Virginia's Institute for Defense and Homeland Security -- September - October 2003 Newsletter

Virginia's Institute for Defense and Homeland Security -- September - October 2003 Newsletter: "Message from the IDHS Executive Director

In the first IDHS Newsletter, I spoke of the rare opportunity provided to those of us at the Institute for Defense and Homeland Security -- the chance to build the institute from the ground up and to lay the foundation for its future. In creating the right vision for IDHS, we must first look at fundamental changes taking place in the national R&D infrastructure and the challenges and opportunities created by those changes.

Today an entire generation of scientists and engineers whose careers began with the race to the moon and the Viet Nam War are retiring or transitioning to new careers. Coupled with this relatively sudden loss of talent and corporate memory is the continuation of the trend toward downsizing of federal R&D activities that began in the early 1990s. Because national defense and homeland security interests demand that we maintain a robust technology base in the face of dwindling federal resources, this century's challenge is to establish appropriate and complementary relationships among the public and private sector components of the national R&D enterprise.

Governor Warner recently challenged IDHS to support his Virginia higher education goals by 'encouraging cooperative ventures "