g o v e r n m e n t & p o l i c y

No longer the pure science agency of old, the National Science Foundation is redefining itself

as sciences converge and emerging technologies pose challenges

Wil Lepkowski C&EN Washington

Among the books of short stories the great southern writer Flannery {O'Connor published, one was ti­

tled, "Everything That Rises Must Con­verge." O'Connor had no background in science, but if she did, and if she were writing about the $4 billion federal agen­cy known as the National Science Foun­dation, the title would have been an apt metaphor for what NSF is today: a caul­dron of ideas, plans, and programs ris­ing, congealing, and transforming— mirroring, NSF would say, the state of science and technology today.

Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble may be another way of putting all of that, es­pecially to grant applicants wondering how to pitch their proposals to an agen­cy whirring in perpetual self-definition. But the agency's leadership says there is no choice. NSF is trying to remake itself into a more dynamic agency and attempting to calibrate its research programs with the rapidly emerging, highly volatile, highly technological economy.

It is a wild scene that is still difficult to define. NSF is telling people who con­fess their confusion to endure and enjoy it for a while. The foundation's staff say their process isn't perfect, but a necessi­ty in the agency's major role to meet the research needs of the U.S., including manpower, in this information-intensive era. NSF also has a new legal duty to be accountable to the public and explain why it does what it does.

NSF is celebrating its 50th anniversa­ry this year, and it is doing it in a big way. Under its director, microbiologist Rita R. Colwell, the foundation is hoping to serve up such an enticing brew of successes and ideas during the year that Congress will swoon and double the agency's bud­get quickly. The wish, given Congress'

fiscally conservative climate, is more akin to fantasy, but Colwell says the money could be put to use immediately—for larger grants allocated for longer periods of time. "Our budget is insufficient for a nation with a $1.8 trillion budget and a $9.9 trillion economy," she says. Re­searchers couldn't agree more.

Fields are combining, giving rise to new fields and new hybridized special­ties. "We can do things we couldn't do 30 years ago," declares Robert A. Eisen-stein, head of NSF's Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences. "It's terribly exciting to watch this all hap­pening. Everyone I talk to reaches this same conclusion."

Colwell adds, "It's like we're having a fermentation that's constantly in the log phase."

That, then, is the bare outline of the new NSF: an internal self-defining opera­tion led by Deputy Director Joseph Bor-dogna, and the external drive spearhead­ed by Colwell, to make NSF a household name by making better known the social return on the research it funds. One in­centive is the drive toward doubling the agency's budget. Another has a legal ba­sis in the form of the Government Per­formance & Results Act (GPRA), which requires NSF to justify through formal assessments the payback on its "invest­ments"—a word NSF insists on using— in research and other programs.

It is interesting to ponder at NSF's Golden Jubilee how close it now is to the original vision of a "National Research Foundation" set forth by Vannevar Bush back in 1945 in his report, "Science—The

From left, NSF Director Rita Colwell celebrates NSF's 50th anniversary year kickoff in April with Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman; former NSF Director Guy Stever, representing anniversary sponsor Science Service; and anniversary sponsor Dow Chemical's Vice President and Director of R&D R. M. (Rick) Gross.

2 4 JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN

NSF AT 50

Endless Frontier," prepared for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The report is a sacred text at NSF, but Bush's vision doesn't come near to what NSF evolved into. If anything, it comes closer to the kind of unit envisaged by a 1940s New Deal Democratic Senator from West Vir­ginia, Harley M. Kilgore, who in several hearings and one bill preceded Bush by at least two years in proposing his own "National Science Foundation."

Kilgore and Bush, who were on oppo­site sides politically, both were allied suf­ficiently in the basic idea of a single na­tional science agency. Having observed the power of organized scientific knowl­edge to win a modern war, they both fore­saw a government agency that would support research in the basic sciences, leading to stronger economies and a more dynamic research workforce.

Where Bush and Kilgore diverged was in one main idea. With Kilgore, a sci­ence agency would also plan research strategies directed toward the improve­ment of national life, if not personal lives. Bush wanted his publicly fiinded agency to be outside of government and left alone to bolster science. The social good would work itself out in consequence, but not by any policy designs.

One can see the progression over the years. In 1950, President Harry S. Tru­man put his signature to the National Sci­ence Foundation Act, and the agency that emerged focused purely on basic re­search directly along the major disci­plines. NSF's first director, physicist Alan T Waterman (1951-63), who had been director of research at the Office of Naval Research, saw to it that NSF remained a physical science agency. Engineering and applied science began to squirrel into the agency during the six-year regime (1963-69) of physicist Leland J. Haworth.

In 1969, biochemist William D. McEl-roy took the reins. McElroy (1969-72) in a sense was NSFs first transitional direc­tor in bringing social conscience into the scientific discourse. He put in place NSFs controversial Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) program, which eventually helped give NSF its first bil­lion-dollar budget. Through grants and contracts, RANN drew on university sci­entists and engineers to do research in fields that included energy, transporta­tion, agriculture, environmental prob­lems, industrial processes, and various societal issues.

It was also under McElroy that NSFs current logo came into being. An assis­tant to McElroy, obviously a union man,

observed that the United Auto Workers expressed the union's spirit of solidarity by the depiction of human figures hold­ing hands and encircling a globe with the initials UAW at the center. With the social responsibility of scientists as the major theme of the day, it seemed natural that NSF might well adopt the same type of logo. It did, and there it is, a monument to NSF's fre quently derided research-for-national-needs past.

The next director, physicist H. Guyford Stever (1972-76), at­tempted to consolidate the new programs es­tablished under Mc­Elroy. Engineering con­tinued to grow, as did RANN—although the pro gram was drawing increased oppo­sition from scientists who claimed it was pulling funds away from basic research. But political pressures were growing. The Nixon Administration abolished the White House science advisory appara­tus, and Stever was asked to fill in as science adviser to the Administration while at the same time continuing to run NSF. The agency became stretched and thus stressed.

Under research psychologist Richard C. Atkinson (1977-80), NSF drifted back to emphasizing the basic sciences, al­though by then the social sciences and engineering had established a firmer footing. RANN's opponents finally won the day, and Atkinson, as the accomplice with the authority, announced its demise. RANN's projects were spread throughout the agency, giving rise to strong growth in interdisciplinary fields.

By the 1980s, the country was becom­ing conservative and at the same time trou­bled by the technological ascendancy of Ja­pan. Competitiveness became the rallying cry, and NSF drew its most transitional fig­ure as its eighth director, former IBM ex­ecutive Erich Bloch (1984-90). Bloch turned the agency on its head and shocked its constituents by declaring that their sup­port was not a right Their work had to help meet the economic needs of the country. Under Bloch, engineering and computer sciences grew and flourished.

After Bloch came the troubled regime of physicist Walter E. Massey (1991-93), when morale at NSF suffered because of insensitive and questionable managerial practices. It was under Massey, however, that the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences was established

and overall planning became a serious fo­cus at the agency. By the time physicist Neal F. Lane became director in 1993, the new sciences and the engineering fields were solidly established, research became almost exponentially produc­tive, and it was becoming clear that a new era for research and policy had

arrived. Lane's tenure (1993-98) was transformative as well,

not necessarily because of him but because Con-gress passed GPRA, forcing intense pro­cesses of accountabili­ty on federal agencies.

NSF had to determine how to show the econom­

ic and social fruits of the re­search it sponsored.

So the pattern is one of change from an agency that sponsored basic sci­ence, to the growth of engineering in its research programs, to the influence of environmental and social forces on the design and language of its programs, to the realization that technology, with its appetite for manpower and ideas, was the driving force for federally supported sci­ence. NSF, in other words, was gradually becoming the handmaiden of technolo­gy, or at least of the technological society.

