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Plenary Opening
Higher Education Summit for Global Development

Welcome:
Henrietta Fore, Administrator, USAID
 
Speakers:
John Hennessy, President, Stanford University
Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education
Thomas Corts, Coordination of Basic Education, Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance
Iqbal Noor Ali, Chief Executive Officer, Aga Khan Foundation
Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director, National Science Foundation
Ambassador Mark Dybul, M.D., U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator
Nina Federoff, Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State and Administrator of USAID
Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director, Library of Alexandria

April 30, 2008

HENRIETTA FORE: Good morning. Good morning to everyone. Thank you very much for assembling this morning. We had a very interesting opening session last night with President Kagame of Rwanda. But one of the things that I have heard last night and again this morning is how much interesting conversation and interaction there is between university presidents from the developing countries and the university presidents in the United States. So I thank you all for continuing good conversations with each other as the day progresses.

I would like to begin by describing our objectives for the summit and then share with you our pledge to take action beyond this meeting, and finally, to challenge you to take action along with us. Our objectives today are twofold. First, to hear from you innovative ideas and approaches to building the human resources necessary to drive economic and social development, and second to establish new partnerships that will bring the combined resources of donors, of higher education, and business communities together to implement these innovations.

We are very fortunate to have with us such an impressive group of leaders from universities and organizations that are committed to higher education. But we want to put this time to good use. So I'd like to set the tone by conveying our commitment to do more and changing some of the ways that we are doing business. While USAID has a long history of working with universities, we are taking time to look beyond our current world. Over the course of this day, I look forward to hearing your ideas across a breadth of sectors.

But USAID has started to expand our relationships. We've had many successful relationships with universities, particularly in areas of education and agricultural research. But now we want to take advantage of your innovations across the development spectrum to learn how you are preparing your students for the global workplace and how you are partnering with industry to spur innovation and economic growth and how you deliver services to your community.

We will create a focal point in our agency for reaching out to the university community so that we can take advantage of the broader scope of ideas and opportunities from you. We realize that we are currently only tapping the surface of what universities have to offer. And we want to be sure that we have the means to communicate with you in the global development commons. This is a historic gathering and we want to take advantage of it.

Toward the objective of establishing new partnerships, I am pleased to announce here, with my good friend Arden Bement, the signing of a new agreement between USAID and the National Science Foundation. This agreement will allow us to tap more deeply into the global scientific community to develop new technologies and methods that will improve agriculture, health, the environment, and understanding of our societies.

United States universities are recognized globally for their leadership in the sciences. And we are very pleased to partner with the National Science Foundation to foster greater collaboration between researchers in the United States and those in developing countries and transition economies. We are committed to strengthening the application of science and technology to development. And this is an important step in that direction. And thank you very much, Director Bement.

I would like to conclude with a challenge to you. I've mentioned several times the importance of partnerships. We recognize that the world of development has changed with new actors such as businesses and foundations and remittances from expatriate citizens playing a more significant role than we the government do in many cases.

We also recognize that tackling of old problems of development will require some new solutions. I'm convinced of the importance of new alliances and have challenged my staff to triple the value of resources that are leveraged through new partnerships this year.

So I ask you to help us reach that goal. Every one of us can be catalysts and incubators for change. Just as USAID strengthens our commitment, we hope this summit provides you with new ideas and enables you to expand your connections with people and institutions around the world.

We have an ambitious and exciting agenda today. So let me also encourage you to participate in the regional meetings on May 1st, where you'll have time for individual discussions and networking. So again, my warmest welcome and thank you for participating in this summit.

Let me now turn to our keynote speaker of the morning, one of our co-hosts, our secretary of education, who will be introduced by John Hennessy, the president of Stanford University. John?

(Applause.)

JOHN HENNESSY: Thank you, Henrietta. Margaret Spellings has been involved in education policy throughout her career. When she was confirmed as secretary of education, she became the first mother of school-age children to serve as Education secretary.

Prior to being appointed as secretary of education, she served as assistant to the president for domestic policy. In that capacity, she was institutional in the creation of the No Child Left Behind Act, which she has since implemented as secretary.

She believes that while higher education has succeeded for many, much more needs to be done to reach those in the U.S. at lower income levels. She stated in a 2007 interview with the Christian Science Monitor, "We are doing a pretty darn good job of educating the elites. But we are not doing a good job at all of educating lots and lots of Americans, particularly people of color and poor people." She continued, "We cannot continue to spend the exact amount of time with our most disadvantaged kids as we do with our most advantaged kids and hope that those kids are somehow going to catch up or get to grade level."

She is an egalitarian who believes strongly that every American should have a chance at the American dream and that education is the enabler. She believes the community college system is also a key part of the U.S. system, providing the opportunity for more people to earn a college degree. In her commencement address to the graduates of Montgomery College in May 2006, she said, "Nearly half of all American undergraduates today are at community colleges. And I am proud that the majority of students receiving Pell grant aid are community college students. It's one of the best investments we can make in America's future."

She has vigorously supported increased funding for low-income students. And I think all of us cheered the recommendation from the Spellings Commission that we enhance our funding for needs-blind financial aid in the country.

I had the opportunity to travel with a number of other university presidents, several of whom are here today - Henry Yang from UC, Santa Barbara; Eduardo Padron from Miami-Dade; J.P. Milligan from the University of Nebraska; Susan Aldridge from the University of Maryland, University College; and Mark Wrighton, Washington University, St. Louis - with the secretary in a trip to Chile and Brazil last summer for the purpose of outreach on behalf of our educational institutions, to local government, university, and industry leaders. And I'd like to make a few personal observations, based on that trip.

First of all, the secretary is a fierce advocate for American higher education. She appreciates both its quality and its diversity of opportunity. Hearing her speak to foreign dignitaries, both putting out the welcome mat and praising our institutions, was a side of the secretary that few of us in this country ever see. She believes strongly in transparency, an area where I think we must admit that as a group, the universities in this country were often falling short, but where great progress had been made over the last few years. And future students and families will benefit.

Margaret Spellings believes in accountability. But she does understand that the goals and assessment mechanisms should be individualized for different levels of institutions and different kinds of education. She is passionate about accessibility and its importance to the future of our country.

Both she and I are fitness fanatics and coffee fanatics. I would go down to the gym and the only person I could be guaranteed finding on the trip was Margaret Spellings. And her entourage is known to make emergency coffee stops if it drives by an espresso place.

Although Margaret Spellings was born in Michigan, she moved to Texas in time to accomplish two things: acquire her Texas accent and also her wonderful sense of humor. Please join me in welcoming Secretary Spellings.

(Applause.)

MARGARET SPELLINGS: Thank you, John. Thank you very much. I appreciate that kind and somewhat excruciating introduction. As John said, he did join me in South America along with other university presidents. I'm going to talk about some of that.

We all, I will tell you, felt like celebrities traveling with John everywhere we went. And those who are there will witness, people said, where's the Stanford University president; where's the Stanford University president? And of course, John was happy to be the star of the show.

So at the end of the trip, I gave everybody a T-shirt - actually Mark Wrighten, this is yours - that says, I went to Chile and Brazil with Stanford University President John Hennessy and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. (Laughter.) Actually, folks got much more than the lousy T-shirt, which we'll talk about more today.

They met wonderful people, colleagues from those countries. And indeed, we've met colleagues around the world. Welcome to our friends from every corner to this earth. We are thrilled that you are here. I want to recognize each of you for taking time for this important dialogue. And frankly, I think it's long overdue. It's amazing to me that this is the first time that the U.S. government has really embraced such an effort. And I think whoever comes after us ought to continue it because it's been a vital conversation.

No matter what distance you've traveled though, we're all here gathered because we understand the imperative of improving the way we connect with each other to deliver higher education all over the world. Why is this important? Because Gondwanaland lives. Some of you might be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. But Gondwanaland is the name of a super-continent that existed 200 million years ago and combined present-day South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, Arabia, and the Indian peninsula. And as these land masses broke apart and spread out, they became and are distinct and separate entities.

In a recent report, Norm Augustine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences used that as a metaphor for what is happening in the world today, technology and globalization now bringing us back together. The result, of course, is increased competition, but also - and I think really importantly - increased opportunities for cooperation and partnerships to pursue shared goals. That is our work. That is our business.

Knowledge is the single most valuable currency in this changing world. We know that. We wouldn't be in this business. And education is the surest path to opportunity and prosperity. It's not a panacea. We know that. But it is a necessary foundation upon which progress is built.

In the global knowledge economy, higher education in particular has gone from a nice-to-have for some elites to a must-have for many more people, for individuals as well as for our societies. We all must educate more students to higher levels than ever before. And we need to do this in the context of the broader world.

Sticking to what you know inside your own campus gates will not work in this global world. So in this tall task, we have a great opportunity to share strategies and best practices, to learn from each other, to benefit from the collective wisdom that we share.

After all, when it comes to higher ed, nations around the world really are facing the same challenges: developing human capital by expanding access to a broad range of post-secondary learning opportunities; equipping all students to meet the demands of a competitive world; ensuring that post-secondary education is affordable and accessible for all; and making our institutions more responsive and accountable to the needs of our customers: students and families.

In my experience, we haven't talked nearly enough about these issues, about higher-ed strategy, really, here nationally, regionally, or globally. And it doesn't really make sense when we know how critical post-secondary education is to increasing the quality of our life in this world and as individuals.

Of course, there are some cutting-edge thinkers, many of whom are in this room. But in large part, there have been islands of innovation doing great work but not connected to potential partners here or around the world. We need to find better ways to work together, to share practices, and to communicate. And that is one of the fundamental reasons for this meeting.

This is starting to happen as institutions recognize the imperative of reaching abroad to establish partnerships, joint programs, student exchanges, faculty exchanges. The benefits of this cooperation not only enriches the partnering schools but diffused throughout society as well. And we see that over and over.

At the national level, one thing governments can do is to encourage cooperation and reduce barriers to interaction between institutions. Opportunities for students, faculty, and administrators to engage inevitably lead to the discovery of common ground and shared knowledge. Ideas start to percolate about how two campuses might come together in an area of shared interest. And that's what this conference is about.

