From the late-1950s to now, R&D Magazine has been proud to provide you with new products and technologies. But, take a look at what’s still to come.

This year we celebrate 50 years of publishing R&D Magazine, which has been dedicated throughout that past half century to providing scientists and engineers working in R&D labs with the technical information they need to do their jobs better. R&D was founded as Industrial Research (IR) with the name change to R&D occurring in the mid-1980s to reflect the significant contributions of government and academic researchers. The founder, Neil P. Ruzic, was a lifelong supporter of research, creating at one time an island for independent research in the Caribbean.

The world of research has changed significantly over the past 50 years in terms of the specific science and technologies focused on by researchers. Instead of steel, plastics, and aerospace, it’s now nanotech, biotech, and sustainability. Instead of European competition, chemical processing, and mainframe computers, it’s now global competition, pharmaceutical processing, and embedded computing.

In a similar manner, though, a lot of research continues today much as it did in the late-1950s on reducing oil imports, developing alternative energy sources like fuel cells, and creating disposable consumer products.

And as many new countries become serious trade competitors in the global marketplace, the creation and implementation of intellectual property has today become a more critical component for each country’s economic growth. And yet yesterday’s IP very quickly becomes today’s commodities. Science and technology continue to evolve at an ever-accelerating pace. Many researchers no longer retire, they just keep on researching; and most continue going to school, becoming life-long learners. U.S. researchers continue to be the global drivers for productivity improvements, and this competitive stigma appears to be increasing.

Similarly, the technological half-life of new products appears to be shrinking with entirely new product directions being driven by unthought-of technologies just five years ago. Video games, for example, are becoming drivers for more than just training fighter pilots. Now their technologies are evolving and driving new technologies in a whole range of medical and biological areas, sensor development, wireless enhancements, and remote monitoring. A few years ago, working remotely on your job was rare. Today, with telecommunication enhancements, working in a global environment with co-workers in other countries is relatively commonplace as is telepresence research. The picture of a person working on a warm beach occurs more often in reality today, than just in TV ads.

Sometimes, those technology improvements come easier than you might expect. Pharmaceutical manufacturers, for example, are finding new applications for some of their existing drugs in areas they might not have considered just a few years ago. In many situations, these new applications are relatively easy to implement due to the minimization of clinical trials for toxicity evaluations. These efforts have become increasingly important for big pharma, who find themselves with fewer successful new products in their development pipelines amid steadily increasing development costs.

And similarly, as oil prices soar, old recovery technologies long thought of as too expensive are now being revived to increase known supplies previously thought of as unobtainable. The increasing oil prices also make every other energy source imaginable much more realistic, once of course we get over the immediate "sticker shock."

Already, the rising cost of oil has triggered an increase in the creation of nuclear energy plants in the U.S., the first time in more than 25 years. And the new nuclear plants are going to be better, with researchers building in more automated control and monitoring systems. And reactor designers are utilizing state-of-the-art high efficiency designs that have only been retrofitted on existing reactors in the past.

The rising cost of oil has also impacted the design and development of more energy efficient appliances. These devices will cost less to operate, require less maintenance, and be without any initial cost differential.

And oil’s rising cost will also result in a number of new energy resources being established by energy entrepreneurs. These resources will result from designs, applications, and resources that we don’t know anything about right now.

Needless to say, technology development has, is, and will always be driven by challenges. We can already see many new developments addressing some current challenges, like energy sources and food enhancements. As editors of R&D Magazine, we’re exposed to a constant onslaught of these new technologies. Every now and then, we feel a little jaded in that those technologies aren’t available fast enough to help our readers and society improve our existence. But then, we’re surprised by another technology that is real that we hadn’t heard about. On the following pages, we present you with just a few ideas on what current technology leaders see in their immediate future.

Published in R & D magazine: Vol. 50, No. 3, June, 2008, p.12.