After the Election: Thoughts on Outsourcing and Personalized Medicine

One largely non-technical issue I feel strongly about is President-elect Obama’s misguided pronouncements on outsourcing.

I think America needs to create new high-quality jobs and not resort to public policy to cling to jobs that can and will get done elsewhere. Preserving “old fashioned” jobs sounds quaint and romantic but would trap people in jobs that are no longer viable and delays the creative rethinking and reinvention of businesses. As President, Obama must lead Americans down the path of innovation and teach them how to overcome the hurdles that come up.

On a more technical note, I am delighted that Obama has championed genomic personalized medicine. I hope he will enlarge support for new research initiatives and IT infrastructure investments so we can do a better job of anticipating diseases, lowering the cost of drug discovery and extending the productive lives of our citizens.

Genetic information could become the basis for new forms of discrimination and get in the way of personalized medicine. I was delighted to learn in this context that President-elect Obama supported the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. I hope he uses the power of the Presidency to advance our study and practice of personalized medicine and helps America become the world leader in this domain.

Author: Ramesh Rao

Ramesh Rao is professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, and director of the San Diego Division of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology. Rao earned his BE degree with honors in electronics and communications in 1980 from the University of Madras in Tiruchirapalli, India. He received his MS degree in 1982 and Ph. D. degree in 1984, both at the University of Maryland, College Park. Since then he has been on the faculty of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently Professor and Director of the San Diego Division of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology. In April 2004, he was named Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Telecommunications and Information Technology. His research interests include architectures, protocols and performance analysis of computer and communication networks. He has authored over 100 technical papers, contributed two book chapters, and led many major interdisciplinary and collaborative projects as principal investigator. He was the Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and was a member of the Editorial Board of the ACM/Baltzer Wireless Network Journal as well as IEEE Network magazine. He has been twice elected to serve on the Information Theory Society Board of Governors ('97 to '99 and '00 to '02).