Together, with the State Department and USAID, my department has worked to increase opportunities for such cross-fertilization by leading delegations U.S. college presidents abroad. In 2006, we led delegations to China, Korea, Japan, and India. Just this past summer, as John said, to Chile and Brazil. These were historic: first-ever U.S. college presidents' delegations from this country.

And I want to recognize and thank everyone who participated in those delegations. And if I could ask each of them that is present to stand, so that if you're sitting next to them, you might strike up a conversation and talk about some of the things that we learned. So all of my mighty warriors, traveling partners, as well as those who traveled with Karen Hughes, please stand. Look around. They're right in your midst.

And I'm thrilled that - Tom Farrell, are you here? He's not here. He's - oh, there you are, the ever-quiet and demure Tom Farrell. Our message, of course, was to encourage student exchanges to highlight the depth and breadth of American higher education and to welcome increased collaboration and partnerships.

Let me give you just a few examples of international partnerships that can be developed out of efforts like this. Mark Wrighton who was mentioned of the Washington University in St. Louis - Mark, raise your hand - came along to South America, visited the University of Chile. And that institution is now part of Wash. U's McDonald International Scholars Academy, which trains promising graduate students and encourages international work.

Bill Brody who is sitting next to him - welcome, Bill - of Johns Hopkins was with me in Asia. His university just celebrated the 20th anniversary of its Nanjing Center for Chinese-American Studies, the first jointly accredited program in China. Johns Hopkins international activities and partnerships range from a nursing school in Peking to a music conservatory in Singapore to a public health program in Uganda.

Eduardo Padron - where are you, Eduardo, are you here - of Miami-Dade College joined me in South America as well where his institution collaborates with the Sao Paulo University on information technology projects to share expertise and give students a more global perspective.

Stead Upham of the University of Tulsa came along to Asia. And his university has since forged academic agreements with four Chinese universities and a research relationship with the geosciences and petroleum institute.

Congratulations, gentlemen, and to your institutions. I'm proud that so many colleges and universities of different stripes from private research universities to one of the nation's largest community colleges are demonstrating the kind of leadership that we need in international education.

As Tulsa's partnerships demonstrate, substantive and productive partnerships need not be just between schools. Businesses can and should play a critical role, just as government should. The idea is to leverage every possible opportunity to advance opportunities for students, faculty, schools, and even for the business community. The benefits, in turn, will diffuse throughout society as graduates emerge from college better prepared to contribute to their communities, to businesses, to our societies, in the context of our globalized world.

The U.S. is working to further expand opportunities for higher-education partnerships. My department will collaborate with the State Department and USAID to host a symposium about the U.S. community college model this year with our broader Middle East and North Africa partners. As we all know, community colleges are something of an American invention. They combine elements of traditional universities with practical vocational training, a model that can be adapted to meet the needs of local economies around the world.

Already, under the State Department's community college initiative, we have partnered with countries like Brazil, Egypt, and Turkey to bring students to American community colleges. They receive English-language training and learn applied skills that will enable them to contribute to their nation's development when they return home.

When it comes to the benefits of international education, one thing we all need to do is tell our story better. And that was a big part of our delegation. What it means to be connected with each other and how much we all have to gain from closer relationships, that there is a ton of mutuality between us and common interest. Education is not a zero-sum game. The cascading benefits of a single smart strategy shared widely can benefit students and communities from Boston or Birmingham, to Burundi to Bangkok or Bangalore.

This focus on international education is especially critical today when we have an urgent need to do this work. Education and higher education in particular enhances regional development strategies, enables collaboration on shared challenges from poverty to health care to energy. And it's our most powerful tool for overcoming fear, ignorance, and extremism, and promoting respect and mutual appreciation.

The quality of education we deliver is a key determinant to the future we can expect. It's central to world peace, prosperity, and civic development. The more we share, the better the quality of education we'll be able to deliver. I encourage everyone here to use this valuable time we have together to build relationships and think strategically about how you can be a part of that effort. Your efforts will build a better and more hopeful world. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

THOMAS CORTS: Thank you, Secretary Spellings. We all appreciate your part in making this summit possible. And we appreciate all that you do for Education. I am Thomas Corts, coordinator of basic education in the Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance who, as you know, is also the administrator of USAID.

One of the reasons I am here, I think, is I've been on the interagency planning committee because I attended the summit in 2006 and found it extremely interesting and helpful. I started to say that I was an alumnus of the '06 summit, but in this audience I thought I best not use that word or I might be asked for an alumni contribution.

One of the important emphases of President Bush, of Secretary Rice, Secretary Spellings, as you've just heard, and Administrator Fore, has been the forging of partnerships between government, business, and philanthropy to leverage much-greater impact on our needy world.

So one of the great partners of the USAID has been the Aga Khan Foundation USA, which is actually a network of several charities applying millions of dollars each year to help people. The chief executive officer of the Aga Khan Foundation since 1984 is Iqbar Noor Ali. He was born in Pakistan, educated in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Canada. His bachelor's and MBA studies have been in business and finance. Before coming to his present position, he served five years with the Aga Khan Organization in Canada, helping recent immigrants to North America establish small enterprises.

With his record of long service, he is known and respected by the development community in the United States and in the world. And he's known as a man of action and compassion. His leadership in time of disaster and catastrophe has been higher-profile but no less effective than his quieter work on behalf of those in abject poverty in so many parts of the world, in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Join me in welcoming the CEO of the Aga Khan Foundation, Iqbal Noor Ali.

(Applause.)

IQBAL NOOR ALI: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, Secretary Spelling, Administrator Henrietta Fore, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, your excellencies. And thank you, Dr. Corts, for that introduction. If my children were in this room, they'd be proud. But they wouldn't know who you were talking about. But that's the way young adults are these days.

In the few short minutes I have, I wanted to do a couple of things. First of all, give you a quick introduction to the Aga Khan Development Network. I must admit before I start that I've never been in an assemblage of so many university presidents, chancellors, and vice presidents, and I wonder if my few hours will earn me some credits in an accelerated fashion so I can qualify for more degrees. But it is amazing.

Last night at dinner, as I was sharing my thoughts this morning with Dr. Hennessy, I had not realized just how broad a gathering this is of people from all over the world, and what we might learn from each other and what I will learn from many of you is simply going to be amazing.

I am not an educator by background. I have no expertise in any of the fields that you have expertise in. But I've been around the Aga Khan Development Network for nearly three decades, 30 years. And I have been exposed to the work of His Highness, the Aga Khan, in the institutions he has founded and what he has done. And by that vicarious experience, I want to place forward some observations with respect to higher education, but with respect to education in general.

As some of you are very aware, in addition to many institutions that that the Aga Khan has established, he has also established two universities and has established or supports over 300 secondary or primary schools, primarily in South and Central Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to that, institutions within the Aga Khan Development Network, the conglomeration of agencies that we refer to collectively as the AKDN, are also involved in social and economic development and in the enhancement and preservation of culture.

The caveat I want to put on the table is because my remarks will be limited to higher education, they ought not to be misconstrued that we do not have an interest in primary or secondary education. In fact, it's quite the contrary. The genesis of the Aga Khan Development Network goes back to its interest in teaching children, giving them education, literacy, numeracy, and making them good citizens. And it goes back to the time of Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, the grandfather of the present Aga Khan from whom he inherited the role of imam of the Ismaili Muslims.

And in a recent speech in Atlanta a little less than two weeks ago, he also mentioned that from his grandfather, he inherited his concern for education and development. And education and development have been at the heart of the work that his Highness, the Aga Khan, has been pursuing for all the past 50 years, because it was his grandfather who had told his followers back in the 1890s that if you have to choose between educating your sons and your daughters and have limited resources, educate your daughters first because that will ensure the stability and progress of the family. And as you can imagine, that was pretty radical thinking in the Victorian times.

I want to talk a little bit about the two universities and what we've learned from it. This too follows a long-held tradition, revival of a tradition, of the forefathers of his Highness, the Aga Khan, the Fatimids who established Al Azhar Uniersity in Cairo over a thousand years ago. When the Aga Khan University was conceived in the 1970s and started work in 1983 - it is now 25 years - there were four principles that guided it. One was access. The second was relevance. The third was impact. And the fourth was quality. And I want to give you a quick progress report on how the Aga Khan University has fared on those four principles.

Access to all is ensured by a needs-blind admission policy so that anyone who qualifies to attend the medical school, the nursing school, or the programs in East Africa is admitted on a needs-blind basis. Patients who come to the Aga Khan University hospitals are admitted without regard to their financial background and their ability to pay because of the patient welfare fund.

Relevance to local needs was ensured when the AKU board of directors at the very inception decided that they would focus on the social sector, the poor quality of social services in Pakistan. And hence, the first two faculties that the Aga Khan University established was a faculty of health sciences and the institute for education development so that better quality doctors, nurses, and teachers could be produced to meet the needs, not only in Pakistan but in the region and elsewhere. This relevance to local needs has also helped us work with governments on policy issues and to operate the delivery of critical social services, particularly in remote and rural areas.

The third factor was impact. The Aga Khan University, which is now 25 years old, operates in eight countries on three continents with a student body of over 2,000, 40 percent of that in East Africa where programs began just recently. It has developed a pioneering model for working with communities, treating the community as a patient, rather than just a people who come to its doors as patients. And that itself is a model.

Medical and nursing students obtain their education in working with communities. One-fifth of the medical students' time was actually spent working in community clinics and with communities, as is the time of people who go for nursing studies. The school of nursing is seen as a role model. It has enhanced the role of women in Pakistan and East Africa by bringing more stature to the profession itself and serving, as I mentioned, as a role model. And the institute of education development had done similarly for women in Pakistan and is beginning to do that in East Africa.

In terms of quality, the curriculum of the medical school in Pakistan has now been recommended by the Association of Pakistan Medical - the name escapes me now - as one that the country should adopt. And the nursing curriculum has also been recommended in a similar way and is being followed in many places in Pakistan. And AKU's medical graduates, when they come to the United States, are readily accepted at some of the best universities, which is a testament to the quality of education they receive in a developing country medical college.

