Thomas M. Connelly

Thomas M. Connelly, Jr. is Senior Vice President and Chief Science and Technology Officer, DuPont Company. He joined DuPont in 1977 as a research engineer and has served in a variety of research and plant technical leadership roles in the U.S. and overseas. Before assuming his current position in September 2000, he held leadership roles in the company's engineering polymers business in both Europe and Asia, served as business director in Advanced Fiber Systems, and led the Fluoroproducts business unit. He received his Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and economics from Princeton University and his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Cambridge (1977).

Evolving Opportunities: Building a Global, Technical Workforce

Last year, DuPont celebrated its 200th anniversary. We have succeeded in business by continually evolving to meet the changing needs of the marketplace. DuPont has done this by transforming science into new technologies. These evolving processes of meeting market needs with scientific advances are inexorably linked in developing new innovations. Market growth is not limited to the United States, and the importance of understanding the market opportunities is not limited to understanding the potential of the technology. The importance of understanding the culture of the market is also crucial to growth.

Rapid development of other countries creates opportunities both as contributors to new technologies and products, as well as business and market opportunities. It is therefore critical that our workforce be diverse to best understand and meet the needs of the changing global marketplace and customer base. A diverse workforce will help DuPont work across cultures to tap into new opportunities. DuPont also believes that a diverse workplace creates a more fertile environment for innovation and creativity.

As such, DuPont is modifying their research model to capitalize on global opportunities. While maintaining its primary corporate research lab, located at the Experimental Station, in the U.S., DuPont will locate new application development labs in key markets. Furthermore they are collaborating with global R&D leaders to building alliances across academia, governments as well as with industry.

Hiring statistics and requirements reflect DuPont's desire to increase the diversity of their population. However, while the demographics of new hires may vary the expectations of technical expertise, flexibility, leadership and communication skills, and the ability to work in team environments are unchanged.

Miles P. Drake

Miles P. Drake joined Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. in 1986 as technology manager, electronics for the company's European applied research and development group. He was named European technology director in 1986 and relocated to the U.S. in 1990 where he was named director, advanced technology for the global applications development group. In 1994 Drake was appointed director of the Corporate Science and Technology Center and in 1998 was named director, Gases and Equipment Group technology. He assumed his current position in February 2001 where he is responsible for all technology company-wide.

Miles was born in 1949 in Roydon, England. He received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Cambridge University in 1971 and a Ph.D. in surface and colloid chemistry from the University of Bristol in 1975.

Miles is Chairman Elect of the Industrial Research Institute; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry; and Advisory Board member of the Materials Research Center at Santa Barbara, California, and the AIChE.

What Major Trends are Shaping the Future Workplace for Chemists and Chemical Engineers?

Globalization of business through separation of the industry value chain and parsing out segments of the chain to the lowest cost region is a major trend. This change is enabled by the automation of many business processes through web enabled systems, the general ease of global communication, and the ability to manage a complex supply chain through business-to-business interactions.

Less well developed is the innovation value chain, though we are now seeing the start of a new trend in global innovation sourcing that will have far reaching consequences for chemists and engineers entering the workforce today. I would like to discuss how these trends will affect the expectations placed on future graduates entering global companies.

Just as a global company is continually looking "where to manufacture for lowest cost,” increasingly companies are looking at "where to find new products at lowest cost" rather than assume that an internal innovation or research arm will be the prime source. P&G, for example, has set a target of 50% of new products and technologies to be sourced from outside the company through their so called "Connect and Develop" approach to product innovation. The rationale is simple. In any field of interest for a large company there are orders of magnitude more talented people outside the company than inside it and they can be reached at zero cost through the Internet.

What are the changes in work approach that a graduate needs to embrace that lead to special skills, training, and behaviors?

·  Need to work with colleagues from around the world in a number of possible ways including leading teams of diverse and geographically distributed people or having the ability to work with supervision from a location outside the U.S., and by a non-U.S. citizen

·  Need to work at understanding and solving problems whether in product development, operations or engineering design, with help from people inside or outside the company, in the latter case preserving value for the company in a win-win relationship know-who as well as know-how

·  Understanding and working in a global "process" that allows rapid transfer of knowledge within a company from region to region

·  Competing with highly motivated talent globally

It is possible that the cosmopolitan nature of U.S. academe and the uniquely diverse society may be harnessed as a competitive advantage for “global innovation" leadership, provided leading edge techniques are both developed and embraced by industry and academe.

Robert P. Grathwol

Dr. Robert P. Grathwol has more than thirty years of experience as a professional historian and publishing scholar, beginning as a university professor and shifting after over two decades to become an independent researcher and historical consultant. In 1988 he helped found R & D Associates, a partnership providing historical research and services in organizational development. Since January 1998 Dr. Grathwol has served as Director of the U.S. Liaison Office of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

After concentrating during his university career on 20th Century European diplomatic history, Dr. Grathwol has focused his recent research and writing on the U.S. military after World War II. He is the co-author of Building for Peace: The U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945-1991 (Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History, expected publication, 2003) and Berlin and the American Military: A Cold War Chronicle (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Other recent publications include American Forces in Berlin, Cold War Outpost, 1945-1994 (Washington, 1994) and Oral History and Postwar German-American Relations: Resources in the United States (Washington, 1997). Bricks, Sand, and Marble: U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1947-1991 is in press for publication this year by the U.S. Army Center of Military History. Earlier publications include Stresemann and the DNVP (Regents of Kansas Press, 1980) and numerous scholarly articles and reviews in both English and German. Dr. Grathwol has served as consultant to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States and conducted research for the U. S. Department of Justice, Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Exhibitions Division.