All that brings us to today's almost hy­personic regime headed by Colwell and Bordogna. The workings of the 21st-centu­ry NSF challenge description because the agency appears to be conforming itself to the speed of change in society and the economy. Many things are happening at once. NSF is also reflecting the pace of change in the sciences, which are in many cases driven by technologies of the most exotic kind—biotechnology, information technology, and nanotech-nology. It's no strange wonder that in­dustry has lined up behind NSF in its pursuit of big budget boosts.

Still, the harsh truth, bothersome to NSF, is that most people in melting-pot America have never heard of NSF and quite likely may not care if they ever will. NSF-sponsored surveys have shown that the public likes science and engineering, or the wonders and products of them, but knows next to nothing about how and why researchers do what they do. They are a little wary, too, of some of the prod­ucts and consequences of the sciences, such as genetically modified foods, priva­cy theft via the Internet, and the utter complexity of high-tech, high-speed life.

NSF today, for the obvious political

JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN 2 5

g o v e r n m e n t & policy

Fifty years at the National Science Foundation

1942-45 U.S. government mobilizes national scientific and engineering community for research directed toward World War II victory. Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer Vannevar Bush is in charge of overall effort that leads to atomic bomb

development, radar, and improvements in medicine. The power of research applied to problems and crises is demonstrated.

1942-45 Democratic Sen. Harley M. Kilgore of West Virginia conducts several hearings on establishing a "National Science Foundation" to apply research to peacetime goals. His concepts form the model that most closely becomes the current NSF.

1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt asks Bush to report on what the government can do to harness science for the economic and social benefit of the country.

1945 Bush issues "Science—The Endless Frontier," a report that lays the framework for an independent, government-supported "National Research Foundation" to fund university-based research for all purposes—military to medical. Debates ensue between Bush and Kilgore concepts. Meanwhile, Roosevelt has died.

1947 A landmark report by White House aide John R. Steelman issued for President Harry S. Truman calls for a national science agency largely along Kilgore

lines, but also calls for strong research roles by other agencies.

1947 Atomic Energy Commission is established, diluting the need for overarching national research program for a single science agency.

1947 Office of Naval Research is established, spurring research programs by other Defense Department agencies, precluding any defense-related programs by a national science agency.

1947 National Institutes of Health, which had its beginnings in 1887, starts a huge expansion, ending any major national science agency role in health-related research.

1949 Cold War intensifies as the Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.

1950 Public law 507 is passed, creating NSF; it is signed by Truman on May 10.

1951 Alan T. Waterman, director of research at the Office of Naval Research,

is named first NSF director. He strongly supports peer-reviewed research in the physical and biological sciences, but none in

science and security. This leads to NSPs first big budget boost. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints MIT engineer James R. Killian Jr. as the first presidential science adviser.

1957 International Geophysical Year begins, establishing a strong NSF role in global change research and major programs for Antarctica and the Arctic.

1958 National Aeronautics & Space Administration is established, diluting any major NSF role in space research. Congress passes the National Defense Education Act, establishing an NSF presence in K-12 education.

1963 President John F. Kennedy establishes the White House Office of Science & Technology. He announces the intention to land a man on the moon and tells the National Academy of Sciences that scientists must keep the public good in mind.

1964 NSF launches its Centers of Excellence program to lift the quality of research in second- and third-tier universities. This is the first major reaction to congressional pressure for a wider distribution of NSF support for research.

1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson disturbs the basic science community by telling NIH researchers to relate their work more toward solving practical problems.

1968 Social revolution of the 1960s grips the U.S.

Congress as it reforms the act that established NSF and mandates research programs in applied science and social and behavioral sciences.

1969 NASA lands a man on the moon, then shrinks in size as the space program winds down, resulting in contractors laying off engineers. Research budgets begin to

decline under fiscal pressures of the Vietnam War. There is a national focus on solving social problems.

1970-71 Congress passes an array of environmental and social legislation. In a first, NSF establishes the Experimental Research & Development Incentives program aimed at solving economic and social problems. NSF accelerates earlier efforts to establish relationships between university researchers and industry.

1972 Congress passes Mansfield Amendment to restrict defense research only to projects with obvious weapons applications. The spirit of the amendment spreads across all federal mission agencies, causing a reduction in basic research programs. The amendment upsets NSF and adds pressure to raise its budget during tight times.

2 6 JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN

social sciences and little in engineering. A strong emphasis is placed on graduate pd 11 rati on.

1957 Soviet Union launches the first satellite, Sputnik 1, beating the U.S. into space and causing major concerns about the quality of American

1973-74 President Richard M. Nixon abolishes the White House science advisory apparatus, eliminating the role of science adviser, the Office of Science &

Technology, and the President's Science Advisory Committee. The scientific community persuades the White House to put NSF director H. Guyford Stever in the dual role of science adviser and NSF director. Interdisciplinary Research Related to Problems of Society is established at NSF, which the White House greatly enlarges into the Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) program.

1974 Nixon resigns and Gerald R. Ford becomes President. Stever remains in his dual role, putting pressure on NSF staff.

1975-76 Ford assigns Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller to reestablish the

White House science advisory apparatus. Stever is appointed full-time science adviser, and Stanford research psychologist Richard C. Atkinson replaces Stever as NSF director.

1977-79 RANN Ms the NSF budget to the $ 1 billion level but proves unpopular in the basic science community, which persuades NSF to kill i t Many of the projects are spread throughout NSF; engineering, as a result, acquires more solid footing at NSF.

1980 Atkinson resigns and is replaced by John B. Slaughter, an electrical engineer from Washington State University, the first black to head NSF. Slaughter works to establish a strong applied science and engineering program at NSF.

1980 Ronald W.Reagan is elected President, launching a conservative era in science and technology policy. Slaughter resigns soon afterward and is replaced by physicist Edward A. Knapp from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Reagan Administration seeks to end social science research at NSF, eliminates the science and math education program, and suggests the merger of NSF and the National Bureau of Standards.

1983-86 Japan looms as a technological threat to the U.S., causing competitiveness to become the dominant U.S. science and technology policy issue. IBM Vice President Erich Bloch becomes eighth

NSF director and the first to come from an industrial background. He seeks to move NSF toward applied aspects of science and the development of a technically trained workforce.

1986-90 NSF programs become more applied and reach for stronger

connections with industry. Bloch establishes the first engineering research centers and, later, science and technology centers.

1988 George Bush is elected President and restores strengoi to the science adviser office

with appointment of nuclear physicist D. Allan Bromley from Yale University. Bush resurrects the President's Council of Advisers on Science & Technology and the Federal Coordinating Council on Science & Technology. The role of government research in industrial development is debated.

1990-93 Bloch era ends and NSF enters a new, turbulent period. Walter E. Massey, director of Argonne National Laboratory, is appointed NSF director with the aim of

consolidating changes wrought by his predecessor. The National Science Board begins a study of NSFs mission and affirms the primary role of NSF in basic research. Massey creates a new social and behavioral sciences directorate at NSF. He departs soon after the election of President Bill Clinton.

1993 Clinton initially pushes for a strong technology policy for the U.S. NSF seeks its bearings in a new economic, technologically oriented atmosphere where partnerships are stressed

between academic research, government, and industry.

