NPR – Marcelo Gleiser 
How many Americans realize that one of the greatest, if not the greatest, legacies of this country are its amazing universities, incubators of some of the most creative ideas in the past 100 years? Ideas that have changed the world, that have shaped the way we live, that have saved (and taken) countless lives, that pave the way for what the future will be like. Manned missions to Mars, the privatization of the space race, self-driving cars, the explosion of social media platforms, renewable energy sources, the endless pursuit for new cures and vaccines, smart robots, ultrafast computers — these are the technologies that will define the 21st century, and they all depend crucially on science and scientific research.(more)