Without federal support for curiosity-driven research, the innovation and talent pipeline that has helped ensure our nation’s prosperity and safety could run dry, warned President Sally Kornbluth during a Washington Post Live event. 

During “The Next Generation,” a panel discussion moderated by Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb at The Washington Post’s “Building America Summit,” Kornbluth and Arizona State University (ASU) President Michael Crow joined forces for a spirited discussion on the importance of curiosity-driven research, examining how universities are preparing the next generation of scientists to lead in America’s rapidly changing technological landscape. 

“Many of the things we have in our everyday lives, whether they be medical advances, technological advances, a lot of these things came from 30, 40, 50 years of scientists just trying to figure out how things work,” emphasized Kornbluth.

Kornbluth pointed to MIT’s curriculum that focuses on teaching foundational skills that can be applied to a myriad of technological advances, skills that will be indispensable to leading in an AI-enabled world.

“I do not think that any of our traditional subjects are now outmoded [by AI]. It’s how you approach them,” said Kornbluth. “In our new curriculum, not only are we leaning into basic STEM fields. We really feel we have to resurrect some of the old, moral and civic and ethical educational goals much more strongly because we want all these kids that are learning to be leading-edge technologists, to come at it from a moral, civic and ethical perspective.”

Artificial intelligence

Key to Kornbluth’s mission is maintaining a human-centric approach to AI. Inspired by MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” (mind and hand), she shared: “We really want students to be able to use physical AI. We want our students to still be able to build things, but use AI as an augmentation tool.”

Kornbluth expressed the importance of teaching interested faculty and students how to best use AI as a tool and her commitment to uplifting student collaboration. 

“We’re putting a big emphasis on things like teamwork. So, [students] need to be able to use these tools and come together towards goals, because you could imagine a situation that AI becomes your buddy instead of your study group. We don’t really want that to happen,” said Kornbluth. 

Using AI effectively requires writing strong prompts. Kornbluth discussed how foundational knowledge in fields like math, physics, biology and chemistry, along with teaching students how to write and communicate clearly and effectively, enables students to use AI responsibly when it comes to applying these new technologies to scientific research.

Students need to be able “to take that knowledge and think about how they can use AI to the greatest good and also learn to write the right prompts,” said Kornbluth. 

Kornbluth noted the MIT Sloan School of Management’s unique role in AI exploration. “It’s because the students are all coming with business experience and the demand out there in the field for them to have really strong AI knowledge is very high,” she said. 

The impact of frozen funds

Federal funding fuels curiosity-driven research—the groundwork of medical, technological and countless scientific breakthroughs.

“It is very difficult to make a groundbreaking discovery that’s going to revolutionize human life because you want to do that. You really have to be figuring out how things work and traditionally that sort of research in this country has been funded by the government because it does not have an immediate return,” said Kornbluth.

Discussing issues with federal funding, Kornbluth said that although money has been appropriated for universities, it has not been released to them by and large.

“We’re really trying to figure out what the funding stream is going to be going forward,” said Kornbluth. 

When asked about the consequences of these frozen funds, Kornbluth pointed to the long timeline required to develop life-saving treatments. 

As one example, Kornbluth pointed to diabetes treatments. 

“[Treatments] started with injections of insulin saving people and now it’s automated pumps and CGMs [Continuous Glucose Monitors],” said Kornbluth. “The next phase is going to be an actual functional cure, which is stem cell implantation—masking the cells so they’re not rejected by the immune system. But it takes a lot of basic work to be able to get there.”

“That [diabetes] is just one area. You can extrapolate that to cancer therapy,” said Kornbluth. 

Investment in basic research can advance treatments such as immunotherapy. 

“Immunotherapy is just in its infancy—it doesn’t work in every possible kind of cancer at this point. But all of the modifications that are being done now in basic science laboratories through to pharmaceutical companies and biotech are making it more and more broadly applicable so that pancreatic cancer is not absolutely a death sentence now,” Kornbluth emphasized.

National impact

Beyond research and AI, the president concluded by highlighting the strength of MIT’s student body, programs, and spinouts. 

Kornbluth underscored the value of an MIT education for students and the greater economy. 

Twenty percent of MIT’s class of 2029 were first-generation students. Education“is the best pathway to economic mobility,” said Kornbluth. 

She continued: “MIT has spun out north of 30,000 companies. The economic impact of MIT on this country is equivalent to the 14^th largest GDP in the world. We are having a huge impact on the economy and we’re producing the next generation of talent.”

Though MIT is highly selective, Kornbluth noted it is financially accessible through its free tuition program for students with parental incomes under $200,000. She further highlighted MIT for America, an initiative expanding access to calculus, a required course for institutions such as MIT, in under-resourced high schools nationwide.

Kornbluth and Crow concluded the panel by highlighting how their respective universities learn from one another.

“What we [ASU] learn from MIT is, where’s the edge of technology,” said Crow. “We learn how master technologists, and master scientists work in small groups.” For ASU, which has a student population of over 150,000, “ it’s instructive to learn and then operate at a different scale and in a different way. There’s a lot of back and forth,” he said.

Kornbluth expressed her hope for MIT to continue its longstanding tradition of research and education in service of the nation’s next 250 years.

“As a smaller private institution, we’re putting a much stronger footprint in how we can impact people well beyond the MIT walls,” said Kornbluth, “as well as having a scientific impact on society through our discoveries.”