How Money and Power Play a Role in Science

2020 MIT Tough Tech Summit — The takeaways go crazy 🤯

As a senior in High School and a TKS innovator, I got the opportunity to attend the 2020 MIT Tough Tech Summit! I was ready to be completely lost and amazed at the same time.

This was a chance to meet with really smart people doing big things — so yea I was intimidated. However, I was excited to attend when I saw the level of female representation the summit upheld. It felt empowering being exposed to women who have, and are currently working on ground breaking technologies right now.

The summit truly made me think about how we have so much tech but it’s not always built to better the world.

Let me break down my top two key takeaways from the first conversation.

The Fireside Chat with Professor Mariana Mazzucato and Tom Khalil. Quick bios, Mariana Mazzucato is named “Top 3 most important thinkers in innovation”, she’s an economist, author and sits on the board of the UN Committee for Development Policy. Tom Khalil is the CIO at Schmitt Futures. A company that aims to advance societies through tech.

I was super pumped for this to be the first part of the conference because they talked about the role of governments and policy when it comes to entrepreneurship and innovation for the public. The role of innovation is the key to the success of future generations. As an entrepreneur myself and someone who likes to follow politics, it was interesting to understand the direct correlation when it comes to innovators working on real world problems, science and government.

• Oftentimes when scientific research is funded by certain sectors there’s an underlying bias that affects the outcome of the research. If governments want their nations to live efficiently then they need to fund scientists and allow them the freedom to explore the unknown. No limits.

For example, pharmaceutical companies. The majority of clinical research that focuses on creating on medications faces a conflict of interest between producing good science and results that will generate income and sales of their products. Just that alone is testimonial to show the direct impact that science, money and power have together. Our health literally depends on how well they work together.

• Procurement Policy — something I’ve never heard of before the talk but is a major game changer for small businesses. The policy governs the process of acquiring goods and services needed by an organization to function efficiently.

There are certain societal needs that are unlikely to be met by the market so instead they’re met by the Procurement Policy. The point is to ensure that genuine social needs are met. Also it’s competitive and binding but it’s worth it to ensure there is wider social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes that go further than just the immediate purchase of the service or product. So a more sustainable outcome.

Lastly Embrace change — it’s 2020. Change is inevitable. Don’t let it hinder you and your goals, rather use change to your benefit.

“Lets build coalitions that are capable of not only tackling and solving these problems but doing it in a way that allows other people to participate” — Tom Khalil

I love this. Let’s give the people who are passionate changemakers the chance to make change happen. Let’s allow others to join on that journey to undergo revolutionary change. When it comes to real-problems, we need real solutions for real impact. The more people the impact reaches the better.

Thank you, thank you to everyone who made my experience at this years Tough Tech Summit awesome! Thank you to Michael for giving me and other TKS kids tickets to attend the conference. Thank you to Katie Rae for an outstanding opening to the summit, it was truly heartfelt. Lastly, thank you to all the speakers for making my experience unforgettable and for dropping so much wisdom. This was wayy better than working on my English Capstone. I can’t wait for next year’s MIT Tough Tech Submit👋

Heyyy, I’m Maryam an ambitious student passionate about all things entrepreneurship and cool current things going on in the world right now.

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