Spotlight with Venkatesh Narayanamurti

Venkatesh (Venky) Narayanamurti, is the new director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. He will be named the Benjamin Pierce Professor of Technology and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School in July.

In May 2006, Venkatesh (Venky) Narayanamurti gave an impassioned speech before Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "We cannot be a great global university if we don't have research and educational programs commensurate with the changing needs of the times," he told them, arguing that Harvard should establish its own School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Soon after, the faculty unanimously voted in favor, marking a major statement of support for the role of sciences in a world-class university.

The speech marked the culmination of years of work for Narayanamurti, widely known as "Venky," who as dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences boosted the size of the faculty by 50 percent and recruited top engineering talent to Harvard. Narayanamurti, who was recently named director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, spent months building the case for an engineering school, including persuading former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers.

He argued that a broadly educated person must have an appreciation of science and technology, and that Harvard could not do great science without great engineering and technology. But he also made a direct appeal to Summers' background as an economist. "MIT for awhile had a better economics department than Harvard. In my own field of physics MIT's department is much larger in size, but that doesn't mean Harvard shouldn't do economics or physics," he told Summers, currently on leave from Harvard Kennedy School and the Belfer Center to serve as President Obama's director of the National Economic Council. Summers became a strong supporter of the project.

The establishment of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is just one highlight in a long and distinguished career for Narayanamurti, who spent 20 years at Bell Labs and Sandia National Laboratories, two of the premier research laboratories in the country, and a beacon for the best and the brightest around the world.

Bell Labs, as the in-house research arm of AT&T, demonstrated the value of research in an industrial setting, and in undertaking R&D that might not pay off right away. Bell Labs managers, Narayanamurti among them, always kept one foot in research. Narayanamurti never thought of himself as a manager, but rather as a nurturer of creative talent. He recruited to Bell Labs two top young researchers who later won Nobel prizes.

The Bell Labs formula was one he would keep in his years as dean of Harvard's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Even then, as he was traveling across the country building the profile of Harvard engineering, Narayanamurti found time for his own research. Additionally, Bell Labs taught Narayanamurti that interdisciplinary work, and, specifically, mixing basic science with the applied sciences, was a formula for tremendous innovation and success. At Harvard, he built a different kind of engineering school, one with no clear delineation between departments, and lots of interdisciplinary links.

Though Narayanamurti had looked at national security and public policy issues at Bell Labs, his time at Sandia gave him an in-depth look at nuclear policy, as well as the wider aspects of national security and energy policy. Sandia was responsible for the reliability of the United States' nuclear weapons, and Narayanamurti, as vice president of research and exploratory technology, had to make sure future work was done to keep the nuclear stockpile viable.

Narayanamurti said he was first attracted to the Belfer Center because of the importance of the federal government in funding science and the early phases of translating science into technology besides science and technology.

"You can't separate science and technology from public policy," Narayanamurti said. "I wanted to spend the last few years of my professional life engaged in scholarship on science-related public policy matters."

He also relished the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of former Science, Technology, and Public Policy program directors Harvey Brooks, Lewis Branscomb, and John Holdren -- each leaders in their fields. Narayanamurti replaces Holdren as director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. Holdren is on leave from the Belfer Center to serve as science advisor to President Obama.

After World War II, and especially during the Cold War, U.S. science policy was dominated by national security concerns and occurred predominantly in the big national laboratories. Today, however, the challenges are much more diffuse, ranging from national security to energy policy and climate change to health policy to information management, innovation, globalization and economic competitiveness. The R&D system will need to evolve to meet these new priorities.

At the Belfer Center and Harvard Kennedy School, Narayanamurti plans to teach a class on science, technology, and innovation policy, and conduct research on guiding principles for structuring R&D. At the Harvard Kennedy School, Narayanamurti also will be the Benjamin Pierce Professor of Technology and Public Policy.

"It's important at a place like the Harvard Kennedy School, which has such an influence in public policy matters, to have an effective program at the intersection of science, technology, and public policy," he said.