1993 Rice University physicist Neal F. Lane is appointed 10th NSF director and establishes a new period of consensus building, achieving high morale among senior NSF staff. Meanwhile, Congress passes the Government Performance &

Results Act (GPRA), establishing a new era of accountability in government

1994-95 Republicans sweep congressional elections, promising smaller government and elimination of many favorite Democratic programs. Republicans eliminate the congressional Office of Technology Assessment Support for basic research remains intact

1996 A bleak period in federal science and technology ensues. Congress cuts programs mainly in applied sciences, and budget wrangling forces shutdown of the federal government, including NSF. The apparent indifference of the public with the work of NSF causes Lane to speak out on the need for scientists to promote the value of their work.

1997-99 Lane consolidates internal workings at NSF and introduces procedures for streamlining grant processes. He smooths relations with Congress and prepares GPRA planning and performance programs.

1999-2000 Lane is appointed science adviser to Clinton. Microbiologist Rita R. Colwell, president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, is the first woman appointed NSF director. She takes an active role in pressing for substantial increases in NSF's budget

JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN 27

g o v e r n m e n t & policy

reasons, seems to align itself with tech­nology for industry and less so with tech­nology and science for a sustainable fu­ture. The latter seems more of an after­thought compared with the excitement NSF expresses over science for indus­try's needs. Sustainability could be await­ing in the wings, however.

Ecology, with its social and econom­ic branchings, is nearing explosive growth, as head of the Directorate for Biological Sciences Director Mary E. Clutter indicates. At some point, NSF will be compelled to insert science for policy choices in that program. That progression could happen soon, since the National Science Board (NSB), the 24-member presidentially approved gov­erning board for NSF, recently complet­ed its report on the agency's future role in environmental sciences and recom­mends stronger research input into en­vironmental issues.

Meanwhile, the foundation's anonymi­ty bothers Colwell, who would like people

to know that NSF-sponsored research on the laser, for example, made possible the convenience and ubiquity of compact discs. She has a long list of other exam­ples she uses in the many speeches she gives around the country and the world.

"We have this $1.8 trillion federal bud­get," she tells C&EN. 'The percentage that we put into basic research has so many zeros after the period that no start­up company would invest so little in X product. But NSF is an agency that pro­vides the most important resource of this country. One-fourth of our budget, a bil­lion dollars, is really education. It's re­search assistants, it's faculty summer sal­aries to be able to do research, providing views and ideas and replenishing teach­ers. We're an absolute necessity for the country. And that comes absolutely from the heart. NSF is, from my view, the most important agency for the federal govern­ment because it's the future."

Defining that future and converting that definition into the design of an ac­

countable agency is Bordogna's job. The process is constant and contentious, and Bordogna says his role is to lead it, ex­plain it, provoke it, and, indeed, feed off it.

Strange as it may seem, and as mind numbing as it might be in prospect, Bor­dogna is urging the research communi­ty to view three documents on NSF's website (http://www.nsf.gov). They are its strategic plan, its performance plan, and its performance report. All three are in constant revision, all three are mandated by law.

Together, the three—especially the strategic plan—make up what can be called NSF's living constitution. The words in them, not really all that boring in the reading, will directly affect the milieu that determines what does and doesn't get funded. That is why his exercise is im­portant to the grantee community. To un­derstand the process, Bordogna further wants people to read such recent books as "Connections," by historian and docu­mentary producer James Burke, and

Erich Bloch remembers Erich Bloch, the National Science Foun­dation's eighth director, had enormous impact on the agency. He is widely re­garded as its most transformative figure. It is Bloch who took NSF into ihe period that it now is in, despite resistance by both the NSF staff and the research com­munity. His message was that the func­tion of NSF was not to produce profes­sors for universities but to ensure a tech­nically trained workforce for ihe future. Under Bloch, industrial thinking entered NSFs lexicon. The cultural change was vast and led to today's technologically in­spired character of NSF.

Bloch recalls for C&EN what he tried to do as director:

When I was at NSF, it was a time of tran­sition, a time to move the agency out of its isolation. By isolation, I mean that the agency was strictly concerned with prin­cipal investigators and universities. The first necessary switch was to something much harder—namely being part of the whole R&D structure of the country.

Second, NSF had to be more strongly connected with industry. There was no way that it could survive without that con­nection because industry was becoming more and more important as a research arm of the country. And industry was more dependent than ever before on what came out of universities. NSF not only had to be cognizant of that, but be an active part of it and an instigator of it

The third thing NSF had to ask itself was what it was doing for the country

and not just for the universities—which was the only thing it was asking when I walked in the door. At the same time, I would defend the core programs be­cause they were important The point was that what was going on was not suf­ficient for the future and for positioning that agency for what it should be. Its mission was very clear: to ensure that the country had an infrastructure for R&D. It wasn't achieving that mission by just looking at universities.

I was also concerned that sufficient talent was not entering the workforce. There was a growing realization that the human resources pipeline that we had built up over the years was insufficient for the future. Things were exploding in many areas—information technology, biotechnology, the biological sciences, materials. All these things were generat­ing new companies and new industry sectors, and there was no way of satisfy­ing the requirement with what was in the pipeline itself. That has been borne out by what is going on today.

I got plenty of resistance to what I was saying from both the NSF staff and the research community. As soon as any­one said something like engineering re­search centers or supercomputers or anything that was not in the catalog at that time, you got accused of squander­ing their money. It wasn't their money in the first place. They didn't have any money. I told them that a number of times, and they didn't like that

The transition was that the old model of science leading in a straight line to technology was wearing out The model

was much more complex, and NSF had to undergo a fundamental change. NSF is much more central to the country's well-being today. You can see that in its being called upon to lead the initiative in infor­mation technology. It was unheard of that NSF would lead anything when I was there. NSF is being held responsible by Congress and the government for major initiatives that span the whole range of agencies. If s also much more in the minds of industry today and has many more relationships with industry and quasi-industrial organizations. It's a more visible agency than it was.

I never thought it was important for NSF to show any research results per se. What was more important was to make sure that the infrastructure on which re­search could be done and that research depended on was in place—along with the people who were needed for doing re­search. That was primarily NSFs job. Its job was not full employment—or being an international science foundation, which many people tried to make of i t That wasn't its job. Its job was to be a national foundation that had international connec­tions, one that took advantage of the in­ternational connections, and back and forth.

Nobel prizes were fine, but that was not NSFs prime mission. The prime mis­sion was to make sure that the infrastruc­ture of the country was such that the No­bel prize winners would emerge. If NSF promoted itself as an agency mat by its funding produced the wonders of the age, that was still secondary to the build­ing of a strong infrastructure.

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"Management Challenges for the 21st Century" by management guru Peter F. Drucker. Both are about the different fac­tors behind social change and the need for institutions and people to adapt

As an example of how the new GPRA-inspired thinking affects the agency's work, the opening pages of NSFs budget summary for fis­cal 2001 contain not the budgets for each of its major research units—such as math and physical science, engineering, and comput­er and information science and engineering—but are arranged in categories labeled "People," "Ideas," and Tools." That is a jolt to those who like their numbers ar­rayed in concrete categories. Peo­ple, Ideas, and Tools spill one onto another and spread across all categories of NSF research and education programs. The separate categories can be found in subsequent pages—funding for the Large Hadron Collider, advance networking in-

Guy Stever remembers Physicist H. Gvyford Stever headed NSF from 1972 to 1976, which was a partic­ularly stressful time in the countrys his-tory—die Watergate scandal followed by me resignation of President Richard Nix­on in 1974. Early in 1973, Nixon abol­ished the White House science advisory apparatus, and Stever was asked to nil in as science adviser while continuing to run NSF. When Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency, Ford quickly reestab­lished die White House science and tech­nology function and made Stever his full-time science adviser.

