Emery Brown

The computational neuroscientist on how scientists themselves need to better advocate for government support

Emery Brown is a physician-scientist, statistician and computational neuroscientist. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School and a practicing anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on the neuroscience of anesthesia and methods for analyzing neural activity.

How would you describe the current state of American science?

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The state of American science is strong. To keep it that way, we scientists must be advocates for continued, reliable government support. Government support has historically been the most critical pillar of research in the U.S. We must continue to lobby for that support to maintain it.

I think that American scientists need to do a better job of sharing our work with public and helping the general public understand what we are doing. We have seen recently how the current moon mission has rekindled an interest in aeronautics, travels to the moon and travels to places beyond. Part of this excitement is because of the intrinsically high interest in space travel. But another part of the excitement is that the many news reports make the material readily accessible to the general public. This type of public education should be applied in other areas of science. Great public support of science is critical for obtaining greater government support.

I am optimistic because I see new and exciting findings being discovered every day. To see this, it suffices to follow the weekly seminar series in any M.I.T. department or publications such as MIT Technology Review . Moreover, here at M.I.T., there is a push to bring together science and engineering to address health care problems that need to be solved. With [M.I.T.] president [Sally] Kornbluth’s support, [the university] has developed its Health and Life Sciences (HEALS) program to encourage M.I.T. faculty to look more deeply into solving health care problems. The enthusiasm for HEALS has been contagious across the campus.

Don’t throw in the towel. Funding support has become more challenging, but good ideas do find support. Also, now more than ever, there is more research being done outside of academia, in industry. Hence industry is perhaps more than ever a viable alternative to academy. This is certainly the case for research in artificial intelligence.