AKU has also benefited from its partnership with many universities, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of North Carolina, the University of Toronto, Oxford, the National University in Singapore and so on. And so, we can attest to the value of partnerships between universities, the linkages that they help bring, and the capacity building that occurs because of that. And the university is now poised for massive expansion both in Pakistan through a new faculty of arts and sciences, and two new campuses in East Africa, the faculty of health sciences in Nairobi and the faculty of arts and sciences in Arusha, Tanzania, a commitment that His Highness made last summer of $700 million to be spent over the next 10 years in establishing a university that will benefit all of eastern Africa.

The second university is the University of Central Asia, which is the world's first university that is focusing on the needs of people who live in mountain societies: three campuses in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and in Tajikistan. And it is seen as an engine to drive growth, economic growth, but also to create the capacity for good citizenship in a free-market world. And we can talk more about that when we have time, but there is another thing I wanted to bring to your attention that is particularly of interest to his Highness.

And while we all know the value of higher education, there is one factor that sometimes gets overlooked, not by this audience, but by many others, which is a critical link between higher education and civil society, democracy, and governance. And if you allow me, I want to quote from a speech that His Highness made to the Association of American Universities a few years ago here in Washington.

And he says, "Building capacity for moral reasoning and moral judgment is a goal that is in the foundation governments of many of the world's oldest and most prestigious universities. For a number of reasons, I worry that insufficient attention is being paid to the development of these important capabilities and that the situation may worsen in the year ahead. The advances that have occurred in the sciences, most recently in the biological sciences and the engineering that underlies computer and information technologies, are important for economic development and attractive to students and scholars. I applaud these developments, but worry that they will crowd out parts of the curriculum devoted to the study of the great humanistic traditions that have evolved in all civilizations through human history," end quote.

These skills and sensibilities are essential, we believe, to a robust, thriving, and productive civil society institutions. I want to also acknowledge the role that both the U.S. government and many U.S. foundations have historically played in promoting higher education in developing countries. The most recent example is the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, which is funded by many prominent foundations, among them the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and so on. And we are grateful that they have put this emphasis.

I think, what I would urge this group, and the power is here in this room, when I say that the beginning, that this assemblage of powerful minds, the wisdom, the knowledge, the expertise, and experience that I see around here, truly has the potential to make this a watershed day in how higher education is pursued in developing countries. And I believe the role is not only that of the private sector, but also of governments. I believe we need to go back, as our friend Peter McPherson reminded us last night, to the days when the U.S. government funding for higher education was higher than it is now, but also has proved its worth. It helped people understand each other better. Our role as Americans was better understood in those days, and it created an environment in which we collectively made progress around the world. I'll leave it to this assemblage, these great minds that there are, to find ways of making that happen again. The time is now. There's great opportunity; the need is apparent. I think the moment is now for us to grab it. Thank you. (Applause.)

MR. CORTS: Thank you, Mr. Noor Ali, for a good challenge and really wonderful insight into what's going on in the world that is changing at such a rapid rate. He alluded to the great minds in this room and last night I was part of a small group that agreed that we have such a profusion of intelligence here gathered that if we all concentrated on the same thing at the same time, we'd probably set off seismic emergency alarms on seven continents. So I guess we don't need to do that to try the experiment.

Another important member of the Washington intellectual elite is the head of the National Science Foundation, which as you know, funds research in science and engineering almost literally from pole to pole, that is North to South Pole. And our next speaker is responsible for a vigorous international research program that partners with industry and education to serve American competitiveness. Presently, Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., has been director of the National Science Foundation since 2004. However, he lived several lives previous to that.

He's previously been a senior research associate at General Electric, a manager of fuels and materials for Batelle, a professor of nuclear materials at MIT, director of the office of material science at the prestigious Defense Advanced Research Priorities Agency, vice president for technical resources of a major tech company, deputy undersecretary of defense for research in engineering. Lately, he held an endowed chair while he was head of Purdue University's School of Nuclear Engineering, then was the director of the National Institute of Standards in Technology before being sworn in as the 12th director of the National Science Foundation.

Now, if that doesn't leave us all breathless, and actually I think he's still trying to either find career counseling or decide what he wants to be when he grows up, the program committee, I want to tell you, Dr. Bement, has wanted you to have the time you needed, and so it has allotted you 98 billion nanoseconds. I am proud to present the director of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Arden Bement.

ARDEN L. BEMENT, JR.: Secretary Spellings, Administrator Fore, distinguished conferees and thank you, Tom, for that very kind introduction. I'm delighted to be part of this forward-looking international convocation. This, without a doubt, has to be one of the brainiest assemblages ever convened. Along with those who preceded me, I am pleased to add my welcome to our distinguished international visitors.

I consider it critical that today's meeting includes industry leaders. Every nation's mechanism for economic growth comes from a strong industrial base. Although the nature has increasingly evolved from smokestacks to the smoking speed of networks, all economies must produce good and services despite the changing nature of both. Let me begin today by saying that international cooperation and research and education is not a luxury or an afterthought in a knowledge economy; it is a necessity for the 21st century and beyond. And our collaborations must increase in both scope and diversity. Science and technology have always been a powerful force for human progress.

Today, more than ever before, we have the opportunity and the capability to enhance global prosperity as we expand the frontiers of knowledge and the path to development. Our commitment to international collaboration will determine how effective we are in realizing this great potential. We must act aggressively and cooperatively to address the global problems of climate change, the health of the oceans, water resources, biodiversity, sufficient and sustainable energy resources, and further advancing the Internet and the cyber infrastructure, to name just a few. We all face these problems and recognize that they can only be solved collectively. The challengers they present will require developing a highly trained and educated global workforce.

At the National Science Foundation, we have followed the principle of integrating research and education to build that workforce from our inception nearly 50 years ago. Although this practice is increasing among the world's nations, you might say that it is our first commandment. We all know that research cannot advance without education, but even more powerful is the idea that education is most effective and enduring when immersed in research. This is also the best formula for ensuring the next generation's science and engineering workforce and will be especially important for developing nations.

International collaboration are particularly useful to help inculcate the concept of integrating research and education in nations building a 21st century workforce. A good example of how these collaborations can work is the NSF Africa Array Project. This partnership combines top-notch research with education and training for young U.S. and African geophysicists. The project, led by researchers from Penn State University and the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, uses a network of seismometers to examine the structure of the super-plume of magma beneath the African continent. The team is also studying the Bushveld complex, a geologic feature that is a source of about half the world's mined platinum and that contains vast quantities of gold, nickel, copper, chromium, and tin.

This project is one example of a growing model in which U.S. institutions and researchers can build the experience of working with researchers in diverse cultures in distant lands. This model will increasingly become the norm around the world. We in the United States must actively build these relationships and the comfort of working in them. They represent a win-win situation for all partners.

We know that Africa should not be a poor country. It is rich in natural and human resources. One of the obstacles to realizing the benefits from these resources is the shortage of geoscientists. How better to serve both nations' needs than to combine the research and education of two diverse groups of young geoscientists in a place ripe for investigation? We have NSF-supported researchers in the geosciences, the biological sciences, the physical sciences, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and in many other disciplines working in developing countries alongside local talent to help achieve scientific breakthroughs.

The Africa Array Project is one of many such collaborations that come under the rubric of NSF's successful and growing program Partnerships for International Research and Education, otherwise known as PIRE. The goal here is to promote forward-looking research, its successful outcome results, from all partners providing unique contributions to the research endeavor. To date, there are 32 PIRE projects around the world, approximately half in collaboration with researchers in developing countries. We plan that there will be many more. It is important to recognize that a long-term solution to self sufficiency and prosperity for developing nations is build their home-grown talent with the help of collaboration.

This is why it is so important to have such strong university participation from developing nations here today. We all know that current and future research and education will be increasingly dependent on infrastructure of every variety, from port to airport to networks. These capabilities are primary for global connection and collaboration. For developing nations, these capabilities can be established efficiently with their own engineers working alongside collaborators from other nations.

NSF has had a long and successful record in building partnerships and collaborations. Among the tangible goals that these partnerships accomplish, they are a fundamental mechanism for science diplomacy. And as we build these collaborations, I am pleased that the National Science Foundation and the Agency for International Development are working together on areas of global interest. Our combined resources will build stronger partnerships between the U.S. science community and the science communities of the developing countries. To all of you participating in today's conference, I want you to know that NSF welcomes collaborations in every language, culture, and concept. Thank you. (Applause.)

MR. CORTS: Thank you, Dr. Bement. Our next speaker is a medical doctor whose name is already writ large in the annals of those who make a difference in people's lives. Ambassador Mark Dybul, M.D., is the dynamo behind the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, informally called PEPFAR here in Washington, and the ambassador is known officially as a U.S. global AIDS coordinator. In attacking the scourge of HIV/AIDS, Ambassador Dybul has fearlessly confronted one of the greatest medical challenges of our time, and he has won the thanks and praise of waves of humanity and of our government.

It is quite remarkable that he continues to be a staff clinician in the laboratory of immuno-regulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. And he still maintains an active role as the principal investigator for clinical and basic research in HIV therapy. He has held a number of important medical positions, but we all owe him praise for the effectiveness with which he has passionately and compassionately pursued the HIV/AIDS problem on behalf of the American people. It is a pleasure to present Dr. Mark Dybul, our ambassador and U.S. global AIDS coordinator.

DR. MARK DYBUL: Thank you very much, Tom. Madam Secretary, Madam Administrator, Excellencies, and everyone gathered here today, good morning. It's great pleasure to be here with so many heads of universities and colleges. You know, I do come from academia and in about nine months I'm going to be looking for a job, so it's good to be here with all of you.

It's a great privilege to be discussing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR as it's known. It's humbling to do so in front of Secretary Spellings because at the White House she was instrumental in creating it. So it's a little difficult to talk about it in front of one of the creators.

Before I talk specifically about PEPFAR, I want to note something I'm sure Henrietta's talked about, and that is we have really inaugurated with President Bush's leadership and a bipartisan Congress, at least in this country, a new era in development. It's what The New York Times called a philosophical revolution; it referred to PEPFAR as a philosophical revolution in development.

And I think the reason for that is because it begins with the dignity and worth of every human life, and the corollary to that, of equality. If you begin with the dignity and worth of every human life, that means all are equal, and we need to believe that not only in theory, but in practice. And that means that we trust and believe in the people in developing countries to do extraordinary things if we support them.

