Role Models & Responsibility

- Prof. Dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer
makers, from artists to world religions we have started
conversations that are making a difference.
Let’s start with the youngest of our stakeholders. Surveys
of industry regularly show that there is a shortfall of
science and engineering graduates. How do we address
the problem? In my opinion: by enthusing the very
young. When we surveyed local opinion of CERN in the
Geneva region in 2008, the results came as no surprise.
Our neighbours recognised the local economic impact of
having a large intergovernmental organization on their
doorstep, but they were wary of us. So we asked them how
they’d like us to become better neighbours. Among the
themes that emerged was bringing science into primary
school classrooms.
and the Swiss Canton of Geneva, as well as with Geneva
University, to design a research project for children.
Simply put, classes get a sealed box, and by using
they have to work out what’s inside without peeking.
We’ve done this for three years. Each year, more classes
sign up. The project has been presented at conferences,
translated into other languages, and deployed as far away
as Mexico. It’s too early to tell whether this will encourage
more youngsters to turn to science, providing a supply
of skilled people for industry, but even if all it does is
encourage children not to lose their sense of curiosity, it
will have been worth while. Over the coming years, we’ll
be keeping track of some of the people who have taken
part, to see if there has been a lasting effect.
ESPRIT St. Gallen Business Review
community to better engage with political circles. How
many times have we seen politicians making the wrong
issues as important as climate change demanding urgent
action, it is vital that those we entrust with making the
decisions are able to evaluate the science well. There’s
although there is an experiment at CERN looking into the
have another important message for the politicians: it’s
your job, as custodians of the public purse, to maintain a
healthy basic science base.
Consider the humble candle. Give it to a company’s R&D
department, and you’ll likely get a better candle, longer
lasting with a brighter burning wick. But you won’t
get an electric light bulb: for that, you need a scientist
curious about nature to establish the basics of electricity.
It is unreasonable to expect industrial R&D to support
basic science, the lead times are too long, and the
return in the short term too uncertain. What industrial
R&D does, and does well, is look for the incremental
gains that can quickly be brought to market and give a
competitive edge. What the world needs is perhaps the
ultimate public-private partnership, with governments
supporting long range R&D that feeds into industry on
timescales much longer than the political cycle. This,
in fact, is precisely what Europe achieved almost 60
years ago in founding CERN, and since then seven other
world-leading European intergovernmental research
organizations. >
Winter 2013 - 21