At the fourth annual UM Tech Summit in the Ford Center, U.S. Senator and Senate Commerce Committee Chair Roger Wicker said that the university should now focus on becoming more prominent in STEM expansion.
The speakers included Wicker, Comcast Senior Executive Vice President David Cohen, Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai, Mississippi media mogul Jim Barksdale, and NBC and MSNBC News Chair Andy Lack.
Pai outlined the federal government’s role in guiding the tech industry, as well as seeing that it reaches all Americans.
“My job is to talk about what the federal government can do not only to encourage motivation and infrastructure development but also to make sure the technologies will be inclusive and accessible to all Americans, especially to those in rural communities,” Pai said.
Wicker, the guest of honor and host of the event, equated expanding broadband to rural areas as similar to expanding electricity in generations prior.
“It’s just as important as rural electrification in the Depression era,” Wicker said. “It’s part of addressing the brain drain that heartland America is experiencing. Chairman Pai and I are determined to bridge this digital divide and make the highest level of connectivity available just like we made electricity available years ago.”
Wicker also defended net neutrality in ensuring that network traffic should be regulated equally.
“We will make sure that the big platforms aren’t able to block you or charge different rates that would advantage the big guys and disadvantage the average person,” he said.
In 2017, Pai led the charge in repealing net neutrality, an Obama-era regulation that requires all traffic on the internet be handled equally. Net neutrality outlawed internet service providers from slowing consumers’ internet service speed and outlaws companies from prioritizing their own content over a competitor’s content.
Wicker said that as an Ole Miss alumnus, he believes that hosting a summit with the most prominent voices in tech is exactly what the university should be doing.
“This is the spot on the face of the Earth that people need to be. We ought to be leading. We’re the university of Faulkner and John Grisham; we know how to write. Now we need to be on the cutting edge in STEM.”
In addition to industry leaders and government officials, university students were given an opportunity to present their own independent research to the audience.
Hannah Newbold, a junior studying integrated marketing communications, discussed exploring ways to market the benefits of virtual reality as concussion technology.
“I had to try to understand the market and figure out how to sell this technology to a market in Mississippi to start with. And eventually, to go global,” she said.
Allyson Best, Director of the Office of Technology Commercialization, described how the tech summit moves the university forward.
“It’s transformative for the university because it allows our faculty, staff and students to hear leaders in industry, as to where they need industry to go and what problems they need solved,” she said. “And that enables our research team to innovate faster and more effectively.”
