Making a Case for BPC

In 2005, the US National Academies—the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medi cine, and the National Research Council—issued a report called Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Ener gizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.1 Reporting at the request of a bipartisan group in Congress, a 20-member panel of advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine concluded that without a major effort to reinvigorate core science programs, the US “could soon lose its privileged position” as a world leader in science and technology.