Lewis M. Branscomb

Lewis M. Branscomb died on May 31, 2023. Lewis M. Branscomb was the Professor, emeritus, of Public Policy and Corporate Management, in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and appointments at the University of California, San Diego in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

His most recent current research activities cover the following areas:

  • Innovation as the path to longterm economic growth. See Osher lecture PPTs at UCSD April 19, 2011, on reversing the trend toward a 3rd world economy.
  • Invention to Innovation: Understanding the risks, requirements and sources of finance of converting a new, high-tech commercial idea into a product or process introduced into a market.
  • Regional Innovation: Analyzing the attributes of a large metropolitan area that are most effective in promoting high-tech innovations in the area and learning how to predict the emergence off new innovation "hot spots".
  • S&T for Counterterrorism: Understanding how research and innovation might reduce the vulnerability of nations considered targets for high-consequence terrorism, and analyzing the vulnerability of critical infrastructures to disasters and divising policies to mitigate these risks and vulnerabilities.
  • International S&T Policy: Study of how other nations' governments organize to make and execute policy in science and technology.
    • Nations of interest to Lewis were primarily Japan, China, Korea, Russia, and India.
    • Specific projects look at policies for promoting innovation and at opportunities for US bilateral S&T cooperation with some of these countries in countering terrorism.
  • Jeffersonian Science: Development of a way governments can employ basic research to make long-term critical national goals easier to reach without sacrificing the creativity and individual initiative that are essential for progress in basic science.
  • Political interference in science advice: Evidence of a broad and purposeful environment in the federal government that suppresses or distorts science advice and scientific analysis in the agencies for political purposes.

This site provides a written professional biography, a complete curriculum vitae, and a full list of publications. For personal background, see Lewis M. Branscomb, Confessions of a Technophile, College Park, MD: American Institute of Physics, 1995. Friends and family can open a password protected area with information about personal events, travel and collections of digital photographs.

Information about recent research and writing is found under each of the above areas of work, along with an opportunity for posting of comments, references to interesting work and information about upcoming conferences.