine said. The real prize will be the development of new battery technologies that reduce costs and improve storage capacity on a scale not possible for lithium-ion. U.S. scientists are researching various technologies, but China’s size and ability to mobilize resources make it a formidable nemesis, he said.
Personalized medicine
The sequencing of the human genome eight years ago signaled a new era in biological science and, ultimately, the practice of medicine.
The vast new troves of DNA information have indeed revolutionized biotechnology, opening the doors to new areas of study and giving researchers virtually endless data to process and analyze.
But the transfer of information from the $3 billion Human Genome Project into usable knowledge has been slow, and experts say it could be decades before it yields answers to some of medicine’s vexing questions.
“The trouble with biology is it’s massively complex, and it’s also connected to chemistry and physics. We need all that expertise,” said Fintan Steele, associate director of the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Colorado. “Identifying some genes that may be involved in cancer is still a long way from curing cancer.”
Still, the promise remains that genomics will yield medical approaches tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup, or what some have labeled “personalized medicine.” Related new areas of research such as proteonics, which is the study of human proteins, could bring similar results. DNA research thus far suggests that diseases afflict people in different ways, and that targeted treatments could be effective, Steele said.
An industry is sprouting around DNA sequencing, fueled by technological advances that have dramatically lowered costs. Sequencing has already enabled researchers to identify genetic markers that may indicate an individual’s predisposition for certain diseases.
The U.S. remains the clear leader in DNA science, Steele said. But China is striving to catch up. Hong Kong- based BGI, a private company, last year bought 120 sequencers. The company says it will have more DNA-sequencing capacity than the entire United States.
Nanotechnology
Big research money is flowing into nanotechnology, which involves manipulating molecules to create materials and chemicals with advanced capabilities.
Governments, corporations and investors poured $17.6 billion into nanotech research in 2009, according to a report by Lux Research in Boston. The U.S. led the pack with $6.4 billion, but other countries continued to chip away at the U.S. lead. Asian and European governments are outspending the U.S. government, Lux reported.
What’s more, a report last March by an Obama-appointed nanotech panel found that in certain areas of U.S. dominance — such as scientific publications and patent applications — China, South Korea and Germany are making significant strides. Another concern: About a third of U.S.-trained nanoscience Ph.D. graduates return to their home countries.
While innovations in nanotech haven’t come as quickly as once hoped, key commercial applications have been made.
Semiconductors used in today’s smartphones and laptops are loaded with nanoscale features; many industrial chemical processes are now aided by nanoparticles; and nanomaterials are increasingly being used in cosmetics, sunscreens and food products.
Medicine, battery technology and aerospace are areas where nanotech experts expect future breakthroughs.
Y.C. Lee, a University of Colorado mechanical-engineering professor involved in nanotech research, said nanomaterials eventually will be widespread because they can be designed and manufactured with far more precision and performance than traditional materials.
“Most people don’t know what we mean when we say ‘nano.’ It’s too small,” he said. “On the other hand, every material is made of molecules, so it’s nothing new.”
Supercomputing
It’s hard to think of a single piece of technology that’s more important to modern scientific research than the supercomputer. The massive, power- guzzling machines are required for increasingly complex problems tackled by scientists, such as global climate change and DNA analysis, not to mention defense and commercial applications.
The U.S. traditionally has led in this field, but last year the nation received a jolt when China unveiled a new supercomputer that advanced the top speed by 40 percent. The U.S. still has about 50 percent of the world’s supercomputers and China has only 5 percent, but experts said the development was a wake-up call.
“It’s not the world’s greatest design, but at the same time it is dramatically faster,” said Earl Joseph, a St. Paul, Minn.-based analyst for research firm IDC. “China’s not just building one giant machine. It’s building 14 new data centers around the country to hold giant computers.”
The country is using those centers to attract Chinese-born scientists back home to lead large research teams in biotechnology, nanotechnology and other fields, Joseph said.
IDC expects China, which had only one or two supercomputers five years ago, to pass the European Union in 18 months and begin to threaten U.S. dominance in six to eight years.
The U.S. needs to double its spending on supercomputing — currently about $2.5 billion a year just on the hardware — to keep its lead, Joseph said. The payoff, he said, will be job creation and economic growth at a relatively low price.
Still, supercomputers are hardly cheap. The fastest now cost up to $200 million to build; in less than a decade the machines may be 30 times faster, cost up to $500 million each and require innovative power solutions.
Water technologies
Water could be the next front in the battle to confront climate change. As populations grow, droughts spread and the overall quality of water across the globe deteriorates, governments and businesses will increasingly turn to technology to meet the demand for clean, reliable sources, and to reduce demand.
The needs range from low-cost purification and sanitation tools in Third World countries to massive desalination plants supplying cities in arid parts of the industrialized world.
“I don’t see any way it won’t become a much bigger issue. There are just increasing numbers of people. . . . There’s a certain amount of water we’re all going to need,” said Andrew Winston, author of “Green Recovery” and an adviser to corporations on environmental strategy.
Technologies that bring clean water to the masses won’t necessarily have to be new or cutting edge, Winston said. “It’s about scaling them, getting people over their inertia and skepticism,” he said.
An example is modern drip-irrigation technology, which the Israelis invented in the 1960s to conserve water but which U.S. farmers were slow to adopt.
A Denver nonprofit, Water For People, uses a variety of technologies to provide drinking water and sanitation solutions in poor countries. The group recently developed an Android phone application it uses to enter, track and share water-flow and quality information about its projects.
On the other end of the spectrum, large desalination plants are being built across the globe at a rapid pace. The plants typically use a reverse-osmosis process and vast amounts of power to remove salt from seawater on an immense scale, returning a salty brine to the ocean.
Israel and other Middle East countries are leaders in the technology, and Australia has rolled out a $300 million desalination plant in Perth that runs entirely on wind power.
Meanwhile in the U.S., desalination has rolled out slowly, set back by environmental concerns, litigation and regulatory obstacles.
Greg Griffin: 303-954-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com
Supercomputing
Why it matters: Needed to handle the complex problems from DNA analysis to commercial applications to defense.
Who leads: China last year produced a machine that is 40 percent faster than the best supercomputer in the U.S.
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Why it matters: Manipulating molecules and dealing with microscopic products, above, could have industrial and consumer uses.
Who leads: U.S., but eroding
WATER TECHNOLOGIES
Why it matters: Water could be the next front in the battle to confront climate change.
Who leads: Israel
GENOMIC RESEARCH
Why it matters: Holds the potential for medical approaches tailored to an individual’s genetics.
Who leads: U.S.
BATTERIES
Why it matters: Advances would allow electric cars to better compete with gasoline vehicles on price and performance.
Who leads: Japan and South Korea