We do not believe we are helping poor, uneducated people. We believe we are supporting some of the most remarkable and extraordinary people in the world, and that's change in philosophy. That's a revolution and it rejects the old notions of donors and recipients and moves forward embracing a new era of partnerships, an era of partnerships between equals and importantly, a partnership between peoples of all sectors, not only government to government, but people from all sectors: the private sector, non-governmental organizations, universities, colleges, all people.

And within this philosophical revolution, within this new era of development, we have PEPFAR, which is unique in a few ways, or somewhat unique. It's somewhat unique in its size and in its scope. In size, it is the largest international health initiative in history dedicated to a single disease. It's a rather extraordinary statement, the largest ever dedicated to a single disease. But the more we think about it, the more we ponder the scope as being also an extraordinary thing.

It's the first time an international initiative has integrated prevention, treatment, and care into a package; not just prevention, not just treatment, sadly care often gets lost out, but all three of them together. And it begins with a result base. It says that we will achieve prevention, care, and treatment goals, not just dedicate the largest amount of resources in history. President Bush set very specific goals that we would support treatment for 2 million people, HIV treatment for 2 million people, that we would support care for 10 million, including orphans and vulnerable children, and we would support the prevention of 7 million new infections.

Now, what do those numbers mean? When President Bush first announced this initiative, only 50,000 in all of sub-Saharan Africa were receiving antiretroviral therapy, 50,000 to 2 million in five years. That 7 million infections averted is 60 percent of the projected new infections in 15 countries, hardest-hit countries in the world.

So you can see the scope of what this is about, but I think as importantly in terms of scope, this is the first time in the history of development we are attacking a chronic disease. Why is this the first time we are tackling a chronic disease with the long-term commitment, the expansion of basic capacity and infrastructure that is so important for a chronic disease? Why is this the first time?

Well, we begin with the fact that 20 million people have already died from HIV, 20 million people. 32 million people are infected in the world today and nearly all will die without treatment. It is the number-one killer of people in sub-Saharan Africa. It's killed more than all wars combined. It has killed more and has displaced more people with 12 million orphans currently in sub-Saharan Africa. So it's fundamentally a humanitarian catastrophe. Some have equated it to the Black Plague of many years ago. And it really begins with that impulse, that humanitarian impulse. As President Bush always says, to whom much is given, much is required. And that is why we engaged in this extraordinary effort.

But there's another part to this story. Unlike most diseases, which kill young and old, HIV/AIDS kills 15- to 50-year-olds. In the hardest-hit countries in the world, HIV/AIDS is knocking out a generation of parents, teachers, healthcare workers, and peacekeepers. At least in Africa, many of the millennium development goals are unachievable if we do not tackle HIV/AIDS. For example, education: In one of the hardest-hit countries, two-thirds of all new teachers were dying from HIV/AIDS, two-thirds of all new teachers. You can set whatever goal you want for a millennium development goal for education; if two-thirds of your new teachers are dying, you're not going to achieve it.

I was recently in the Kingdom of Lesotho in the hills. There was a village next to the one I visited with 150 people; 120 of them were HIV positive, 120 of 150. Because HIV/AIDS kills 15- to 50-year-olds, because it is killing a generation of parents, teachers, healthcare workers, and peacekeepers, it is literally tearing apart the social fabric of small communities, countries and in fact, in one case, a sub-continent. And that leads to hopelessness and despair, and that's a breeding ground for fanaticism and instability. As General Wald, our four-star general who used to cover Africa for us, said, the three greatest global security threats are terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and HIV/AIDS.

There's another reason we're engaged in HIV/AIDS, and while many of your countries are as well, and that is it's good for us all to be engaged in the world. This is a global epidemic and requires all of us to be engaged. There's a reason for that, in many ways. One is it gives us windows into each other's hearts and souls and conscience. We believe many people have a new window into the heart of Americans as a result of some of these efforts. People know what we stand for when we stand with them, and that's true no matter where you are, and it's true of our university communities in your communities. We also have a new window into the hearts and cultures of distant lands, and that's contributing to the philosophical revolution, the notion that we are not donors and recipients, that we are partners and equals together. And only by engaging each other can that change occur.

Finally, and President Bush always says this, whenever we are engaged in this type of effort, no matter who we are or where we are, it is good for our character, it is good for our national character, it is good for our conscience, it is good for the conscience and character of any community, including a university.

So with that as a backdrop on what PEPFAR is all about, what this new era in development is about, what can universities do about this great challenge?

Well, the first is create awareness. HIV must be on the agendas and in speeches of every university and college in the world, particularly those most affected by HIV/AIDS but everywhere. This country, and everywhere else, young people are the greatest at-risk; they are also the greatest opportunity for the future, as you all well know. You can discuss it in your speeches, put it on your university agenda; make sure it is engaged on your campuses. And the nice thing about this - because most of you have to watch your bottom line - is it's totally free to do this. So it's a good opportunity to make a difference.

The second is to convene. Universities and colleges, higher education, are one of the best convening organizational bodies in the world. As I mentioned, all sectors need to be involved in the global response to HIV/AIDS, or anything else we do in development. Universities are small cities; they're microcosms of multi-sectorality. You have everything on most of your campuses to bring the right people together.

Let me give you a few examples. One of the pressing needs at the moment is a long-term approach to balance the immediate need for low-cost commodities and drugs with a long-term need for protecting intellectual property. We need a conversation among ethicists, lawyers, healthcare providers, public health individuals. That conversation has not occurred. Universities are a perfect place - colleges and universities are a perfect place to hold those types of dialogues to convene the people who can make a difference.

Second example: One of the greatest impediments to all development is management and the business side of development. Universities often have schools of business, schools of management, medical institutions, schools of public health; all of these people together can actually create the template and the long-term infrastructure, literally, to change the world. And universities are uniquely situated to develop these new models to bring people together.

The third is direct implementation. Some of our largest providers of prevention treatment and care services who have won competitive bids are universities, whether in this country or in developing countries. And I hesitate to go over the list - I actually saw a number of you here because I don't want to miss any - but a number, both in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and in the United States, your universities are principal implementers of PEPFAR.

Sometimes I hear, you know, we don't have any PEPFAR money; we only have a USAID grant for HIV or a CDC grant. All U.S. government money related to HIV/AIDS is PEPFAR. It's all under the rubric of the American people's response to global AIDS, so if you have any of those resources you, in fact, have PEPFAR resources and we're privileged to have you as partners.

But one of the greatest needs for the future is building capacity. As I mentioned, we're tackling a chronic disease. It's the first time we've ever tackled a chronic disease, and that means building a capacity and infrastructure. And so we've developed a twinning center to connect universities, colleges, other organizations in the United States and other countries with countries around the world, including South-to-South twinning, as we call it. If you're interested in that, www.pepfar.gov is a great place to find out about it, but it's a wonderful opportunity to share knowledge. It's not just from the North to the South, it's South to the North and South to South; it's all combined so we can share the opportunities and build the capacity that's necessary to move forward. And that's for service provision, the research that is necessary, so we can improve our service provision in the future what universities do for a living.

We are at unique moment in history. There is enormous - as the Secretary said - sense of globalization, of continents coming together. There is a unique window of interest in millennium development goals and in development. There is energy and excitement about changing the world and in development that there has never been before. But as always, unique opportunities come with grave responsibilities, and all of us in this room share the grave responsibility to grasp and capture this opportunity, and to change the world. And so we're delighted to be here with all of you, to see how we work together to change the world, because we know that working together, everything is possible. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. CORTS: Now, one of the great things about a summit like this is it gives us an opportunity to talk face-to-face with friends and with others, and to explore opportunities. And we now have just a few minutes and we'll take the advantage of this moment to say if you have a question you would like to raise of any of the speakers who have been before us, we have a few moments. And we'll let you pose whatever question you would like. This may be the best chance you'll ever have to address this group. And, intimidating as it may be to our panel, to have all this profusion of intelligence in this room, we're willing to risk it. So would you like to raise a question? Yes, Dr. Brody.

DR. WILLIAM BRODY: Yes, Will Brody, from Johns Hopkins, for Ambassador Dybul.

One of the concepts that has been very powerful in technology has been the idea of open-source development of software and also of courseware, that you will hear in a breakout session. I've long thought and actually written about, but not gotten anybody to step up, to believe that we could develop drugs for either orphan diseases or AIDS by developing a network of centers that would open-source the development of these drugs. Companies could still manufacture them as generics, rather than patent, and companies could still make a profit, but the price of the drugs would be a fraction of what it would be for proprietary drugs. Have you done anything in that or put together - try to put together a network?

DR. DYBUL: It's an excellent question, thank you very much, Mr. President.

We have not directly because we are not engaged in that piece of it; we're more the implementing agency. I believe there are some people at the Gates Foundation here who have worked intensively on this. We've also worked in the international community towards something like this. As you know, many innovator companies are trying to do something similar, but not in an organized way, which is voluntary licenses and it just isn't sufficient. So we agree with you that something should be done. To be honest, I think this is an area universities should be taking the lead in, and it's great that you're writing on them, to create these models that can then be implemented. We have not done that because we're more of an implementing agency, but as I suggested it's something we'd very much like to be engaged in.

I would point out something similar, however. Prevention, treatment, and care protocols, how you do things effectively, are very similar. And unfortunately, they are often treated as proprietary. Everyone running around, creating their own protocols and certification systems, we're trying to create - and are going to create before we leave office - a clearinghouse of basically pre-approved certifications and protocols and approaches so we don't have to reinvent the wheel, which actually wastes time as you're creating that, which means you're not saving lives immediately. And it also wastes money because you could, instead of creating something new with hundreds of thousands of dollars, simply use that money to care for people. So I think both are excellent points and great examples where universities can take a lead.

RUSSELL JONES: My name is Russell Jones. I am the president of the new startup university in Abu Dhabi, the Masdar Institute.