Here are some of Stevens recollec­tions of that time:

The biggest issue for me when I headed NSF was the Research Applied to Na­tional Needs (RANN) program. RANN opened the way to the involvement of NSF with industry. At that time, the In­dustrial Research Institute, made up of vice presidents for research at the major corporations, asked how they could be­come more involved with our programs. There were people for and against the RANN program. A small number of them thought it was a complete waste because it was taking money away from basic research.

But the countervailing force was that, on college campuses, a lot of people during the Vietnam era were saying that government science was not relevant to what society was doing. We had a num­ber of people from the academic world who definitely wanted us to get into

frastructure, prekindergarten through 12-grade education—but the categorical neat­ness is gone.

Similarly, NSF

Bordogna (left) and Eisenstein

no longer issues an annual report in which the research sponsored by each di­rectorate is described. The annual report is now an "Accountability Report," dis­cussing "outcome goals" and containing

things that were important And the Ad­ministration, as well as Congress, was very strong on supporting research that had a direct effect on the economy.

I made up my mind that I was going to support RANN. I knew there were going to be some failures—there were failures in our research programs, too. I was go­ing to make sure RANN was not going to run off with NSFs moneybags. It never did, although the research division strongly felt that we were bringing RANN on too fast I said that RANN would not in my time receive greater money increases than the research area.

But RANN definitely was different. And it was extra different because of its director, Albert Eggers. He came over from NASA and had the idea of con­tracts and of reporting the progress of projects over time, which wasn't the way basic research grants were handled. So there was a great deal of fuss and furor over that The RANN program was do­ing all sorts of things for states, and even cities, establishing science advis­ers in state houses, helping them, and working with the legal profession.

There was also the period when I was asked to serve in the dual role of NSF director and White House science adviser. Early in 1973, President Nix­on suddenly decided to terminate his President's Science Advisory Commit­tee, his Office of Science & Technology (OST), and the job of science adviser. George Shultz (Treasury Secretary) asked me to come over to his office, where he told me the functions of OST were going to be sent over to NSF,

financial balance sheets of interest to only a few. Oddly, nowhere can be found any

mention of legal actions taken against NSF, such as the suit against the agency by the con­tractor that built the new radio-telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W.Va. The issue is over cost overruns, which the contrac­tor refuses to pay.

In any case, the People, Ideas, and Tools concept guides the thinking behind the planning. How do People, Ideas, and Tools per­tain to a line-item account such as, for example, science education?

'The $600 million or so in the Directorate for Education & Hu­man Resources budget is not real­

ly the education budget at NSF," Bordog­na explains. 'Thats the directorate's bud­get There's really a billion dollars being spent if you want to identify the education numbers more specifically. We try to ex-

where they had actually started. He told me to draw up a plan.

So we worked out the way it was going to be done. I would be the science ad­viser to the President and continue as director of NSF. The energy section of RANN turned out to be the staff for our energy policy work, which because of the oil embargo crisis was very impor­tant and in fact led to a lot of the re­search programs that still exist today.

At the same time, the research on the effects of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer was coming out. When I briefed the press corps on the budget for 1974, all the questions were on that Moreover, the economy was in terrible shape. That was a hectic time.

I still expected to stay in that dual role only short time, but then Vice President Spiro Agnew got in trouble and had to re­sign, Ford was made vice president, and by then it began to look as if Nixon was going to get in trouble too. My dual role went on more than a full year. Ford even­tually took over as President Very early on, he told me he wanted to reestablish science in the White House, but by act of Congress so that it would be permanent He said to keep my dual hat going until we got the law passed. I thought that would be quick, but another year went by until I got rid of the other hat

So in sum, I'm most proud of help­ing to get science reestablished in the White House. I'm also proud of what we did in energy. We really started a lot of the things that are still going on in energy. I was sad to see the RANN program go.

JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN 2 9

g o v e r n m e n t & policy

The life of chemistry at the National Science Foundation

Chemistry has one key feature that sets it apart from other core sciences, notes National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry Director Janet G. Oster-young. 'There are a lot of strong aca­demic chemistry departments," she says. "That's not true in every disci­pline—there are not many fields that put out 10,000 bachelor's degrees ev­ery year. So chemistry is ubiquitous, i fs more dispersed geographically. I believe that is a strength and gives our division a broader outlook for quality everywhere rather than just where some people would expect to find it"

Indeed, chemistry has been an important component of NSF since the agency was cre­ated 50 years ago. In the begin­ning, chemistry existed as a program activity within the Di­vision of Mathematical & Phys­ical Sciences. As the chemistry activity grew, it became the Chemistry Section in 1963 , and then the Division of Chem­istry within the newly created Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences in 1975.

Organic chemist Walter R. Rirner was one of the first employees at NSF and the first head of the chem­istry program, serving from 1951 to 1966. Kirner came to NSF from the National Research Council and was joined in the fledgling agency by a number of scientists from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Early on, Kirner and other NSF lead­ers decided to adopt the flexible grant proposal and peer review procedures already in place at ONR, notes M. Kent Wilson, who served as the head of chemistry at NSF from 1967 to 1973. Wilson, a physical chemist specializing in spectroscopy, was a professor and chairman of die department of chem­istry at Tufts University, Medford, Mass., before joining NSF for a two-year temporary rotation as director that eventually became permanent. He

later served as head of the NSF budget office and as science adviser in the NSF director's office, among other po­sitions, before retiring in 1994.

A vital aspect of NSF tradition is that division directors and program direc­tors in the various science subdisci-plines are often active researchers who have come to fill temporary assign­ments. This model has worked well

over the years, Wilson says, and

Wilson (above) and Kirner

provides the agency with a constant source of new ideas, an input most other federal agencies don't get Wil­son notes that aspect hasn't changed a lot. "We relied, as NSF does today, heavily on the peer review system and the individual judgment of the pro­gram officers."

Unlike other granting agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, where grants are usually awarded based on the review scores of the pro­posals, NSF program directors have the autonomy to make the final deci­sion after taking peer review and study panel suggestions into consideration, Wilson explains. In other words, they don't have to follow the reviewers' rec­ommendations. "So sometimes a pro­posal is granted that, on the face of it, doesn't have the highest judgment of

the lot, but rather is based on the sci­entific judgment and the expertise of the program officer."

Another person who came to NSF on a temporary assignment and stayed is electrochemist Richard S. Nicholson. He came to NSF from Michigan State University in 1971, originally for one year, to head the chemical instrumen­tation program. The importance of the position wasn't lost on Nicholson, who realized it was another contribution to the chemistry community he could make besides research and training

students. So he decided to stay on at NSF.

"I realized that I could make a contribution on a bigger scale, more on a national scale," he notes. Nicholson later became Division of Chemistry director from 1977 to 1982, and then served in several executive po­sitions at NSF before leaving the agency in 1989 for his cur­rent position as executive di­rector of the American Associa­tion for the Advancement of Science.

The chemical instrumenta­tion program was started by Kirner in 1957. It has become an important facet of the Divi­

sion of Chemistry and is a program that most other NSF divisions don't have. "That program was how most chemistry departments acquired their instrumen­tation," Nicholson recalls.

One of the hallmarks of NSF over the years has been a competent, low-key management style from the top down. Osteryoung says the NSF division direc­tors' management role is to be a liaison between the agency and the scientific community and to be a sound financial manager. "The chemistry division has a long history of good financial manage­ment and is rightly proud of it," she notes. Osteryoung currently oversees about $140 million worth of annual support for research and education in the chemical sciences through about 800 active awards.

