The problem is becoming particularly acute as a growing pool of scientists face a shrinking pot of money, both from drying stimulus funds scheduled to disappear this September and 2.9-percent budget cuts forced on the N.S.F. through sequestration.
These companies are drawn by India's pool of scientists and engineers, who can earn less than 10 percent of their peers in Europe and the United States, and India's long tradition of innovation when raw materials or machinery were not available.
But the pool of scientists holding formal qualifications in both computer science and biology is diminutive.
Vandebroek helps ensure that a diverse pool of scientists and engineers is recruited.
In addition to increasing the nation's pool of scientists, Bruns says, the program aims to overhaul the way science is taught at the undergraduate level.
In highly technical fields like semiconductors, there's a very large pool of scientists and engineers to hire from, says Celia Merzbacher, vice president of innovative partnerships at the Semiconductor Research Corporation SRCC), which is based in Durham, North Carolina.
In order to support in the academic preparation and production of a larger and more diverse pool of scientists and engineers, there continues to be a need to better understand how the psychosocial constructs of interest and motivation drive the success of students pursuing academic degrees in STEM.
If he could pick one thing to do, Ioannidis wrote in an e-mail, he would recommend spreading resources "to give more opportunities to a wider pool of scientists, especially younger ones, to help them secure continuity of productivity and excellence".
Policy Objective D of the FIRST Act is "expanding the pool of scientists and engineers in the United States, including among segments of the population that have been historically underrepresented" in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.
As the planet's richest nation, with the world's top pool of scientists, we should be committing far more, not less, federal funding to free and unfettered basic scientific research that is directed towards confronting the array of crises that confront us globally.
