The United States has long recognized that the nation's prosperity and security depend on how we address challenges of disasters, poverty, famine, and disease around the world. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has played a vital role in promoting U.S. national and international interests by advancing strategies for employing science, technology, and innovation to respond to global challenges. The focus by USAID on science, technology, and innovation is critical to improve development outcomes. At the core of this progress is the engagement of science institutions and other innovative enterprises and their commitment to work in partnership with USAID to research, test, and scale solutions. The Role of Science, Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships in the Future of USAID provides an assessment and advice on the current and future role for science, technology, and innovation in assistance programs at USAID and on the role of partnerships in the public and private sectors to expand impact. This report examines challenges and opportunities for USAID in expanding the utilization of science, technology, and innovation in development assistance; assesses how USAID has deployed science, technology, and innovation; and recommends priority areas for improvement going forward in partnership with others.

Is the United States in danger of losing its competitive edge in science and technology "S & T"? In response to this concern, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness asked RAND to convene a meeting, held on November 8, 2006, to review evidence presented by experts from academia, government, and the private sector. The papers presented at the meeting addressed a wide range of issues surrounding the United States' current and future S & T competitiveness, including science policy, the quantitative assessment of S & T capability, globalization, the rise of Asia "particularly China and India", innovation, trade, technology diffusion, the increase in foreign-born S & T students and workers in the United States, new directions in the management and compensation of federal S & T workers, and national security and the defense industry. These papers provide a partial survey of the facts, challenges, and questions posed by the potential erosion of U.S.S & T capability. The importance of S & T to U.S. prosperity and security warrants that policymakers pay careful attention to the various high-level reports issued over the past ve years that warn of pressures on the U.S. lead in S & T. The intellectual point of embarkation for the RAND meeting was the foremost recent such report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, by the National Academy of Sciences.

An increasingly important and often overlooked issue in science and technology policy is recognizing the role that philanthropies play in setting the direction of research. In an era where public and private resources for science are strained, the practices that foundations adopt to advance basic and applied research needs to be better understood. This first-of-its-kind study provides a detailed assessment of the current state of science philanthropy. This examination is particularly timely, given that science philanthropies will have an increasingly important and outsized role to play in advancing responsible innovation and in shaping how research is conducted. Philanthropy and the Future of Science and Technology surveys the landscape of contemporary philanthropic involvement in science and technology by combining theoretical insights drawn from the responsible research and innovation (RRI) framework with empirical analysis investigating an array of detailed examples and case studies. Insights from interviews conducted with foundation representatives, scholars, and practitioners from a variety of sectors add real-world perspective. A wide range of philanthropic interventions are explored, focusing on support for individuals, institutions, and networks, with attention paid to the role that science philanthropies play in helping to establish and coordinate multi-sectoral funding partnerships. Novel approaches to science philanthropy are also considered, including the emergence of crowdfunding and the development of new institutional mechanisms to advance scientific research. The discussion concludes with an imaginative look into the future, outlining a series of lessons learned that can guide how new and established science philanthropies operate and envisioning alternative scenarios for the future that can inform how science philanthropy progresses over the coming decades. This book offers a major contribution to the advancement of philanthropic investment in science and technology. Thus, it will be of considerable interest to researchers and students in public policy, public administration, political science, science and technology studies, sociology of science, and related disciplines.