Lara Estroff, chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry, delivered the following remarks at her department’s graduation ceremony on May 24, 2025.
As I have wrestled with what I want to say to all of you in this consequential moment for science and engineering in this country, I have been drawn to thinking about how I got here, and how I imagine all of you may have gotten here as well.
I can’t help but reflect on the ways in which my parents fostered in me a sense of wonder in the world. They encouraged me to be inquisitive and experimental, like letting me put cream and lemon in my tea at the same time to see what would happen. We explored nature together and I was urged to ask questions about why things were the way they were. To this day, I begin my mornings walking through the woods near my house, delighting in small wonders, like fresh fox prints in the snow or the blooming spring ephemerals. This way of being in the world – always attuned to big and small changes occurring all around me – has made me the scientist I am today.
Rachel Carson captures this philosophy in her beautiful essay “The Sense of Wonder”, which I often give as a gift to new parents. In that book she writes:
“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living.”
Looking at all of you, and reflecting on conversations I’ve had with many of you over the years in my office, in the classroom, and in the lab, I know that all of you are also driven by a desire to understand our physical world, understand why materials behave the way they do, and to then apply that fundamental knowledge to make our society healthier, safer, and more technologically advanced.
So today, I urge you to take care to never lose your sense of wonder or let anyone try to take it away. It is part of what makes us who we are. And right now, in our polarized society, the very value of that open inquisitiveness and pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, the thrill of discovery, are being threatened.
I don’t say this to scare you but to motivate you to see yourselves as ambassadors for science and engineering and to take action accordingly throughout your lives: What we have is too precious to lose or give away.
As I have struggled to absorb headline after headline describing efforts attempting to dismantle the federal science agencies and institutions of higher learning, I have sought to better understand the visionaries who created the current partnership between universities and the government, which has thrived and been a model for the world for my entire lifetime.
Over 80 years ago, as WW II was raging on, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charged Dr. Vannevar Bush — who at the time headed the Office of Scientific Research and Development — with developing recommendations for creating an impactful and resilient scientific enterprise in the U.S. In his November 1944 letter to Dr. Bush, FDR wrote:
“New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war, we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.”
Dr. Bush’s report entitled “Science: The Endless Frontier,” lays out compelling arguments for why fundamental research matters, why science is a “proper concern of government”, why universities are ideally suited to carry out this research, and why higher education is essential for the welfare of our great country and the world. While I was tempted to just read the entire report to you (Don’t worry, I won’t! But I encourage anyone interested to ask me for a copy!), I will highlight just a few of the most salient sections that provide strong arguments to counter ongoing actions aimed at undoing years of progress.
In making the case for why universities are engines of scientific discovery, Bush writes:
“How do we increase this scientific capital? First, we must have plenty of men and women trained in science, for upon them depends both the creation of new knowledge and its application to practical purposes. Second, we must strengthen the centers of basic research which are principally the colleges, universities, and research institutes. […] They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As long as they are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere.”
The report then continues, framing the importance of basic research:
“[Basic research] results in general knowledge and an understanding of nature and its laws. This general knowledge provides the means of answering a large number of important practical problems, though it may not give a complete specific answer to any one of them. The function of applied research is to provide such complete answers. The scientist doing basic research may not be at all interested in the practical applications of [their] work, yet the further progress of industrial development would eventually stagnate if basic scientific research were long neglected.”
Finally, in laying the groundwork for government-university partnership, he writes:
“Moreover, since health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of Government, scientific progress is, and must be, of vital interest to Government. Without scientific progress the national health would deteriorate; without scientific progress we could not hope for improvement in our standard of living or for an increased number of jobs for our citizens; and without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny.”
Based largely upon the recommendations contained in this report, over the past 75 years, the United States has nurtured and grown a scientific community that trained and financially supported generations of researchers and innovators who thirsted to understand the rules of the universe, to elucidate the fundamental forces that govern how materials behave, and to reveal the complexities that create life as we know it.
We have built a thriving community of researchers, drawn from around the world and of which you are now a part, and these researchers have brought us countless innovations that we now regard as essential to our lives: MRIs, one of the most widely used medical imaging technologies, smartphones, the internet, LASIK eye surgery, doppler radar, which is key for weather forecasting, and CRISPR, which has the potential to treat a wide-range of genetic diseases. Every one of these inventions and countless others, which have changed for the better the lives of hundreds of millions of people, started with government-sponsored research in university labs.
The health of this ecosystem of teaching, learning, and research is at risk today. Let me be clear: the private sector by itself will never be able to support the basic research that we must keep doing for the sake of future generations and for our country’s continued leadership on the world’s stage. As you go out into the world as newly minted graduates, and as parents of newly minted graduates, I ask each of you, regardless of your own politics, to be an ambassador for science and engineering.
It is our sense of wonder, of which I spoke earlier, that calls to us and compels us to pursue our careers in science and engineering, and so I leave you with this blessing from Rachel Carson:
“If I had influence with the good fairy […] I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
I have seen from each of you a commitment to living in this world in a way that your impact matters at a personal level and at a global level. You have so much to offer, and you are an inspiration.
On behalf of the entire faculty: Congratulations!
