During an appearance on campus Wednesday, a former director of the National Science Foundation spoke on the interconnection between science and policy – and how each could help in shaping and improving the other.

“In light of the growing global interconnectivity, it is no longer the case that one institution or one nation can solve the challenges that we currently face,” Arden Bement, the director of the Global Policy Research Institute at Purdue University, said. 

In a speech during the second annual Robert F. Davis Distinguished Lecture, Bement spoke on the importance of scientific policy research in a shrinking world.

“In today’s connected environment, it is increasingly necessary to have a wider perspective,” Bement said. He also emphasized the significance of social networking, citing recent events in the Middle East where Facebook and Twitter have helped play a role in social uprisings.

With such increased interdependence comes an increasingly difficult set of challenges, often involving a range of issues and requiring a multi-faceted approach to solve.

Bement called these issues “global-challenge theme areas” and divided them into seven broad categories of environment, economy, energy systems, agriculture, security, health and society, and leadership.  

“All of these have interdisciplinary interconnections that involve technical, economical and human factors. Those connections are sadly often not found in current interdisciplinary research,” Bement said.

It is here, Bement said, universities can play a crucial role.

Bement focused on the barriers to interdisciplinary work and identified three major issues that required an interdisciplinary approach: rising concerns about food shortages for both human and animal consumption; fuel production, urbanization and natural disruptive events; and issues of data growth and security.

Regarding issues of food and fuel, Bement said with the current rate of growth in world population, food production would have to be doubled by 2070.

“There will be increased use of crops for biofuel production as well as rising competition between feed for livestock and food for humans,” Bement said.

Peter Krommenhoek, a doctoral student in material science, said he appreciated Bement’s point of view on food production.

“It was nice to get this different perspective on things,” Krommenhoek said. “I have heard similar discussions regarding global issues like agriculture, so this was really interesting.”

Bement also said the issue of rapid urbanization and natural disasters required attention because of the scale of the issues.

“By 2025, 5.5 billion people will be living in cities, resulting in a huge demand for commodities, infrastructure and services,” Bement said. “Also, most of these cities are in seismic regions and lie near a coastline, which makes them vulnerable to tsunamis.” 

Bement also spoke on the growing threat of cyber crime and espionage.

“We are seeing an exponential growth in data, to such an extent that we are unable to store, archive and secure the data,” Bement said. 

“Scientists, engineers and technologists could be the change masters of the 21st century,” Bement said.

Christian Roach, a junior in materials science and engineering, said Bement did a good job of describing the issues.

“I liked his talk, as he was fairly charismatic and it related to real-life issues,” Roach said.

Anthony Jain, also a junior in materials science and engineering, had a similar opinion.

“He spoke about real-world issues which were of practical importance,” Jain said. “These are things that we need to think about. The food and fuel problem he talked about was interesting to hear about. “