When making choices, or setting policies about the economy, education or medicine, society is best served by electing people who are particularly hardworking, intelligent and interested in long-term thinking.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

Technology must be implemented as part of a thoughtful, holistic approach to education transformation that includes teacher training, relevant curricula, parental involvement, and programs for children that fill unmet needs for basics like nutrition and health care.

The US in some ways has been the best. Who figured out shale gas? Although that wasn't a good thing [for CO2 levels], it was very innovative. It's led to low-cost energy. Who figured out nuclear power? Largely the United States. Once you get past the steam engine, which is mostly British, then the US has been at the center of most of the energy things that have happened.

The Chinese are clearly inculcating the idea that science is exciting and important, and that's why they, as a whole-they're graduating four times as many engineers as we are, and that's just happened over the last 20 years.