Dr. Grathwol has a B.A. from Providence College, an advanced degree (Diplôme Supérieur) from the University of Strasbourg (France), and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He held faculty appointments at several institutions, most recently at Washington State University (1979-90). Concurrent with his service as a university professor, he served as director of the Washington State University Press and the Bologna Center Library of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; he also held a position at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Grathwol studied in France from 1961 to 1963 on a Fulbright Fellowship and conducted research in Germany as a Humboldt Research Fellow in 1973 to 1975. He is fluent in

German, French, and Italian.

Seeing the World Through a Different Window

The presentation assesses the issue of preparedness for a global workforce as involving two intertwined problems:

1)  Maintaining or stimulating creativity in research, and

2)  Assuring that American-trained researchers have the tools to compete in an increasingly global environment.

The metaphor used as the title of this presentation—seeing the world through a different window—encompasses these two propositions. One way to find that “different window” is to venture into research setting that take us out of our comfort zone. My personal history, which has led to my current responsibilities, convinces me that research opportunities abroad can change our perspective, give us that “different window,” and enrich both our research and our lives.

To explore this assertion, the presentation will sketch what others, particularly in Europe, are doing to find that “different window,” and what Americans are doing – or frequently not doing – to enhance the range of their international experience, vision, competitiveness.

Evidence suggests that, as a community, we Americans are reluctant to venture abroad, whereas our overseas research colleagues – or competitors in the global workforce – are not so bound. Will what Europeans are doing to broaden their research efforts internationally give them an advantage in the global arena? What explains our apparent reluctance to see opportunity in overseas research ventures? Answering these questions involves a series of propositions that include:

-  The curse of our preeminence or “Why should we worry?”

-  The level of our arrogance or “Why should we bother?”

-  The level of our awareness or “What do YOU know?”

and other issues such as money, reintegration—or more accurately its failure, difficult career tracks, two career couples and the special career situation of women,

We are powerless to change some of these factors, but have the capacity to change others. The presentation offers several observations about what the Humboldt Foundation is doing to think and act creatively, and how others can take similar action.

Sharon Hemond Hrynkow

Sharon Hrynkow is the Deputy Director of the Fogarty International Center (FIC) at NIH. FIC’s more than twenty programs and initiatives are aimed at reducing disparities in health status between rich and poor countries. FIC initiatives address infectious disease threats, including HIV/AIDS; adverse health impacts of environmental pollution; maternal and child health concerns; the burden of brain disorders in the developing world, and other global health challenges. FIC supports a significant portfolio of training programs to build scientific capacity in low- and middle-income nations as well as research programs on cross-cutting global health issues. In addition, FIC serves as the focal point at NIH for international activities.

Among Dr. Hrynkow’s specific areas of focus at FIC are efforts to combat brain drain for junior scientists from developing nations who are trained in the U.S. and initiatives to address gender issues as related to global health.

A native of Rhode Island, Dr. Hrynkow received her PhD. in neuroscience from the University of Connecticut. After completing postdoctoral training in the area of brain development at the University of Oslo, she become a Science Officer at the U.S. Department of State, a position she held for roughly 3 years. At the State Department, she worked on a range of health and science issues of import to the U.S. foreign policy community, including HIV, AIDS, chemical safety, and biotechnology. She worked with interagency partners, State Department leadership, NGOs, and business leaders to produce the first "U.S. International Strategy on HIV/AIDS".

Dr. Hrynkow is a member of numerous professional organizations and has published in Neuroscience, Brain Research, and other journals in her field. She was elected to the Council of Foreign Relations in 1996.

Expanding Boundaries to Improve Cooperation: Lessons Learned at NIH, and Ways Forward

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the lead biomedical and behavioral research agency within the US federal government, supports the largest portfolio of medical research and training programs anywhere in the world. With a budget of over $27 billion in FY 2003, NIH supports efforts throughout the United States and the world to improve health and health outcomes. Chemists and chemical engineers play a critical and integral role in a range of biomedical research programs, and, given the pace of scientific progress and new challenges on the horizon, this role will only expand.

This presentation will focus on needs and opportunities to bring the chemical and the life sciences into closer alignment. Put in the context of a global culture of science, we will explore obstacles in achieving successful international collaborative partnerships as well as models of successful and lasting cooperative ventures. Perspectives on how critical need areas could be met without contributing to brain drain will be discussed as well as differing approaches toward development of partnerships with OECD countries and lesser developed countries. Finally, opportunities for training and research in inter-disciplinary areas aimed at fostering collaboration among chemists, chemical engineers, and life scientists will be described.

Alvin L. Kwiram

Alvin Kwiram became Vice Provost at the University of Washington on January 1, 1987, and Vice Provost for Research in 1990. In 2002 he stepped down as Vice Provost and returned to the Chemistry Department as Professor of Chemistry. Currently he serves as Executive Director for a new NSF Science and Technology Center in photonics and opto-electronics. From 1964 to 1970 he was on the faculty at Harvard University. In 1970 he became Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, and was promoted to full professor in 1976. He served as Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington from 1977 to 1987.

He received his BA in Physics and BS in Chemistry from Walla Walla College in 1958, and he completed the work for his PhD in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in 1962. During 1962-63 he was awarded the Alfred A. Noyes Instructorship at Caltech. During 1963-64 he was a Research Associate in Physics at Stanford University working with Professor William Fairbank studying the newly discovered phenomenon of quantized flux in superconductors.