Osteryoung, also an electrochemist,

press that in the budget. Should we move that billion dollars into a line item and give it all to Education & Human Re­sources? Well, we know that's not how to do it because a lot of the education is done at the high end, especially with the students on the research grants. If you add up all that money that the students get at the Ph.D. level—is that research or is that education?"

Bordogna acknowledges the lack of constancy in the language NSF chooses to describe its goals and activities in

terms of its People, Ideas, and Tools scheme. "Why should there be constan­cy of language?" he asks. 'There 's no move here to be intentionally obtuse. That's not the issue. This is the kind of argument around a table that can result in a Nobel prize. If you think about the questions I'm often asked and the un-comfortableness with which they ' re asked, that's really the frontier."

The short life span of descriptive words for overarching NSF initiatives does pose a problem at the agency. Ten

years ago, information technology at NSF was known by the cutting-edge phrase "Knowledge & Distributed Intelligence." KDI still exists as a program, but it now sits among many others. It is no longer a theme. Similarly, a "Human Capital Initia­tive" was seen as the next big thing in the social sciences. No more. HCI has gone by the board, but a new and bigger pro­gram incorporating all the HCI elements will be taking its place in a spectacular debut in the fiscal 2003 budget. "life In Extreme Environments" was likewise a

3 0 JUNE 19,2000 C&EN

has been division director since 1994, and prior to that she had a two-year ro­tation (1977-78) as NSF program di­rector for chemical analysis. In be­tween, she was a professor of chemis­try at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and then a professor and head of the department of chemistry at North Carolina State University, where she still has a faculty appointment

The most important indicator of the direction the division should take, Os-teryoung notes, is the science itself. "We spend about 80% of our budget now on investigator-initiated projects," she says. "What peo­ple send us in their proposals is what they think is the most important thing to do right now. There is quite a spectrum of ideas, of course, and the subjects change with time." She adds that workshops orga­nized by program directors and input from the National Science Board are important indicators as well.

Chemical engineering—such as reaction, transport, and separation processes—also has a significant presence at NSF. Engineering began as a small division at NSF in 1964, but after 15 years the agency began to expand its support for the field and el­evated the division to a separate direc­torate. In the current organizational structure, the Chemical & Transport Systems Division is part of the Direc­torate for Engineering that funds re­search for industrial manufacturing processes and some natural process­es, such as those in water and in the atmosphere.

"About half of Chemical & Transport Systems is what we think of as classi­cal chemical engineering," Osteryoung notes. "And the Division of Chemistry works very closely with them on all kinds of things. The interaction is a closer or better relationship than there is between most chemistry and chemi­cal engineering departments at univer­sities. Just because there are organiza­

tional boundaries usually doesn't make much of a difference."

NSF is continuing a push that was begun in the early 1990s by former NSF Director Neal F. Lane for the inte­gration of research and education. "If you look at the criteria for reviewers," Osteryoung says, "the educational features of a research proposal are things that appear very prominently in those criteria. We consider them very seriously when making recommenda­tions on research proposals.

Osteryoung (left) and Nicholson

"We're very much aware that an im­portant part of the mission through all of the money that we spend is to pro­mote learning and teaching and the pro­duction of people with degrees and good skills and general education in chemistry," she continues. "We spend a limited amount of money on things that are specifically identified as education, rather the funding tends to be integrat­ed more across all of the programs."

Over time, one of the largest and most important shifts in science, Wil­son believes, has been the move into biochemistry. 'When I first started at NSF, a molecule that had 100 atoms was really a challenge to synthesize or to even think about," he says. "Now researchers can routinely generate [biomolecules] of almost any number of atoms."

Nicholson recalls that development of advanced nuclear magnetic reso­nance spectrometers was active dur­ing his tenure as division director. "That was when superconductivity and 13C were just coming along," he says. "People were working on mak­ing better superconducting magnets. So we funded some of that research and there was a lot of discussion about how chemistry was going to cope when the instruments got to be

so expensive that the top de­partments couldn't afford one of everything."

On looking ahead, Oster-$ young says, "We don't have

wisdom that is any better than what people are excited about these days." Nanotechnolo-gy, for example, will continue to be a significant component of the division's focus, she notes.

And a couple of years ago the Environmental Molecular Science Institutes program was started with the goal of "bringing the best chemical science to bear on environ­mental problems," she says. "I think one of the things that is important for the division

to do is to stick with that." Wilson, Nicholson, and Osteryoung

praise their colleagues at NSF for be­ing highly professional and collegial and making their jobs enjoyable. One person who had a great influence on the way the Division of Chemistry op­erated for more than 40 years was the late Elizabeth (Iibby) Tucker, the divi­sion's longtime administrative officer. She began her career as a secretary working for Kirner when NSF first formed.

"She learned the language of chem­istry and knew more about the chemi­cal community than nearly anyone," Nicholson remembers.

Wilson adds, "The chemistry divi­sion's story would not be complete with­out mentioning her."

Steve Bitter

theme two budget cycles ago, but now it is not much of a factor in budget debates.

Eisenstein in the Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences ad­mits he is bothered by the proliferation of names and concepts rising then seeming­ly disappearing at NSF. "I do sympathize with concerns about projects and pro­grams coming and going," he says. "I was a grantee myself not very long ago. I re­member how difficult it was to keep up with the year-to-year changes in founda­tion policy and programs. I think it's a le­

gitimate concern and it ought to be said. Change is inevitable, change is valuable, change is necessary. But you have to manage it so that people can understand it and deal with it."

As to frequently heard criticisms that NSF is less willing to fund risky projects, Eisenstein, who often has to decide what is and isn't creatively risky, is more care­ful. "You can really wind yourself around the axle on that one," he says. "NSF has plenty of examples of big risks taken. LIGO [Laser Interferometer Gravitation­

al Wave Observatory] is one example. It's the biggest project NSF has ever built. Nobody knows what we're going to see. In fact, the research community, which on the one hand chides us because we're not risky enough, displayed itself in that particular case as quite risk averse.

"And for projects, 20 years ago we started something called the Institute for Theoretical Physics [at the University of California, Santa Barbara]. And in more recent years we've started mathematics institutes. The individual investigators

JUNE 19,2000 C&EN 31

g o v e r n m e n t & poliey

NSF highlights 5 0 nifty innovations The National Science Foundation, as part of its 50th anniversary celebra­tion, has developed a "Nifty Fifty" list of inventions, innovations, and discov­eries that were at least in part funded by the agency. The list includes ad­vances in fields from astronomy to zo­ology—such as the discovery of extra-solar planets, materials research, Dop-pler radar, earthquake and weather predictions, edible vaccinations from plants, and several communications and computer technologies, including the Internet. Some of the chemistry-re­lated advances that made the Nifty Fif­ty are listed below, and a complete list is available at the interactive web­site http://www.nsfoutreach.org.

• Antarctic ozone hole research. In No­vember 1985, NSF delivered ozone sensors and balloons to researchers in

Antarctica to measure the loss of ozone as a function of altitude. NSF later helped put together a research team to discover the cause of the depletion. The

ozone hole research was the first defini­tive demonstration that human activi­ties are capable of affecting the global ecosystem, and helped lead to the phaseout of chlorofluorocarbon produc­tion in industrialized countries.

• Antifreeze proteins. In the early 1970s, NSF-fiinded research identified glycoproteins as the "antifreeze" in some Antarctic fish. These compounds inhibit

the growth of ice crystals in tissue, pre­venting cell damage. NSF continues to fund basic research in this area, and pri­vate companies have begun to explore the use of glycoproteins in increasing freeze tolerance of crop plants, improving farm fish production in cold climates, ex­tending the shelf life of frozen foods, and preserving tissues for transplants.

