2025 Bromley Memorial Lecture: Dr. Robert Atkinson
Virtual (In person for those in Washington D.C.)
Mar 25, 2025 — 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
On Tuesday, March 25th, 2025, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP) at the University of Ottawa is travelling to Washington D.C. with a group of students to attend the 2025 Bromley Memorial Lecture and Event, co-organized with the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy (IISTP) at the George Washington University (GW) Elliott School of International Affairs.

About the 2025 Bromley Memorial Lecture:
The ISSP and the IISTP are pleased to host the 2025 Bromley Memorial Lecture as part of the Bromley Memorial Event.
This year’s Lecture features Dr. Robert Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, speaking on the topic of “US Science Policy at a Crossroads.” His remarks will be followed by brief comments from two student respondents from uOttawa and GW, and a Q&A with the audience.
The Lecture will be available in person and online via Zoom and will be recorded.

Dr. Robert Atkinson
Keynote Speaker
As founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Robert D. Atkinson leads a prolific team of policy analysts and fellows that is successfully shaping the debate and setting the agenda on a host of critical issues at the intersection of technological innovation and public policy. He is an internationally recognized scholar and a widely published author whom The New Republic has named one of the “three most important thinkers about innovation,” Washingtonian Magazine has called a “tech titan,” Government Technology Magazine has judged to be one of the 25 top “doers, dreamers and drivers of information technology,” and the Wharton Business School has given the “Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award.”
President Clinton appointed Atkinson to the Commission on Workers, Communities, and Economic Change in the New Economy; the Bush administration appointed him chair of the congressionally created National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission; the Obama administration appointed him to the National Innovation and Competitiveness Strategy Advisory Board; as co-chair of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s China-U.S. Innovation Policy Experts Group; to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and the Trump administration appointed him to the G7 Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence. The Biden administration appointed him as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information and a member of the Export-Import Bank of the United States' Council on China Competition.
Atkinson currently serves on the Expert Panel on the State of Science, Technology, and Innovation in Canada at the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), which has been tasked by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to assess the state of science, technology, and innovation in Canada, and determine how Canada compares internationally. Atkinson also served on the UK government’s Place Advisory Group to advise the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation on how policy can drive innovation in more regions. He is a member of the Polaris Council, a body of cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary science and technology policy experts who advise the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) team on emergent and emerging issues.
Atkinson holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was awarded the prestigious Joseph E. Pogue Fellowship. He earned his master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Oregon, which named him a distinguished alumnus in 2014.
Previous Bromley Memorial Lectures:

2024 Bromley Memorial Lecture: Dr. Rémi Quirion