I was struck last night by the president of Rwanda, who had a very good perception of three things that made life difficult in sub-Saharan Africa, where I happened to be last week. The middle of them is one that I think we can do something about with this people in this room. His concern was that when aid money flows from rich countries like the U.S., it typically flows with strings and requires that consultants or contractors from the donor country be used. I've seen this happen in sub-Saharan Africa; I've seen it happen in Latin America and other places. What it means is that we don't ever build human capacity. That old Chinese proverb that says give a person a fish and you feed him for today; teach them how to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. But the third piece we don't do, which is teach them how to package and sell that fish and you build economic development.

Looking at what's happening now in rebuilding Iraq, I noticed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for the first time, has put in their contracts human capacity building as one of the requirements. But my observation is that USAID money typically does not have that. How can we get that policy changed and really build human capacity?

MS. FORE: Thank you very much. We agree with you, that this is a enormous need throughout the developing world, that building the human capital is our number-one activity because, as Mark and as Secretary Spellings were saying, our hope is to let people build their own lives and their own nations and their own futures. In USAID, we are moving to contracts in which we will either be asking contractors to take on mentees - so that let's say you're building a road, that you would have civil engineers who are of the country - but you would have key individuals who are being mentored so that the next time round, they can get the contract and they can build the road.

But we are also now looking at all contracts and a training component, so that it is part of the contract. Sometimes it is better to be a little less efficient, in when you finish a project, to make sure that you have developed local capacity so that you have encouraged the people and brought up the human capital so that people can do it for themselves. But we not only want people to fish and to be able to process it; we want them to be able to get financing so they can build their businesses, and we would like it to be for both men and women. So we agree strongly.

MR. : Administrator Fore or Dr. Bement, could you comment a little further on the substance of the agreement between AID and the National Science Foundation?

DR. BEMENT: Well, we haven't quite yet signed it. It's still under development, so I'm hesitant to get into the details. But I think fundamentally, it's a way in which the National Science Foundation, which is a domestic foundation, can partner with USAID, which is international, to carry on partnerships where resources can be provided to do the kind of projects that I was talking about.

MS. FORE: We had been thinking about signing it today, before all of you, but then we thought that perhaps you wanted to talk to each other. So we'll try to get it signed right away and have something for you, just after this summit, on how it will work because we're interested in shared research; we're interested in curriculums and we're interested in individuals who might participate in this.

MR. : (Off mike.)

MS. FORE: We are very interested in all aspects of education: art, music, how one visualizes one's culture, how one visualizes one's nation. We also think that there's a great amount of integration that can be made between all disciplines. So we're intrigued with what you might suggest to us, coming out of this summit, for ways that we can improve this collaboration and integration.

DR. DYBUL: If I could add, because I have some specifics - one of the greatest things many countries have to offer are beautiful products that are created by the people who live there. So there are actually some fantastic projects supported by USAID and PEPFAR to create baskets, clothing, art, paintings, in particular types of cloth that have prints on them, that are - now there are developing markets - for example, beaded, beautiful jewelry. Oprah did a big thing on beaded jewelry that was being provided from a couple countries. Not cheap; it's $150, $200. And there are now contracts with, for example, Macy's to buy hundreds of thousands of these. So we are all supporting some of these fantastic programs which are founded in the arts, founded in creativity, which can lead to incredible economic opportunity.

MS. SPELLINGS: I would just add, echo what Henrietta says about programs that we at the Department of Education run, and that is we're looking for the synergies between the disciplines. And again, we're all ears about thoughts you might have on that.

One of the things that I observed when I arrived at Department of Education is lots of little programs, a thousand flowers blooming, lots of silos, no interconnectedness, no strategy and, you know, we frankly have little to show for it at the end of the day. And I think, again, it's an area for, you know, development aid 2.0, as we figure out how to do this better, more efficiently, and frankly, much more effectively.

DR. BEMENT: I might add that the National Science Foundation does have an active partnership with the Endowment for the Arts and also the Endowment for Humanities because, in many cases, arts is a way of expressing what science can provide. And also, we learn from the arts of the past; for example, we're now understanding how nanotechnology was used in the Middle Ages to make stained-glass windows. And part of it is optical science and part of it is material science.

In the case of endangered languages, which is a partnership we have with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Endowment for the Humanities is primarily interested in archiving endangered languages so that there's a record. The foundation is more interested in the linguistics of the structure and the syntax of the language because, in many oral languages which don't have a written counterpart, that oral language contains the culture, the history, the development of that particular population, and when that oral language dies, of course, all that dies with the language. We're very much interested in preserving that.

MS. FORE: Thank you. I want to thank Secretary Spellings and the panel and turn to our next speaker, who I hope will come through the door at any moment.

I now have the pleasure to introduce the Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman. He leads a department of more than 100,000 employees - thank you, Secretary Bodman, for coming just on cue - (laughter) - more than 100,000 employees and a budget of more than $23 billion. He earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also taught that discipline. He later was a financial executive, both in venture capital and as president and chief executive officer of Fidelity Investments. He has served with distinction in three cabinet departments, as deputy secretary of commerce, as deputy secretary of treasury, and now as the 11th secretary of energy for the United States. Please welcome Secretary Samuel Bodman.

(Applause.)

b Good morning. First, I want to thank Henrietta for her nice introduction. It's a real pleasure to address you today and talk about education. That's a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. I was also pleased to see that Dr. Bement preceded me. Arden, it's very nice to see you, as well as Ms. Spellings.

When it comes to science and science education, I think we're faced with a remarkable paradox. On the one hand, the world is more dependent than ever before on science and technological innovation to provide solutions to the challenges ahead, especially in my area of energy. At the same time, it seems as though support for basic physical science research, and the interest that young people show in those disciplines, seem to be waning. According to a recent report from the National Academies, over the last 20 years the number of engineers, mathematicians, physical scientists, and geoscientists graduating with bachelor's degrees in the United States has declined by 18 percent. Similar trends can be seen elsewhere in the world.

Inasmuch as anything demands our urgent attention, I believe that this is it. We must reignite in young people a sense of excitement about math and basic physical science. This new enthusiasm may lead them to explore these disciplines, make them an object of study once they reach the university level, and perhaps lead them to make science their life's work. This is, in my view, critical to a prosperous global future.

The International Energy Agency estimates that the total global investment needed for the world to meet the projected demands for energy, by the year 2030, is going to be $22 trillion. Ensuring that investment, and ensuring that it occurs, may be the central energy challenge of our age, even more than others that dominate the front pages of our newspapers and magazines. And as we lay the groundwork, even now, for these investments, we must act in ways that are mindful of our future workforce as well, which means we also need to make a substantial investment in education.

The United States is relying on science and technology to point our way to clean, more efficient, sustainable, and affordable energy supplies. This means that we must do all that we can do today to ensure the workforce that we need for the future, that it is in the pipeline. In my judgment, this will require closer cooperation between government, private industry, and academia.

In the United States, our president has moved to strengthen this relationship through his American Competitiveness Initiative. The ACI, which calls for a dramatic increase in federal funding for basic physical science research, and for math and science education, is a strategic and directed investment in America's future. It is a major commitment in support for cutting-edge technologies, like supercomputing, nanotechnology, advanced nuclear reactor technologies, and fusion energy.

By making a substantial investment in university-level education today, we are making a down-payment on our human capital needs for tomorrow. Success, as I define it, requires us to make a sustained commitment over the long term. But in my judgment, this will not be as arduous a task as it may sound for one simple reason, and that is we have done it before. You see, I am a product of what I like to call the Sputnik generation. I can remember standing in my backyard with my parents at our home in Illinois in 1957, staring up into the nighttime sky trying to pick out the point of light that was the Sputnik, the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth. The Soviet Union put Sputnik into orbit, just 12 years after the end of the Second World War, and it scared a lot of people in our country.

To the United States, Sputnik flashed across the sky like a great warning beacon, suggesting that America was falling behind and that its days were numbered. But that did not happen. It didn't happen because the United States got busy. Sputnik's launch was the beginning of a major reassessment of U.S. scientific capabilities that led to the creation of NASA, and led to a massive increase in funding for the National Science Foundation, something that my friend Dr. Bement, no doubt, would like to see happen again. We both would. It was that increase that established the NSF as a major powerhouse of funding for university fellowships in science and engineering.

It was through an NSF fellowship, incidentally, that I was able to attend MIT. And I want to note today that MIT's President, Susan Hockfield, is here, along with David Skorton, who is president of Cornell, where I did my undergraduate work. These two institutions, Cornell and MIT, and the support of the National Science Foundation, made it possible for me to become a teacher and a professor of engineering at MIT. It was that experience that helped me develop the skills that I needed to be successful in business as a venture capitalist, and then as a chief executive. This ultimately combined in a way that made it possible for me to say yes to the president when he asked me to take a significant leadership role in developing U.S. science and engineering policy.

The parallels between that period and the one today are quite striking. Today, the world faces challenges, especially in the energy arena, that are technologically comparable to those involved in the conquest of space. As it was then, some of the challenges that we face today seem insoluble. In 1957, it seemed impossible that anyone would put a man on the moon, but through our determined effort and science, the United States put two men on the moon and brought them home alive and safe before the end of the next decade.

We need the same kind of investment on a global scale that the United States undertook in the late '50s and early '60s. In 1956, the year before Sputnik was launched, the United States graduated almost twice as many bachelor of physics degrees as we did last year. Fewer than 15 percent of U.S. high school graduates have the credentials in math and basic physical science that are necessary to even start on a university-level engineering degree. As an engineering myself - as an engineer myself, I find that thought very sobering.

But money alone is not sufficient to meet our needs here in the United States or around the globe. Our long-term success depends on our ability to successfully cultivate a few decades' worth of new scientists, engineers, industrial planners and designers, and business leaders. We are depending on them to create the innovations that we need and to deploy them effectively into the global marketplace. And as we move ahead in our efforts to encourage young people to adopt these disciplines as fields of study, to spur their interest in math and science, we must also act to ensure that colleges and universities around the world are able to keep pace with the technological revolution.