• Circadian rhythms. In humans, a cluster of cells in the brain regulates metabolism, digestion, and the sleep-wake cycle. Gaining control of this bio­logical clock could produce many bene­fits, including lowering blood pressure, improving drug metabolism, overcom­

ing jet lag, and helping shift workers function more effectively. Researchers at the NSF Science & Technology Center at the University of Virginia and other lo­cations have used luciferase gene tech­nology to show periodic cycling as a lumi­nescent glowing when certain genes are turned on and off in plants and animals. (Luciferase is the enzyme responsible for the bioluminescence of fireflies.) This re­search has allowed precise monitoring of gene activity and has generated interest in the agricultural, energy, and environ­mental communities for developing re­newable resources.

• Buckyballs. NSF-fiinded researchers Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl Jr. of Rice University and non-NSF-fiind-ed researcher Harold W. Kroto of the Universi­ty of Sussex, in England, shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemis­try for the discov­ery of fullerenes. The structural strength of buc­kyballs and car­bon nanotubes make them good candidates to replace silicon as the build­ing blocks for future electronic devices in computers and communication devices.

• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). NSF has provided a significant part of the basic research infrastructure that scien­tists worldwide have drawn upon to de­velop MRI. From 1955 to the 1990s, NSF support for nuclear magnetic reso­nance instrumentation, the basis for

have said in both cases that we were tak­ing money away from them. They said there would be nothing of value gained from such centers," he explains.

'That's proved not to be true. We're also putting a fair amount of money into quantum computing. We don't know whether that's going to pay off. I don't know what people are talking about when they say we don't take enough risks."

For Eisenstein's directorate as a whole, to talk about it is really to talk about the condition of research and re­searchers that his directorate funds— chemists, physicists, mathematicians, materials scientists, and astronomers. What he sees out there is a relentless pro­gression toward combining disciplines. "Look at [femtosecond spectroscopist] Ahmed Zewail," he says. "Is he a physi­cist or a chemist? Or look at fullerene co-discoverer Richard Smalley. What is he? I

could go on and on in this vein. And these guys are not even seen in terms of inter­disciplinary problems."

Eisenstein says the major issue for him is finding ways for science to "flow­er." He says the tension is clear between letting science flow to where it wants to go and at the same time imposing man­agement and control and shaping pro­cess on it. There is nothing really new about that, but the pressure and intensity of that form of control is rising. Eisen­stein sees no way out of that dilemma as long as NSF remains engaged with the political process.

The new merit review criteria that re­quire grant applicants to describe the social and educational benefits of the re­search they are proposing "are a big part of the angst in the community," Eisenstein points out. "We're still learn­ing how to handle it.

'There's also tension about whether NSF is funding too many of those strate­gic initiatives. Look at this year's budget. There's a big proposed increase for NSF. Yet half the increase goes to the initia­tives. And the old initiatives get morphed into the new ones. Whaf s worse is that the remaining money is not slated for anything specific—just to build the scien­tific base. So it can go anywhere.

"But the thing hurting our community most is grant size and duration," he main­tains. "In some of our fields, the grant size is so low that you have to ask questions about the adequacy of scientific produc­tivity and training. Grant size has not grown over the past several years. It's bad. At the same time, because of power­ful desktop computers, there have been these enormous productivity gains. You can access everything via computer. It has totally changed the way science is

32 JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN

MRI, amounted to $90 million. NSF also supported re­search in related areas such as elec­tromagnets, digital systems, computer engineering, bio­physics, and bio­chemistry that had a direct impact on MRI development

• Hot springs bacterium/DNA finger­printing. DNA fingerprints are sequences of DNA that are unique to each individu­al. The patterns of sequences can be identified when small amounts of DNA are amplified by the polymerase chain re­action (PCR). This technique uses DNA polymerase, an enzyme that assembles DNA chains over many cycles of heating and cooling. Most DNA polymerase can­not withstand high temperatures, but NSF-supported researchers discovered a bacterium (Thermus aquaticus) in hot springs at Yellowstone National Park that can. PCR now is able to amplify millions of copies of DNA in a matter of hours and has become an essential tool for DNA analysis.

• Engineering plants. NSF-funded re­searchers are using genetic engineering to develop traits in plants that will, for example, allow them to flourish in soils contaminated by mining and industrial wastes as a means of remediation. The work is also leading toward plants that are more efficient at extracting iron from the soil for food crops to help nu­tritional problems in developing coun­tries. NSF-funded scientists also are studying approaches to develop plants

that can better tolerate soils with high levels of salt

• Reaction injection molding (RIM). RIM involves high-speed mixing of two or more chemicals, such as prepolymers, as an integral part of injecting them into a mold, a process that typically takes less than a minute. RIM has resulted in light­er replacements for structural materials such as steel, resulting in cost savings from reduced auto repair, insurance costs, and fiiel consumption. NSF has supported RIM research since the 1970s, when much of the Department of Defense's university-based Materials Re­search Laboratories was transferred to NSF.

• Effects of acid rain. Research funded by NSF that identified acid rain and its effects began in the early 1960s at Hub­bard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, with major findings pre­sented in 1972. This research over time led to important changes in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act Acid

•mr; rain consists of abnormally high acidic levels in rain, snow, fog, and clouds, and is caused primarily from the burning of high-sulfur coal and oil used to fiiel elec­tric power plants. Documented effects in­

clude harm to freshwater ecosystems and decline in forest health, including damage to more than 70% of the red spruce forests in parts of New England.

• Nanotechnology. NSF helps support five university-based nanotechnology re­search hubs with a focus on electronics, biology, advanced materials, optoelec­tronics, and nanoscale computer simu­lation. Goals for this burgeoning field

include using nanoscale processes to create tiny electronic, medical, and oth­er high-performance devices.

• Tissue engineering. The term "tissue engineering,, was coined at an NSF-spon-sored meeting in 1987. Two tissue-engi­neering inventions are now in medical use: skin tissue replacement and a scaf­fold that allows slow release of an anti­cancer agent NSF-funded research ef­forts continue for skin replacement and for drug delivery, and a tissue-engi­neered liver is under clinical evaluation. Private companies and other federal agencies now have active tissue-engineer­ing programs.

Steve Bitter

done. One should consider what it costs to support a scientist under those condi­tions. You may in fact not need as many dollars. But the main problem with grant size is that we can't afford the people costs anymore."

Clutter paints a different picture of the Directorate for Biological Sciences, which she has headed for the past 13 years. Clutter sees a special place for biology in both social relevance and sci­entific paradigm setting. "Science in the 21st century," she says, "will be dominat­ed by biology." She sees domination of the field by interdisciplinary studies be­cause everything is in the process of— there's that word again—"converging."

The day-to-day work of program man­agers, at least in her directorate Clutter says, has changed a lot over the past 10 years or so. The major operational change she has made is to create clusters

of staff to perform project reviews in place of groups of reviewers that used to be set along traditional disciplinary lines. "What grouped these small programs is that they have intellectual affinity in three to four clusters. What we have is not just an intellectual grouping, but an administra­tive one as well."

She also says assessment of propos­als is done differently in her directorate than in others. "When it comes to decid­ing what to fund, we have discussions across clusters. We want to see whether the proposals recommended for fund­ing fill a gap. We are not forcing this. It is just happening because of the nature of the proposals we are getting.

