Wanted: World-Class Scientists to Save Planet

Q&A: As the Microsoft Imagine Cup finals kick off in Paris, Prof. Stephen Emmott of Microsoft Research discusses the critical need to inspire young people to pursue careers in science and technology.

CAMBRIDGE, UK — 3 July 2008 — One hundred twenty-one student teams from around the world have landed this week in Paris for the final stage of Microsoft's annual Imagine Cup competition, which starts today. For the better part of a year, these high achievers have put their minds to work, developing technical concepts, designs and prototypes, and winning national and regional heats along the way.

This year's theme? "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment."

One of Microsoft's champions of global environmental sustainability is Stephen Emmott, director of Computational Science at Microsoft and head of the Microsoft Research Computational Biology Group. The EMEA Press Centre caught up with Emmott this week in his office at Microsoft Research Cambridge to discuss the importance of inspiring young people to pursue careers in science and technology.

EPC: In what ways is Microsoft Research Cambridge involved with technologies for environmental sustainability?
Emmott: Technologies for a sustainable future — if such technologies exist — are probably not going to come from computer science, but from biology or other realms of science. My department in Cambridge is focused on research into new computational methods to develop predictive models of complex natural systems, and probably the most complex of those is the biosphere. Understanding and predicting future changes to the life support system we depend on — our biosphere — and the impact of changes on other ecosystems is one of the biggest problems we face at the moment.

The technology we're working on at the lab will help scientists build more accurate models of climate change, taking into account the biotic aspects of climate change — forests and microbial communities, for example — and the coupling and feedback mechanisms to the physical components: atmospheric physics and atmospheric chemistry.

This is a really important and exciting area, and one that will transform our understanding of what's going on with the planet. Other areas include modelling biodiversity, biodiversity loss, and the role of ecosystems in our planet's life support system.

EPC: Going into the weekend with the Imagine Cup finals, it's safe to say that hundreds of these exceptional students are moving towards careers in science and technology. How does Microsoft Research engage with aspiring scientists and researchers?
Emmott: There are a number of ways. First, our PhD scholarship programme attracts the best and the brightest — not only in computer science but in ecology, zoology, mathematics and biology — who want to develop a research career at the intersection of traditional scientific disciplines and computer science. It's a good opportunity for us to get involved and help train interesting and passionate young people from all around Europe.

Second, in our own lab we have a number of groups, including computational biology, computational environmental sciences and technology development, each of which have PhD students, post-docs, interns and visiting scholars. These are young, bright scientists who are just starting their scientific career or their research.

It's worth noting that, among our permanent staff, we have people who represent a wide range of disciplines, from mathematical biologists to zoologists and ecologists. I'm building a lab of "new kinds" of scientists — highly computationally literate scientists who have a different way of thinking about important scientific problems.

EPC: Are you seeing the calibre of students and researchers you expect, coming out of universities?
Emmott: I still have an academic position at Oxford University, which involves teaching first-year PhD students. Oxford is an amazing institution creating some of this new generation of interdisciplinary scientists, in a programme led by my colleague at Oxford, David Gavaghan.

However, I do feel there is a need to greatly improve the quality of teaching in science and technology at a school level, prior to university. We need more teachers who are able to inspire and encourage more students to go on to study and excel in science while they are at school. Computer science suffers in this way in particular, in part because it is seen as an engineering discipline, often, rather than a scientific discipline. The popularity of computer science as an area of study at university has declined considerably since the dot-com bubble burst.

EPC: So what is the solution?
Emmott: I don't think there is one simple answer. The problem has a combination of factors, and it is likely to get worse unless we address them all. First, the teaching profession doesn't attract enough top new teachers into the pipeline who are great science teachers and scientists, not least because it doesn't pay enough — and this is widespread across Europe. Partly as a consequence, we have too few teachers who inspire children to remain curious about how the world works. When I visit schools and talk to 10-year-olds, the room is full of boys and girls who are incredibly curious about nature, the planet, the universe. By the time they are 17, huge numbers of these young people are no longer anywhere near as interested. They just want to be "famous", or footballers. In Europe and the US, we have a popular culture that values celebrity status over people who make a contribution to society.

In Victorian England, scientists were fêted, they were seen as incredibly interesting and valuable members of society. Today, C-list celebrities get more attention than Nobel laureates.

EPC: What are some basic skills that a student needs to have, to be a successful researcher or computer scientist?
Emmott: Mathematics is critical in most scientific disciplines, and mastering it offers tremendous rewards. Maths is like a language, enabling scientists to communicate in a common language with other scientists and solve all manner of problems.

The other point would be cultivating a different way of thinking about the world. We continue to face fundamental problems in biology, and in understanding the environment. These problems have been around in science for 50 or more years, and we still don't know how to solve them. Technology alone will not provide the answer; we need new ways of thinking about the problems themselves. Likewise, creative imagination in scientific discovery is crucial. And this gets back to school children studying science — they have too few opportunities to experiment and draw their own conclusions to problems. School exams drive creative thinking and the excitement of discovery out of people.

EPC: Is the scientific community doing enough to help governments and society face the environmental challenges that are before us?
Emmott: Let's say we knew a large asteroid was on its way to earth, and we could observe its trajectory and knew when it was going to hit. If that asteroid was large enough that its impact would wipe out half the human population, every single government in the world would be focusing on finding a way to stop it.

The truth is, we are in an equivalent scenario, and that is climate change. We just don't know the date of "impact". And instead of something coming from the sky we're creating it from the bottom up. We're not doing nearly enough — not at the scale that the problem warrants.

EPC: Are you hopeful that human beings will eventually achieve a sustainable balance?
Emmott: I'm not that hopeful, to be honest, for the following reasons. First, we don't understand the scale of the environmental problem. And that's the focus of some of our work here at Microsoft Research. Understanding the problem is an urgent challenge and prerequisite to understanding what the solutions are. Currently we are busy talking about band-aid sorts of technology solutions to a problem we don't even know the size or impact of. Secondly, I think if we can accomplish the first priority, we'll find that the problem is larger and more serious than we currently think. Even when we do understand the problem, governments and the scientific community generally believe we can "technologise" our way out of this. I don't agree.

We need to fundamentally rethink the way we live. Ultimately, we all have to consume less. Currently there are 6.5 billion people on the planet. In 40 years' time there will be 9 billion, and all evidence points to the conclusion that the planet is incapable of supporting that many people in a sustained manner.