After focusing on biotech and security technologies, the US government now supports a new belief : that the next decade's major breakthroughs will come from physical sciences and engineering. A good sign for MaNEP's activities.

The American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) was launched in February 2006 by the White House.

This initiative is aimed at boosting American innovation which is considered a key engine to grow the economy.

Some important changes are taking place regarding the type of research supported by the US government.

During the period 2001 – 2007, most of the federal support was dedicated to biomedical research and security technologies.

Due to foreign competition and acknowledging that 50% of the post-World War II economic growth was due to R&D fueled technological progress, a new set of challenges is emerging : among them, the cost of energy and its consequences on all areas of society.

The new belief is that advances in physical sciences and engineering will generate the key scientific and technological breakthroughs of the next decade.

Research in physical sciences and engineering provides tools and technologies for all the other fields. Ultimately, everything is made of atoms and their subcomponents.

Basic techniques such as imaging, manipulation and simulation of matter at the atomic scale are of value for applications in every field.

A few examples from the past :

1) 1988 / Giant magneto-resistive effect : data storage and reading

2) 1990 / Lithium ion battery : MP3s, mobile phones, laptops

3) 1988 / Thin film transistor : LCD TV

4) 1960-1970 / Large scale circuit design : DRAM

5) 1965 / Fast Fourier Transform : signal processing and compression, etc.

Doubled budget

Based on the above, the budget for federal R&D provided by the ACI will double from 2006 to 2016, reaching 19.5 billion dollars (versus 6 billion in 1998).