Some of the world's institutions of higher learning are reinventing themselves; others are beginning anew like those in Saudi Arabia and their new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which is just outside Mecca and that I visited recently. In any event, we must do what we can to help tomorrow's scientists and researchers and engineers receive a first-rate education most anywhere in the world. That means we must begin now to a global effort to increase not only the quality of university education in math and science, but also the opportunity for students to receive it. It is my view that a successful and prosperous global future is dependent on that effort. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MR. CORTS: Well, we've had a very stimulating morning. And we thank you, and thanks to each member of our panel and Secretary Bodman, Secretary Spellings, Ambassador Dybul, Dr. Bement, and Mr. Noor-Ali. We've had a real feast already, so we have now a little time to talk about that with a break that we'll take. But first, I need to say that if you are participating in the next segment of the breakout sessions, if you have a PowerPoint presentation, we need you to go to Room 1408 if you're not already set up and satisfied with your arrangement, Room 1408. And we'll reconvene at 10:00. Thank you.

NINA FEDOROFF: I'm Nina Fedoroff. I'm the science and technology advisor to both the secretary of state and to the administrator of USAID. I welcome all of you to what promises to be a brief, but very intense and productive dialogue. I am delighted and humbled by your willingness to take time out of busy schedules, on short notice, and travel long distances to join together in thinking and talking. Some of our conversations today will be about how colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher education can better use the new tools and toys of the digital age to bridge the deep chasm that separates the worlds of educational and economic opportunity open to the young people of different countries and cultures.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has declared that the world is flat. By this, he means that the Internet Revolution and globalization have put all peoples of the world on an equal economic footing, but despite the extraordinary increase in our ability to communicate and access information, despite the spread of cell phones over the entire face of the earth, we all know that the world is far from flat, even metaphorically. For many years, talented students have traveled from less developed to more developed countries to fulfill their educational aspirations, but as we heard so vividly from President Kagame yesterday, herein lies a paradox.

Sending its best students to be educated in more developed countries often exacerbates a country's problems because the education itself, be it a teacher certificate, a nursing degree, or a Ph.D. makes it easier to find employment and often a more prosperous life in a developed country. So this brain drain has robbed and is continuing to rob many countries of their educated people. These are the people who design and maintain society, its infrastructure, its agriculture, its schools, its clinics, its power and telecommunications networks, and they're the professors and the researchers who generate and propagate the knowledge, the science, the technology that are essential in every aspect of life and that are the driving forces of today's successful economies.

We hear increasing talk of brain circulation rather than brain drain. The notion is that educated citizens of the world of tomorrow will spend time in their lives both at home and in many other countries according to their interests and opportunities. This hopeful vision is predicated on the realizations of Friedman's flat world, the global equalization of educational and economic opportunities. Our colleges and universities, medical schools and institutes working together with the business sector and using contemporary electronic resources have a unique opportunity to accelerate this flattening, this equalization of opportunity.

Can it be done? Yes, we've brought together for you today examples from both academia and industry of the kinds of state-of-the-art innovations, both physical and intellectual, concrete and abstract, that make it possible today to interconnect institutions, organizations, and individuals for learning and collaboration in ways that were simply unimaginable just a few decades ago.

And yet the task of assisting much less wealthy countries to bolster the instructional, organizational, research, and technological capabilities of their own institutes is a much different task from inventing the means because it's about people and organizations, about bridging cultures. And by cultures, I don't mean just the obvious; I mean the cultures of the organizations themselves, the educational and business institutions. And more than that, it's about bridging the past, the present and the future.

Academics of the developed world look to foreign institutions for top-notch graduate students and post-doctoral scholars to educate in their institutions, to train in their laboratories. But already in today's knowledge society and surely that of tomorrow, what will be in short supply everywhere will be the people adequately trained not just to run the electrical grids and maintain computer networks, but adequately prepared to step on the road of inventing the future, of creating the ideas, the knowledge, the technologies, and the organizations that will permit us to steer a populous planet into a better future.

Today we have brought together speakers who pull us into that future, leading the way to jumping the digital and cultural divides, both technologically and conceptually, and in different disciplines, as different as agriculture and electronic communications. But we have also made time to talk together about what we lack in making the best use of what we have already invented, and to talk about what still needs to be invented, developed and implemented: ideas, technologies, and most importantly of all, organizations.

What kind of organization do we need? What kind of global university network to make it possible for students and professors to move more freely among institutions in different countries, to create new courses, to implement and support the sophisticated courseware that has already been developed, and simply to collaborate in learning, thinking, teaching, and carrying out research. How can we participate together in designing and creating new courses and programs, new departments and institutions, even new colleges and universities, as is happening in many parts of the world today?

How do we foster the entrepreneurial cultures that make the best use of researcher's discoveries and take on the practicalities of turning them into things that people will use, will buy? How can we go even beyond the traditional bilateral partnerships between educational institutions to center on and support people and the problems that they wish to address?

In your conversations today, please identify those needs and opportunities, generate ideas, make recommendations. We will do our best to capture them and to keep the dialogue going, to transform them into concrete steps and actions.

Enough said. The rest is up to you. You're supported by our best scientists, the Jefferson Fellows, senior scientists from both USAID and state, and our wonderful cadre of AAAS fellows. And I want to also state that at the end of today, the AAAS is hosting a reception for all of you. Please come. It's a spectacular place, and they promise a good time.

Let me introduce our next speaker, a truly transformative figure. Dr. Ismail Serageldin was born in Egypt, earned his undergraduate degree from Cairo University and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He joined the World Bank in 1972 and served in various capacities. These include director of programs in West Africa and country director for Central and Occidental Africa in the 1980s, then technical director for all of sub-Saharan Africa, and vice president for environmentally and socially sustainable development in the 1990s.

He has authored edited more than 50 books and 200 articles - makes me tired to think about it - technical papers, and book chapters. In 2000, he embarked on an extraordinary adventure of recreating the Library of Alexandria, the center of the intellectual world for some 700 years, 2000 years ago.

Today the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a modern architectural and electronic marvel, stands quite near the site of the ancient library and is increasingly reassuming its ancient role of intellectual Mecca, largely through the inspired efforts of Dr. Serageldin and his staff. His lecture is titled from "Papyrus to PDFs: The Library Comes of Age." Dr. Serageldin.

(Applause.)

DR. ISMAIL SERAGELDIN: Thank you, Dr. Fedoroff, for that very kind introduction. And, yes, I think that it was both a challenge, an awesome challenge, and also something that one could not turn down, the idea of trying to recreate the ancient Library of Alexandria on the very same spot where it used to be 2,300 years ago.

So I will take you through a prologue in this talk, and I hope that you will be tying your seatbelts because I'm going to take you through a lot of images because sometimes I do believe that a picture speaks more than a thousand words.

The main questions is that higher education generally in the developing world is an essential part of the education, training, and cultural system. It teaches youth to become citizens as much as it teaches them marketable skills. And that is too frequently overlooked that part. And they learn to learn because science changes and everything changes. And libraries, I believe, have an essential role to play in that learning experience.

So the new library, the one that goes towards the PDF, not the one that goes toward the papyrus, is much more than a repository of books; it's an active participant in forming networks of users and learners. It uses the new technology to overcome the obstacles of poverty time and space. And I believe that it is the best instrument that we have to break this impending appetite with those who have more knowledge - more knowledge - continue to have more knowledge while others are left behind.

And so I'd like to present a case study of the rebirth of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, hence the title, "From Papyrus to PDF," since it had most of the papyruses of the world. And guess what, we now have also the complete Internet archive, from San Francisco. We're the only - (inaudible) - copy in the world, so we do have the modern version of the Library of Alexandria.

But let me say just a few words about the inspiration that comes from the ancient library to the new Library of Alexandria, and how of all of the great libraries of today, we were born digital, and as such, we can, indeed, as Nina mentioned, honor the past, celebrate the present, embrace the future, and lay down an infrastructure for science in a poor country that doesn't have the resources to do quality science, but where we can get our young people to collaborate with your young people in doing something collectively.

So it starts - my story starts with Alexander the Great. As you all know, he created Alexandria, and every traveler who came there said there were two great marvels in Alexandria. There was the pharaohs, the great - one of the seven marvels of the ancient world, and the ancient library here. The pharaohs, this is what it looked like, and in fact, the greater legacy probably was the library itself, although we don't know what it looks like. This is Carl Sagan's image; this is another image. We don't know exactly what it looked like, but we know what it did. It was part academy, part research center, part teaching facility, and part library. It had a botanical garden, zoological garden, and then a section (?) room attached.

So it was a very different kind of institution than what we think of when we talk about libraries. But it did hold 700,000 scrolls, which was the largest amount in the ancient world, and they used multiple languages, as we know, thank god, for the Rosetta Stone, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to decipher the ancient hieroglyphics. So that was also part of what they did - (inaudible).

It had at least three locations. The original location, or the temple to the muses, one close to the water, and one called the Daughter Library in the Serapium. What happened there? Well, a poet was told by the chief librarian that he couldn't just spend his time writing poems and had to do a catalog, so Callimachus actually wrote 120-volume catalog called the Pinakes, and for the first time, universal knowledge was organized by subject, by author, and alphabetically by author. So he became the father of library science, or at least bibliographies as we know them today.

We had - Aristarchus was the first person who actually said the earth revolves around the sun almost 1700 years, 1800 years before Copernicus. And Aristostenes calculated the circumference of the earth after proving that it was spherical with enormous accuracy - 98.25 percent of our contemporary measurement. And think how far people regressed in the Middle Ages when the image of the flat world once more emerged.

Hipparchus calculated the length of the solar year within 6.5 minutes. And when you think of what they had as instruments, this is really amazing. They established a calendar - 365 and a quarter days with leap years, and that so impressed Julius Caesar when he became enamored with Cleopatra that he actually took that and applied it to the Roman Empire. It became the basis for the Julian Calendar, until Pope Gregory fixed it later on.

One of our greatest resident scholars is a guy by the name of Euclid, who I believe wrote the only - the only scientific textbook that is still thought largely unchanged 2,200 years later. In all of the sciences, I don't think there is anybody else who has a similar claim to Euclid. I wish we had the royalties for that. (Laughter.) I wouldn't have to worry about the endowments. (Laughter.)

We had visiting scholars. Archimedes came by for two-and-a-half years. Would that he had stayed; he wouldn't have been murdered in Syracuse. But en passant, while he was there, he developed the archimedean screw to raise the water of the Nile for irrigation, which you can see is still being used. This picture I took only about a few years ago - still being used in Egypt to this day to raise the water - archimedean screw.

