On Thursday, Oct. 31, The Tartan spoke with Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The interview was shortly after Panchanathan’s President’s lecture on innovation and the frontiers of science and technology.
Panchanathan told The Tartan about his work as director of the NSF, the democratization of opportunities, ways faculty members can inspire students, and how the NSF regulates artificial intelligence.
“One of the important tenets of a scientist is to have curiosity, you take on interesting problems to solve and you build the appropriate skill set to solve them,” Panchanathan said. “Your learning never stops. It’s a lifelong quest.”
When someone becomes a faculty member at a university, Panchanathan said, one has to apply their skills, mindset and expertise to find solutions to research problems and questions. Becoming a leader in academia requires you to apply these same skills to ensure the success of other researchers and students.
In the past, Panchanathan viewed the NSF as a faculty member and learned how to secure grants from the NSF. When he joined the National Science Board, he learned more about the NSF and what it does. Being director of the NSF requires him to ensure the success of faculty members and students on a national level.
“One of the things that I really wanted to see is that students everywhere across our country are successful,” Panchanathan said, reiterating his desire for equitable opportunities. “Whether they are from rural areas or urban areas … you want to create an environment for success.
“You see students who with their unbelievable intellectual spirit, entrepreneurial spirit, and the spirit of ensuring that they are helping others and solving problems, are given the opportunities,” he said. “I want to make sure that I did that at NSF.”
Panchanathan said he delivered the graduate commencement ceremony speech at Northeastern University for the graduating class of 2024. As director of the NSF, Panchanathan said he believes it is important and inspiring to visit universities across the nation.
“The real work happens in the universities and other entities that NSF invests in. Therefore, for me, it’s very important to be there, talking to students, listening to them,” he said. “It is really, truly inspiring to me to come and meet everybody.”
Panchanathan said that students and faculty are working hard to solve new problems and that his presence shows them that the NSF cares, not just through funding but by ensuring they have the environment they need to succeed. He stated that each university has its own set of novel and transformative projects, which he finds inspiring.
Panchanathan said the Cloud Lab at Carnegie Mellon, a platform for artificial intelligence driven experimentation, is an example of important research happening at the university level.
He said he is inspired by one of his former students, Dr. David Hayden, who built a note-taking device to help him take notes in class after finding it difficult to do so due to his visual impairment.
When asked what advice he would give to faculty members seeking to inspire their students, Panchanathan said, “Keep your eyes open. … I always say that there are always students looking to be engaged, to want to get inspired, to want to contribute, to want to learn … the key is to be able to provide such opportunities for students to get the ability to be able to engage with your work.”
Panchanathan said Hayden became an example of what a student can accomplish with the right environment. Hayden’s device has helped many students with visual impairments.
At the end of his interview with The Tartan, Panchanathan delved into the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and its safety.
Panchanathan said that an interdisciplinary background aids in the creation of safe AI, something Carnegie Mellon has always been good at. He mentioned faculty members at Carnegie Mellon who are working on advancing the future of AI such as Dr. Erica R. H. Fuchs and Dr. Giulia Fanti.
“You see a number of these projects that are contributing to the future of AI, secure, safe, trustworthy, reliable, responsible, ethical, bias free,” Panchanathan said. “That kind of an AI that benefits everyone, the human … symbiosis that helps humans and does their tasks effectively and advance as a society, as individuals and as a society.”
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