Talking with members of the globalization of materials R&D study

The Committee on Globalization of Materials Research and Development was appointed by the U.S. National Research Council in December 2003. Its charge: to assess the status and impacts of the globalization of materials R&D. The 12-member committee, which included representatives from both U.S. and international academia and industry, published its findings in August 2005 in the form of a report Globalization of Materials R&D —Time for a National Strategy. To gain some perspective on the report's findings, JOM spoke with representatives of the committee, retired from Alcoa; Gordon Geiger, director of the engineering management program and professor of industrial engineering at the University of Arizona; Jennie Hwang, president of H-Technologies Group in Cleveland. Ohio: and Michael Jaffe, director, Medical Device Concept Laboratory of New Jersey Institute of Technology and associate research professor at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. See the sidebar for a listing of the committee's recommendations. The interviews were conducted by e-mail and telephone; respondents chose which questions to answer.