Herophilus was the first person who said that the brain controls the body and was the father of functional anatomy. Aristotle had said it was the heart; he said it was the brain. And Manetho, the eminent historian, he's the one who actually chronicled the Pharaohs and organized our history into the dynasties which we use to this day. And we say such-and-such affair of the 18th dynasty, that is the work of Manetho at the ancient Library of Alexandria.

The Septuagint, the very first time that the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek was done in the ancient library. And they were teaching girls 200 B.C., as you can see from that statue. And no, this is not a laptop in her lap; it's a slate. (Laughter.) Little remains physically of that, but it lives in the minds of all people. It did not disappear in one great fire as people imagined; it actually disappeared - there was fire in 48 B.C. with Julius Caeser. The destruction then in 272, A.D., removed the second one, and the last one was destroyed in 391 to 415.

The old Bibliotheca Alexandrina is gone, but the dream remains, and I think it is a dream for tomorrow, a dream which I and a few other people have decided to pick up the gauntlet on trying to realize.

And so we want to create the new Library of Alexandria with the same universal commitment to universal knowledge, to rationality, to openness, to dialogue, to the unity of knowledge, not the notion of specialization. We want to create a center of excellence for production and dissemination of knowledge and promoting dialogue and understanding between peoples and cultures. For that, we want to be a window in Egypt for the world and to be a window in the world for Egypt to rise to the challenge of the digital age and to be a vibrant center of intellectual debate, a space of freedom for dialogue between individuals and civilizations.

And that's why it is much more than a library. It is a library, indeed; it can accommodate 4 to 8 million books, although we don't have that many now, and I doubt that we'll ever reach 8 million books because of the movement towards digitization. And it has a center for the Internet, as I mentioned, the conference, a planetarium, an exploratorium, three museums, nine special permanent exhibitions, seven research institutes, et cetera, et cetera. And we have a lot and a lot and a lot of visitors, as you can see from these visitors. It gets more and more crowded. And special events, we have a lot of attendance too.

So we get about a million visitors annually. Of these, about 800,000 come for a day visit, for an event, and 250, 260,000 come of reading purposes. But we have children everywhere, and I believe in starting young. I believe that this is the future generation. And let me tell you, we make no bones about it. We are involved in a battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation against bigotry, obscurantism, fanaticism, and xenophobia, and therefore starting young is important.

(Applause.)

And we also believe that whether it is art or science, both art and science encourage individualism, encourage the imagination, encourage people to question and to say why not, and therefore it's important.

I'm very happy that our website that started with 300,000 hits a month have no exceeded 200 million hits a year - 300,000 a month - and this is one of them. Eternalegypt.org, which is done conjointly with IMB, is a great - it won a lot of awards. As you can see, we've grown gradually, but last month we had 14.5 million hits, so we're well on our way to improving that. And there is a lot of support that comes - about 14 percent come from the United States, and Egypt accounts for a third of that.

So the children, the readers are our primary audience, but not the only one. We hold about 600 events a year, so every year there is about - every day, there is two or three events going on, some of them for the high and the mighty, some of them for concerts, some of them for international gatherings. But above all, we also try to become a hub for national, regional, international collaborations. And all of these centers and institutions now have their headquarters at the Library of Alexandria.

So it's a complex of lively institutions. We have a very young staff. Our average age is 29; 51 to 52 percent are women. And the old people like me who are over 55, out of 2000 staff, we have only 50 - so 2.5 percent. Our junior managers average 32 years, and the youngest, she is 25; and the senior managers average 42, and the youngest, she is 34.

And so it's a hybrid library. It's an online system. Everywhere you will have computers. As you can see here, we have computers everywhere along with reading tables. And we have specialized libraries for the blind. We have children's libraries, young people's libraries - 11 to 16, and multimedia, audiovisual, rare books, and the Internet archive about which I'll say some more later on.

We have three museums - manuscripts, antiquities. Incidentally, that is the real Cleopatra who was not that beautiful but was a very brainy lady. (Laughter.) In case you didn't know, the way to her heart for Mark Antony was to give her the 200,000 books, the Pergamon, because of the original fire that had taken place there. Now, that is not the image of Hollywood about her. If the way to her heart was to give a huge book donation to the national library - (chuckles) - I think she has been mistreated by Shakespeare all the way to contemporary playwrights. (Laughter.)

Science museum, planetarium, and the exploratorium, a didactic history of science museum. Alice Rubenstein was asking me whether I was going to speak about the history of science. It's important to let our young people know that their predecessors contributed much to science. It's not an import; it's something you should be proud of. You're following the footsteps of your forefathers from the pharaohs through the ancient library through the Muslim interregnum in the Middle Ages. In the planetarium, we have special outreach to youth and an exploratorium where they can actually have hands-on exposure to science.

We have many permanent exhibitions everywhere. Art is everywhere and temporary exhibitions that allow people to see the best from different parts of the world. We have currently seven institutes in the forum. The first one deals with manuscripts, but everything is digital. So we digitize manuscripts and give them to scholars to take away with them: all knowledge to all people at all times for free if I can. We do multilingual publishing of all manuscripts, and we also have a special center for the study of writing in different scripts and languages, not just the Arabic writing, although it has its own beauty as you can see here.

We have a center for special studies, which handles our science, and it's a virtual network of excellence. It encourages young scientists in Egypt to work with scientists abroad and holds big international science conferences. We do believe that collaboration is the best form of capacity building and that is why we pursue it.

We have a major center of documentations, the only one of my centers that is located in Cairo and in Alexandria, and that is the building in Cairo. And it does culture a natural and non-material heritage, and I'll have more on that in a moment.

We have a special, very advanced center of informatics: the International School for Information Science, ISIS, the Egyptian goddess of wisdom, counterpart to Athena. And all of this work is done in partnerships with powerful imaginative partners including Carnegie Mellon, including Yale, Stanford, and others.

We have a special art center. We created the first classical orchestra in Alexandria, and we invite people from all over the world to exhibit art because art transcends boundaries in ways that are not known. We hold about 120 concerts and performances. We honor past art and contemporary art. And we encourage the young to develop their art and to learn about painting, sculpture, and music. We have exhibitions all of the time that vary from place to place.

We have a special center that studies Alexandria and the Mediterranean, and a dialogue forum in which we mobilize Egypt's intellectuals to the fight against obscurantism and fanaticism that I mentioned before. The Arab Reform Forum, which launched the Alexandria Declaration asking for reforms in political, economic, social, and cultural realms, which were signed by 163 of the Arab world's most eminent intellectuals from 17 Arab countries.

So with these institutes, we are now adding one for the University of Peace, under the first lady's support. This is not a popular topic, as you can imagine today, in the Middle East, but in Egypt, in the Library of Alexandria, we are hosting the first Institute For Peace Studies in the region. And also, we are trying to create the first, in collaboration with the president of Alexandria University, Dr. Hassan Nadeer, we are creating the first institute for Hellenistic studies that is being funded by our friends from Greece.

Generally the BA has become a venue for eminent intellectuals - Umberto Eco, Wole Soyinka, Farooq al Baz; eminent political figures - that is Michel Rocard and Mahathir bin Mohamad (?), prime ministers both. But we have a special emphasis on science. And we're trying to cope with the speed of change by harnessing the tools of science itself to do this, to expand the reach of our brains beyond what anything we could imagine or our parents could imagine. And I encourage young people to ask what if, what if, what if. For that to me, that journey of discovery, the spark that is challenged within the souls of young people is not only the right start on the journey of science, but it is also the best anecdote to dogmatism and fanaticism.

I have had 23 Nobel Laureates who came and lectured and eminent figures in technology - that is my friend - (inaudible). We founded new institutions like the Alexandria Bibliotheca, the academy library, which of 40 founders, 20 were Nobel Laureates. And all of these parts, I think, are essential. They reinforce each other. The art, as much as the science are all part of opening up the vista and allowing human beings to be full human beings and to reach to others across cultures and across political divides.

Our work is documented in annual reports that are audited and produced within 90 days of the end of the fiscal year, which I'm very proud of. That's for my 28 years in the World Bank. I insist on having proper accounts. But above all, what sets the library aside was that it was born digitally. We were inaugurated on the 16th of October 2002. So we are a child of the digital age. And we are committed to access to all information for all people at all times.

I believe that, contrary to what some people say, that this will add to the creativity of young people, all of this digital stuff. It is not true that it becomes mechanical. On the contrary, by putting the fingertips the entire network of global knowledge must indeed open up vistas for young people that were impossible or unheard of before. And this is in every field. Nobody writes music without listening to others' music. Nobody paints without having seen paintings. And nobody can do a sculpture without having seen other sculptures.

So we were born digital, and before we were three years old we were adopted into the Digital Library Federation. And now, just before we were five years old, we signed an agreement with the Library of Congress to be partners in designing the hub of the World Digital Library, which the Library of Congress is launching. And to hold the only copy of the World Digital Library, we will be working with - (inaudible) - that is myself and Jim Billington signing that agreement a year ago today.

We have many other achievements in ICT. The Million Book Project, which is now called the Two Million Book Project, which is under the aegis of Carnegie Mellon University, the Internet archive, and the preparation for our library.

Nina asked about the past, the present, and the future. Well, I think in the Library of Alexandria, we use the tools of the digital revolution for these three purposes. So what do we do about honoring the past? Well, obviously, we have manuscripts. We have documentation. We have special centers. But we have a lot more than that.

Let's take manuscripts. As I said, we digitize everything and make it available to people. We make it available to a scholar to come and take a manuscript for $1.50, all in complete PDFs that they can take and study with detailed images in JPEG. Our cultural center - cultural and natural center - which is located in Cairo, documents the tangible cultural heritage as well as the intangible one. So we have an archaeological map of Egypt, which has all the archaeological sites here. But you can also go on the map like that and you can click here. And you get a site like the pyramids here. And then, you can go to one of these lesser-known tombs here. You get the tomb; and from this plan, you can navigate the tomb and then go to this wall, for example. And you get the wall. And then, here, you get the English translation of the hieroglyphics.

