An Open Letter to Dr. Subra Suresh, CMU’s newly named President

Dr. Suresh:

 

Allow me to add an enthusiastic welcome to Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh on the eve of your formal installment as University President.  By accounts from both CMU press announcements and Pittsburgh media, the University and the City are honored that you’ve chosen to accept this position.  Your work at Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the National Science Foundation speaks volumes for what you’ll accomplish in Pittsburgh.

CMU and Pittsburgh need more citizens of your experience as stakeholders in our urban ecosystem.  While I have little doubt that the University and its Board of Trustees are excited about your history of establishing programs and identifying requisite funding sources to realize those programs’ success, I am especially heartened by your work at MIT.  While at that school you were instrumental in establishing the Center for Computational Engineering.  Endeavors along those lines are specifically what Pittsburgh needs.

In a recent talk before the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association, you highlighted how a relatively small initial investment from a governmental program such as the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps can be leveraged into very large investments from the venture capital community ultimately producing large numbers of start-ups and hopefully longer term enterprises.  Please bring more of that to Pittsburgh.  Lack of capital is often cited as the number one reason Pittsburgh conspicuously lags other cities that have not much more in the way of intellectual resources.  I applaud your introductory emphasis on capital investment, no matter its source.

Capital is the key here: both human and financial.  CMU already has the human capital.  Such an oversupply in fact that it exports most of it to other places willing to award more financially to CMU’s best thinkers.  Financial capital, money, has been the element lacking in this latest incarnation of Pittsburgh economic development.  The late 19^th and early 20^th centuries had Andrew Mellon and his cohorts.  Pittsburgh blossomed, not unlike California’s Bay Area has done in the late 20^th century.  I urge you to make financial capital acquisition a top, perhaps the number one, priority.

You’ve spent much time in Cambridge, Massachusetts at MIT.  Walking down Massachusetts Avenue, I noted that two of the largest and most impressive structures carried names of their benefactors: Eli and Edythe Broad on the Broad Institute, and David H. Koch of the eponymous Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.  Using these two examples it must be noted what impressive achievements their investment in MIT given that the Broads call Los Angeles home and David Koch is basically a Texan, among his many residences, though also an MIT alumnus.

The parallels between work being done at these two institutes and work happening at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute is striking.  Both MIT affiliated institutes were founded within the last 10 years which is also the time frame for UPCI’s founding.  It’s acknowledged that UPCI also partners with many faculty members from CMU, but I believe CMU can add significant fund raising muscle to their efforts.  The hard truth is that biotechnology has yet to produce the financial rewards that computer technology has.  UPMC, Pitt’s Medical School, and UPCI all are loaded with talented, creative individuals and alumni.  But my suspicion is that currently, the alumni list at CMU has a larger number of individuals with access to financial capital; individuals who understand cutting-edge research and its requirements.  These are the people that you, Dr. Subresh, can personally tap for help in CMU’s and Pittsburgh’s technology efforts.

 

Allow me to insert a personal story that illustrates the excitement I’m hoping you will bring to CMU, the Oakland neighborhood, Pittsburgh and the tri-state region.  While competing at last year’s Head of the Charles Regatta, I was walking with friends past both the Broad and Koch Institutes.  The window displays in both buildings are impressive to say the least.  Watching the genome of a rabbit being mapped before your eyes, or the molecular structure of a cancer cell being explained in mind-blowing full color is an engaging experience for the passer-by.  To that end, I was walking with friends from Austin, TX who were so impressed with what they saw that they dropped the usual chauvinistic central Texas viewpoint to comment that “We have multi-colored guitar sculptures on our streets, and here they show some of the world’s scientific breakthroughs.  Wow!”  That summed it up, and that’s what I want for Pittsburgh.  You can help bring that to CMU and the City.