'The big difference is there are now more disciplines," she says, "and we are taking this cluster approach to make sure we are not missing something. When I walk into a panel meeting—usually at the

end—I ask them what is risky. The divi­sion director has a little extra money and can use it to fund the risky projects. NSB often talks about this. They know the pro­gram officers are allowed to spend 5% of their budget on high-risk research."

While biologists and ecologists are somewhat ahead of the game scientifi­cally in taking holistic views of prob­lems, they aren't doing so well at moving into the Internet age. "Science is becoming more global," she says. "Researchers can now work with col­leagues all over the world. Because of the Internet, it is possible to have daily interactions with people everywhere. In the plant genome program, we are fund­ing virtual centers. But this is the excep­tion. Our scientists are really not doing that sort of thing very much yet. So it represents management problems. They are just learning how to do it."

JUNE 19, 2000 C&EN 33

g o v e r n m e n t & p o l i c y

Colwell's Golden Anniversary Thoughts National Science Foundation Director Rita R Colwell is as busy as ever, but she devotes much of her energy spreading the word about NSF, the research it's support­ing, and the importance of her concept of biocomplexity in people's lives. Here are some of her 50th anniversary thoughts.

C&EN: What do you hope will be the result of all ofNSF's 50th anni­versary activity? Colwell: A greater national awareness of the National Science Foundation. If NSF were to wither away, industry in the U.S. would be in serious trouble. The overall issue is that we are signifi­cant, highly significant, for the nation. The National Institutes of Health budget is huge, almost $17 billion. Our budget of around $4 billion is insufficient. That's especially true because the investments weVe made in basic research have been enormously efficient.

NIH produces health workers and leaders. NSF does exactly that for industrial science and technolo­gy. NIH serves health needs. But we see cell phones as needs, as well as automobiles with efficient engine combustion, Doppler radar, or CAT scans, or laser surgery for cataracts. None of those would have occurred without NSF invest­ment in basic research.

C&EN: Bill Joy, research chief for Sun Microsystems, recently spoke to NSF and suggested that some areas of research should be walled off from general access. He fears work in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology—all priorities for NSF—will come under the control of technically sophisticated sociopath-ic individuals or rogue states that will use those technologies to harm soci­ety. What do you think of his ideas? Colwell: I would compare his concerns to those surrounding Asilomar, the meetings among scientists 25 years ago that discussed the dangers of doing re­combinant DNA research. Asilomar sci­entists said, "Let us think about what it is we are doing." Bill Joy is sort of a one-man Asilomar. He is asking us to reflect on the advances that we are making in science and engineering. Thaf s not a bad

thing to do. But as in Asilomar, the focus was on all the dangerous things that would happen, when in fact, there hasn't been a single adverse effect directly at­tributable to the process. The products for human use need to be evaluated and, as necessary, regulated.

C&EN: A major new initiative at NSF is biocomplexity. What is it, really? Colwell: It's not enough to understand biodiversity by itself, or to try to figure out sustainability by itself, or to address the molecular basis of heredity by itself. WeVe got to bring these together. If s a complex world we live in, and we have the tools now, with information technolo­

gy, to understand these enormously complex interactions of the physical envi­ronment with the biological environment and the social and behavioral aspects.

C&EN: Then what sort of structure do you see at NSF for biocomplexity? It is called an initiative at NSF, but it seems to have no place at the inter­agency level. Colwell: I don't think we should focus on the organization but instead on where we think well be and how can we help so­ciety with the research that we do. Bio­complexity is a concept, and a program, to achieve a good. The vision is there. And we will get there. We are moving that way because the programs in NSF are not static things. They evolve. These programs all evolve. They don't just bifur­cate or sequester new programs.

C&EN: You're pretty enthusiastic when you describe a topic such as nanophase studies that reveal, for ex­ample, bacterial Uagella as biological motors. What is your vision of how you can better share with the public your excitement about science? Colwell: Thaf s where we have to com­municate. It is the responsibility of every scientist I think my predecessor, Neal F. Lane [now President Clinton's science ad­viser] said it very well. We need to be civic scientists. A civic scientist, when his or her findings are published, should credit them to NSF. If stories are written in the newspa­per, they should be explained from the basis of funding provided by the federal government. The average grantee should be speaking to civic clubs, chambers of commerce, local community groups, be­

ing involved in local schools. We sci-| entists are citizens of this world, and ^ we have been in isolation. ©

s. I C&EN: On the fiscal 2001 bud-| get, if you don't get the 17% re­

quested, are you going to divide up the cuts proportionately among all areas? Colwell: No. The worst thing you can do is to take funding and spread it evenly like peanut butter. You have to make investments, and we've spent a lot of time with the community and with our advisory committees establishing priorities. We know there are directions in which we need to go—information technology, biotechnology, nano­technology, and the workforce that

is so critical—plus making sure that we do the core funding as well. So we'd do the best we could with whatever we get.

C&EN: What is behind the emer­gence of the social and behavioral sciences as a major NSF initiative in fiscal 2003? Colwell: I believe the 21st century will be the century for the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. They will achieve their own ascendancy because we have the tools now to better under­stand human behavior and the brain's cognitive processes. We are ready to un­derstand, for example, how children learn. We don't understand the spread in variation in which kids can learn to read; we need to understand so we can incor­porate that in our teaching. I'm commit­ted to it

3 4 JUNE 19,2000 C&EN

The directorate with the content that represents the real tomorrow, the to­morrow that Clutter's biological scien­tists are only slowly adapting to, is the Directorate for Computer & Informa­tion Sciences & Engineering, headed by Ruzena Bajcsy, a Slovakia-born robotics and artificial intelligence researcher. Computation, information processing, and information representation, she likes to say, are at the heart of any scien­tific endeavor.

Bajcsy's directorate started to come into being during Bloch's regime. It be­gan with early computer science, then expanded with the demand for network capacity, and now ranges across every area of com­puters and communications. It branches into the interests of all the other directorates and has re­cently established strong re­search associations with the so­cial and behavioral sciences. Moreover, Bajcsy directs NSFs lead agency role in the govern­ment's Information Technology Initiative. She has concerns over where these fields are headed and devotes a lot of time to think­ing about it.

"Because of all that you can do with computers," she says, "you can regard them as extenders of human capabili­ties. They can serve as exploration tools of an unimaginable space. On the one hand, you can represent physical prop­erties in computers—weather forecasts, modeling, and the like. But then the beauty and danger of this is that you can now start to fantasize. You can say, What if I add this? What if I add that?' You can expand the space. The limit is only in the imagination. The creativity is tremendous. It could be unleashed, but it also could be dangerous."

And that fantasy potential naturally in­fluences the other sciences. "I have en­gaged in numerous conversations with Bob Eisenstein, especially about quan­tum computers," she says. "He and I con­nect in a very deep sense here. Quantum computing is very different from silicon-based computing. In quantum comput­ing, you deal with different subatomic en­ergy levels and you have an enormous parallelism, but you really have results in a probability sense. So how to compre­hend this? What does it mean in terms of computation as a process? This is still a matter of research. It is a deep, conceptu­al problem."

Bajcsy says she hasn't been around

NSF long enough to tell whether or not the enormous impact of computer sci­ence is beginning to change NSF itself or the way science is perceived. "I have been here one-and-a-half years," she says. "Maybe I'll be here another year. You don't change people in two-and-a-half years. This is an organic organiza­tion, and I'm sure it evolves with time.

Bajcsy says she is not head of the di­rectorate merely to manage programs of research. She sees her position as having much broader re­sponsibilities. Her

Bajcsy (left) and Bradburn

concern, she says, is that the "underlying science for understanding what this new technology is doing in so many sectors, and in some predictive way, is just not there—not even probabilistically." Bajcsy says she wants to make sure that the few individuals who think in terms of wider ramifications are engaged and supported.