This is being done in conjunction with IBM. And we have a lot of it. And they asked us at IBM, how long do you think it will take to finish all of Egypt? And Dr. Sadr (sp) said, well, 150 years maybe. (Laughter.) There's a lot of culture to cover.

We do the same for the architectural heritage: all the listed monuments in Cairo by individual monument, by street, by architect, all the wildlife preserves - the herbs and the flora and the fauna. Music databases, we're creating music - photographic memories, all pictures are all digitized and made available. And we even document folklore before it disappears. And all of this is also available to be seen in a special nine (?) computer, nine-screen presentation, which Bill Gates called one of the best multimedia shows he had seen, and which actually has a patent in Europe and in Egypt. And also, all this information is available for free on this website, eternalegypt.org.

Our center for Alexandria and the Mediterranean does studies of the old pharaohs, of where the underwater archaeology is being pursued. And this is examples of what we are pursuing in underwater archaeology, and also the medieval city of Alexandria, as well as the modern city.

But in modern Egypt, we have started with one of the most amazing examples, which was the Description de l'Egypte. Napoleon Bonaparte was not an average conqueror. He had different views. In fact, what he did, he brought 167 scientists with him to Egypt in 1798 and they studied Egypt in the most amazing way and produced a work, a monumental work, called the Description de l'Egypte, which has 11 plate volumes of almost 1,000 plates, 7,500 pages of text, and an index book. We digitized it completely for the first time. We can scroll, turn the pages, and so on. And that becomes one of the books - it's available on the web right now. You can actually see it on the web.

On the other side, we started with the archives of President Nasser. And it's a huge collection from the U.K. records office, Department of State records, 1300 speeches, 51,000 photos, et cetera, et cetera, all linked with a powerful search engine. But we are also doing Sadat. So with Nasser and Sadat, you have one end - the recent end - with Bonaparte and the turn of the - beginning of the 19th century at the other end. And we're filling in between with the Suez Canal, the Hillel Journals and so on.

So we are creating a portal. So that will be the way, when we say we want to be the world's window on Egypt; we'll just make it more user-friendly to come to the Library of Alexandria than to go through any other website, because we believe those 200 million hits are going to become billions and billions of hits. And they will be able to learn about our culture through that, just as we hope through the World Digital Library and other programs, we will be able to learn about other cultures.

We celebrate the present through the Million Book Project, Internet archive, the science super-course, which Nina (?) knows about, and the development gateway. On the Million Book Project, it's a project that is launched by Carnegie Mellon University with our friend, Raj Reti (ph) in charge, and the Internet archive in California and China with 10 centers in India - actually 18 not 28 centers. And we digitize material like that and then we do special OCR text on image presentation for the material. We do the Arabic material also for India and for others. It's an enormously powerful work. It took a lot of work to do because Arabic is particularly difficult for OCR. But we're working with Stanford and with Yale. They think we do a pretty good job of that right now.

The Internet archive - here it is - it is basically the archive of the whole public pages available on the World Wide Web from 1996. It's an enormous archive. We work also with the Open Continent Alliance as - (inaudible) - we invented the Internet archive and is an architect behind it and with a creative commons with - (inaudible) - and we are also active in the access to knowledge because to us, these are some of the things that we use, the digital technology, to overcome the digital divide.

The science super-course is to help teachers by providing PowerPoint lectures like this one for free. And I used to give out DVDs like that. This one had a thousand lectures. Now we have 3500 lectures used by over 40,000 faculty teaching a million students a year in 175 countries, and we're expanding it and working with - (inaudible) - and Bill Oman (ph) on that and Ron LaPorte (ph) and my self. And we give those DVDs away telling the people, provided you share them with at least five more. And it's all available on the web anyway. And we get about 80 million hits on the super-course. It's only for epidemiology right now, epidemiology and preventive health, but we hope to expand in other fields. On the statistics for the Library of Alexandria server, we get about 8 million hits.

And the development gateway is with the World Bank and other U.N. agencies where we are in effect Arabizing the material that is presented. So this is the gateway in English and this is the gateway in Arabic, so it becomes accessible to people in the region. As for the future, well, we have the reform program of course, which I mentioned. We are trying to promote civil society, engage committees. We take on tough issues like the status of women, like the problems of education and corruption, and we launched these programs through the Arab Reform Forum, which is accessible in multiple languages.

And we follow that up with our work on the freedom of expression every year. And we created this special meeting site where over 700 Arab NGOs from 19 Arab countries now join and enter into dialogue and debate. For young people in science, we are trying to promote with the French Academy of Science "La Main a la Pâte," which is hands-on science for the teachers in primary schools to be able to use this material, and we are doing the Arabization of that material. Arabization is not just translation, so for example, in the chapter examples of fermentation that use wine, well, we've turned it into yogurt. (Chuckles.) So we have examples where we Arabize it for cultural content as well.

From India, we learned the example of the hole-in-the-wall experiment, which you all know, which is a fascinating experiment, and we're launching it in Alexandria. And also, we do "My Book," which is kids come and select from a computer, print, cut, bind, and they have their own book. But before they can take it and read it, which gives them a great sense of pride, they have to rescan one of the pages and see it reappear again in the book, so that they see that these are all formative ways of holding the same information.

We put all that equipment also in a car, it's called the Bookmobile, and we send it to the various schools. And here it is, and everywhere it goes, the kids really take to it like a duck to water. And for tools for tomorrow, we have developed a very sophisticated digital assets repository. And we're also working with the United Nations University on the universal networking language, which is intended to do some machine translation in multiple languages by going through the UNDL. So it's a hub and spoke design; we're doing the Arabic spoke and any native language can go into that and then come back in the other language. It's a long-term process that will take time.

But we also developed new ways of making material available to people, including the Espresso Book Machine. For the first time, we can overcome the obstacle of having 70 percent of the titles today being under copyright and out of print. So everything should be available digitally, and then we can print one copy at a time if you need it. And the Espresso Book Machine exists; this first prototype was put up in Washington, D.C., and the second one was put up in Alexandria, and the third one in the New York Public Library, and so on. You select a book from the catalog; it prints, it produces the book, it falls out, and it's immediately readable. It doesn't have to dry or anything at all like that. And it produces quality paperbacks. So I say come and visit, consult the digital version, and buy a book before you leave.

So that's the new business model, which I hope in the future will be available like ATM machines in airports and shopping malls, and why not? Banks also resisted the appearance of ATM machines before they realized it was everybody's advantage to service all their clients. This will enable us also to reissue the classics in ways that will become accessible to a much broader audience. And this is just the beginning of many alternative possibilities.

But what we are mostly concerned about is building an infrastructure for science. And to do this, until 10 years ago, we had only two kinds of science: we had theoretical science and experimental science. Now, we have in silico simulation that is feasible because computers have become so much more sophisticated. So what do we do?

We have a hybrid library which has 25,000 journals electronically online, full-text, and that's how people can access it. We have a large computing capability at the library and we are working with Virginia Tech on building a supercomputer. We have an analytical center that allows us to transform two-dimensional datasets into virtual reality three-dimensional sets, which we call VISTA, the Virtual Immersive Science and Technology Applications. There it stands there. You have to wear your glasses, but you can get into it. These are cuts of geological surfaces, which you can move around to determine the best strategy for boring into it. There's medicine being done. There's before-and-after surgery examples, the heart, studies of the heart. These are coming from conventional MRI data, which is converted this way.

And we've had applications on our own country of this technology. So we're not just using the applications that were done in sophisticated universities in the United States. For example, the Sphinx, we are studying how the erosion occurs to the Sphinx from the sand and the air, with people from the IBM Center and the Council on Antiquities. And what we did do after these studies and simulations was to be able to do like a tomography here; and the red spots are the weak spots that you have to monitor in order to be able to do the proper maintenance of the Sphinx. And you can see where they are, including the famous left shoulder does show up. There were problems with the left shoulder of the Sphinx. It does show up as one of the weak spots that have to be watched.

We also created a model for the library itself where you can navigate inside the library. This is now we are in 3-D virtual reality, not quite because it's 2-D projection, but still you could actually navigate the entire library anywhere. The ability to demonstrate and discuss this with others enables us to have people working in Egypt with their counterparts elsewhere not having to dumb down the analysis to be able to work in Egypt. Whatever can be done in terms of analytical capability at the U.S. university can be replicated there so our students from Alexandria University or from elsewhere can work with their counterparts in a way that will enable them to do this.

The large storage devices, the famous Internet archive, well, these are - we call them the PITA box - and just hold your breath, look at these racks here. The first racks were installed by Bruce and Allan Driscoll by themselves; we just looked at them and learned how to operate them afterwards. The second racks, all of these racks, we installed ourselves and they just checked afterwards that we installed them. Now, one rack, if you took a page, a book, 300 pages, and you converted it to text, one rack would hold 100 million books. It's an amazing volume, and if you have images and color pictures, it could take 12 million books, so look at all these racks that are put there. And what is more, not only we did all this, we now are also assembling them from scratch in Egypt. Our young people are doing this.

Now, this is real technology transfer, for which I am profoundly grateful to the people of the Internet archive and our U.S. partners in this. It does allow this, and I think that the next generation will become co-designers with them on it. Last but not least is large bandwidth connectivity. And thus far, we really need your help there because it's outrageous that it should cost us 10 times as much as it costs in the United States to get bandwidth, but it does. And so connectivity is very important, especially for the new sciences. And therefore, we need to link up with the world system, like we could link through Europe, the Giant system, which has these huge 10 gigabit connectivities; we have only 45 megabits. The library has 155 or 145 megabit connectivity in these North African countries.

We should have a much bigger connectivity to enable us to work. With that infrastructure for science, we can say that the digital future is here. I think we are just starting; we are only five years old, and we are proud to join the artisans of a better future, those who are completely dedicated to fighting obscurantism and fanaticism and xenophobia and bigotry, those dedicated to universal access to all knowledge for all people at all times. So we need you to help us to work together in collaborative mode, problems that are relevant to us, give us the bandwidth, facilitate access for free or nominal fees if possible, and working all together, there is so much we can do for a whole generation and for the whole world. Thank you.

(Applause.)

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