"Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT"
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Editor: Debbie Levey
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Inaugural Miller annual lecture

On May 10, 2002, Prof. Sir Alec Broers, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge Univ. (England), gave the inaugural Charles L. Miller Annual Lecture at MIT, entitled, "Insight or Invention? The Need for Collaboration in the Development of High Technology." Prof. Daniel Roos, associate dean of Engineering Systems, opened the program with a brief biography of Prof. Miller and his MIT accomplishments. Broers' talk dealt with various models for advancing high technology, especially in partnerships between world-class research universities and the private sector, an area of great interest to both Cambridge University and MIT.

The Engineering Systems Division web page summarizes Broers' remarks. "The economic success of a modern nation depends on how it develops and uses technology. In this lecture I describe the evolution of some of the key technologies that have driven the information and communication industries and draw some conclusions about what was important in their development. My conclusions can be applied to other industries where the driving technologies are based on the physical sciences and perhaps on the chemical and biological sciences, but probably not those that rely on software alone." He concludes that insight and investment are at least as important as invention. "Almost all advances involve large organizations, either the research laboratories of large industrial companies, or laboratories supported by them or by government. The latter are frequently university laboratories.

"It is rare today for fundamental advances to come from small enterprises, but small companies, which have spun out of large companies and universities, frequently bring advances originally made in large organizations to the market place, and go on themselves to become large enterprises. One of the keys to success is collaboration within organizations, across nations and across the world. Ideas can emerge anywhere in the world and the potential of international collaboration is immense -- hence my excitement and optimism over the Cambridge MIT Institute.

"Finally I consider the need to reserve an environment for researchers in which totally new ideas and concepts are free to evolve and flourish. It is necessary to have a 'membrane' between the research and the development environments. The membrane allows the ideas of the researchers to pass to the world of development and allows them to 'see' the requirements of the commercial world, but prevents the lure of product development from constraining their creativity to short term objectives. Industrial and university researchers can work together behind this membrane."

Prof. Joseph Sussman reported, "The enthusiastic audience filled the auditorium and all agreed that this talk was a wonderful kick-off to the Miller series." The event was co-hosted by the Cambridge MIT Initiative, the CEE Dept., and the Engineering Systems Division.