"It is like saying, I'm not going to run with those guys. I will forego all the mil­lions of dollars they make. But what I will do is think about these matters so that we can make some predictions about what will happen if we add anoth­er 10,000 nodes to the Web, or if the Web crashes."

Bajcsy recently invited Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems chief science officer and cofounder, to come to NSF and expand on his much-discussed article in the April issue of Wired magazine. In that article, Joy argued that the fast-moving fields of biotechnology, nanotechnolo-gy, and information technology pose se­rious dangers to society now that their techniques can be manipulated via com­puter networks. Great damage could be done, he said, through reprogramming production processes and introducing those programs and products into legiti­mate, ongoing work.

"My view is that Joy's fears are well justified," Bajcsy says. "I don't think

he's saying we should stop all this re­search. Some people may feel that way, but I don't. What he's saying is that this is a revolution that has more potential danger than the nuclear bomb, because nuclear energy is more contained, more localized. The new technologies are dis­tributed, and those of us who are doing these technologies have the responsibil­ity to make sure they are not going to get abused. And the scientific communi­ty has the responsibility to raise ethical

consciousness." Bajcsy's concerns lead natural­

ly to the impending growth of the social and behavioral sciences at NSF, the field past Congresses at­tempted to eliminate there. The social sciences have had a rocky ride at NSF throughout its histo­ry, constantly seen as a border­line science—if that—by physical scientists, who usually have been in charge of the agency.

The head of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences is Norman M. Bradburn, a former research psychologist. Bradburn says he was given no marching orders by Colwell when

he came aboard. "I essentially have a blank check to do what I want," he says.

'There is a lot of concern about appli­cations. The opportunity I see here is to try to build up the portfolio of resources to do the kind of research we ought to do. I just saw figures I don't quite believe— NIH has $1.6 billion on social and behav­ioral research, and thaf s just oriented to­ward health. Our budget for all of the di­rectorate is something like $135 million. But we have two other divisions, Science Resources Studies and International Pro­grams, that provide services for the whole agency. So we actually have some­thing like $100 million."

Bradburn's directorate, being small and diverse, has to be selective in the re­search is decides to fund. "Part of the problem is that we cover such a broad range. The big questions in psychology are: How do people think? How do they process information and improve the quality of rationality? That has a biologi­cal basis.

"We're trying to put some money into the cognitive neurosciences. The problem of understanding cognitive processes is that you can't get inside the head in real time, so you depend on var­ious kinds of inferentials. One tradition­al approach is reaction time—get people to solve a problem or to react to it. It

JUNE 19,2000 C&EN 3 5

government & policy

NSF's budget has grown steadily despite the influence of war, politics, and competitiveness The National Science Foundation's fund­ing got off to a slow beginning in the early 1950s because of competition with other federal agencies such as the National In­stitutes of Health, the Office of Naval Re­search, and the Atomic Energy Commis­sion. The start of the Korean War just a few months after NSF was formed didn't help. In 1952, NSF awarded its first 28 research grants, which amounted to $1.4 million of its $3.5 million budget

Everything changed dramatically after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in October 1957, however. Although NSF budget increases were diluted by the creation of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration in 1958, the agency's 1959 bud­get jumped almost $70 million million to $111 million in constant 1951 dol­lars, a slight blip relative to current funding levels, and it continued to grow into the '60s.

The budget dipped in 1969 and re­mained flat in con­stant-dollar terms through the '70s, a victim of the Viet­nam War and the Cold War, when ba­sic research had a

low priority. A period of rapid growdi fol­lowed in the 1980s after economists be­gan to associate basic research with eco­nomic growth during a period of techno­logical competitiveness with Japan.

Throughout its history, NSFs total budget has hovered between 0.1 and 0.2% of the total federal budget, com­pared with 0.4 to 0.5% for the Environ­mental Protection Agency and 0.8 to 1.0% for NASA. NSFs 2000 R&D bud­get of nearly $3 billion is about 4% of the current federal R&D budget of just over $80 billion, compared with more than $15 billion, or 19%, for NIH.

NSFs Research & Related Activities funding, its primary source for funding

$ Billions 4

1960 1970 1980 1990

Note: R&D is NSF's Research & Related Activities funding. Source: National Science Foundation

to individual researchers, accounted for only 40 to 50% of NSFs total bud­get in the '50s, but began to gradually increase throughout the '60s and '70s to reach nearly 92% in 1983. The re­search account has waned since then, stabilizing at about 75% in the past few years. Education & Human Resources, another major NSF line item, accounts for about 18% of the current total NSF budget. This program includes educa­tional outreach efforts, undergraduate and graduate curriculum develop­ment, and efforts to raise awareness of science and engineering education.

NSF Director Rita R. Colwell has publicly stated her goal of doubling NSFs budget to $8 billion in the next few years. The Administration has proposed an increase of $675 million,

or 17%, for fiscal 2001, double the amount of any oth­er request in the agency's history. The impetus for the increase is NSFs role in lead­ing U.S. research efforts in comput­ing and nanotech-nology. However, the House Appro­priations Commit­tee has approved only a $160 mil­lion, or 4%, in­crease for now.

Steve Bitter

2000

turns out that the interesting timescale is the millisecond. Until recently, we haven't been able to measure reactions on that scale. Now we can.

"We can also study how knowledge is organized, how people categorize and process things," he says. "Magnet­ic resonance imaging allows people to look at blood flows in the brain nonin-vasively and get close to what's going on in brain processes online. You can get people to think about problems, solve problems, and see how the brain is functioning."

Bradburn runs through other hot ar­eas of research—such as the impact of the Internet on the way people commu­nicate, the availability of vast amounts of information, the impact of the Internet on personal communications, the type of workforce needed for the new infor­mation economy, the ways of measuring the social impact of science and technol­ogy, and the information flows in com­plex systems.

Bradburn is looking forward to the so­

cial and behavioral sciences splash that Colwell already says she plans to an­nounce. It will become a full-fledged ini­tiative, which means the need for a buzzword. "When I came, if you had asked me what I would call it, I would have answered straight off, 'Oh, the Human Capital Initiative'. Then I dis­covered that there was one of those that never went anywhere. My guess is that at the moment the set of things that would come under the rubric of human capital is the set of issues where we ought to be making lots of investments because there's a lot of re­search going on."

In a sense, the planning going on at NSF is a social engineering experiment as much as anything else. NSF is per­forming this experiment as it tries to con­form the present with a complex moving target—the future—and nudges the re­search community in changing direc­tions. Will the exercise make any differ­ence? Would it not be sufficient to simply fund good science and study its impact

through policy scholarship? Bordogna doesn't really know. What he does know is that there's a law that compels NSF to plan ahead, and that the agency would be doing it notwithstanding.

What does seem clear is that NSF will be spreading out via technologies: nano-, bio-, information, and those to come. More initiatives will surely follow, worry­ing those scientists whose proposals come in response not to the latest initia­tive but as new and risky ideas.

The big challenge for NSF could well be in the social dimensions. Today's awe­some economic promise is fast driving the growth of new technologies and is threatening to influence NSF's programs. The question is whether NSF will decide to remain absent from the social debate over this convergence of pure sciences and high-reward technologies and con­fine itself—as Colwell suggests—to is­sues around the processes of research rather than the impact of research re­sults. In other words: How far is NSF will­ing to push the envelope?^

36 JUNE 19,2000 C&EN