Recharging the Energy Laboratories
DOI: 10.1063/1.881397
Despite their legacy of research achievement, our national energy laboratories are at the threshold of a sea change, brought on by the end of the cold war and by domestic economic pressures. New attention is being paid to America’s ability to compete economically in the world marketplace, and questions are naturally being raised about how the nation invests its research dollars. As industrial labs, including those of IBM, AT&T, Exxon and General Electric, continue to be eliminated, downsized or refocused to meet corporate financial objectives, new expectations are being raised that would have national laboratories work in partnership with the private sector to improve the competitiveness of American industry. The challenge is no less than to reverse what some see as an erosion of the US technology base, using the investment made over the past decades in the national laboratories.
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More about the authors
Charles V. Shank, Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California.
