NSF Cuts Back On Faltering Science, Technology Centers

The agency's plans to fund up to 80 facilities at universities now seem doomed by harsh criticism and funding shortages WASHINGTON -- The National Science Foundation has decided to give its controversial science and technology centers program a rest -- a move that may please longtime critics of the program but disappoint those scientists who had hoped to land centers on their own campuses. A cornerstone of the effort by former NSF director Erich Bloch to safeguard U.S. scientific eminence and at the same time shore up the country's high-tech economy, the program is now limping through a delayed second round of awards. NSF of officials have no plans right now for a third round, and there is not expected to be any money for new science and technology centers (STCs) in the 1992 budget being proposed this week by President Bush. In fact, the centers, once one of the most popular programs of the foundation, are now, according to foundation spokesman Alan Levitt, "a matter of mostly local interest." Bloch introduced the concept of science and technology centers in January ( 1987 as a network of up to 80 university-based, interdisciplinary centers that would unleash the creative talents of thousands of scientists. Although NSF was to provide the bulk of the funding, states and private industry were encouraged to chip in. The centers were designed to give faculty a chance to expand their research by linking teams of scientists from various fields and by giving them multimillion-dollar grants to support large teams and purchase costly equipment. Following on the heels of the engineering research centers created in 1985, the STC program was intended to bring the benefits of bigness to the entire scientific community, from astrophysics to microbial ecology. Although some members of the scientific community worried that the program would drain scarce resources (The Scientist, March 23, 1987, page 1), the agency's first solicitation in the fall of 1987 generated 325 proposals seeking a total of $4 billion. Some academic scientists worked round-the-clock for weeks to meet that first deadline (The Scientist, March 2],1988, page 1). But the program never grew as quickly as its founders intended. Funding for that first round was pushed into the next fiscal year when Congress trimmed NSF's budget request. In February 1988, in an attempt to avoid such last-minute cuts Bloch sought a separate five-year $150 million appropriation for the program as part of the foundation's request for fiscal year 1989. But the idea was rejected by Congress. Still, in December 1988 the foundation announced the names of the first 11 winners and the initial distribution of $24.7 million. Some of the centers, NSF said, could expect as much as $20 million over five years. Bloch hoped NSF would be able to announce a new round of centers every year for five years. Now, more than two years after that delayed first round of grants, news of the second round of winners is dribbling out of campuses around the country, and not NSF A week before Christmas, for example, the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and Kent State University, Ohio, announced that their institutions had been awarded NSF funding for science and technology centers. A few more centers were expected to get the good news in January, with as many as 14 notifications due out by April. NSF's Levitt says that the foundation doesn't plan to make a formal announcement about the new centers. "With the large local contribution and the involvement of the private sector, we decided it's c really a local story," says t Levitt. "But [acting director Frederick] Bernthal was at the Kent State announcement, so we're certainly not trying to ignore it." But the decline of the STC program is more than a matter of adopting a lower profile. From the beginning, says Carl Lineberger, former chairman of the STC program's advisory council, "the program has been a lightning rod for complaints by individual investigators about a shift toward specialized programs." Moreover, says Lineberger, a professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado, the centers are "a symbol of what many scientists see as the growing threat to investigator initiated research." No one has been more vocal in his criticism of the program than Nobel Prize-winning physicist Philip Anderson of Princeton University. Anderson has said repeatedly that the centers waste scarce resources, discourage creativity, and hamper the education of the next generation of scientists. In a speech two years ago at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example Anderson called the program an example of "the collectivization of scientific research," and declared that "the STC decision should be rescinded." This year, NSF will spend $42 million on the centers out of a $1.8 billion research budget. And NSF officials point out the large number of both senior scientists and younger researchers, from the undergraduate to the postdoctoral level, who are part of each center Still, many scientists are angry that, on a percentage basis, the program has grown much more rapidly than the* funding for individual NSF disciplines. The decision by NSF officials to cap the program's growth at a projected 25 centers, at least temporarily, should appease such critics. At the same time, supporters of the centers' concept say that fears of the program's threat to the overall health of the NSF budget are groundless. The $550-million-a-year mathematical and physical sciences directorate expects to be supporting nine centers once the second round of awards is over, but this year's $18 million price tag for the centers is "peanuts," says David Sanchez, head of the directorate. "I'll defend them to the hilt," he says. "They represent good science, and we're quite excited about the opportunities they present for training students and for collaboration among disciplines." The current round of awards has taken a toll on both NSF officials and recipients of the awards. The foundation had budgeted $25 million for them beyond the $27 million it was already spending. But when Congress slashed the research portion of NSF's budget, agency officials cut $10 million from the budget for new centers. That left the 14 finalists, whose proposals had been provisionally approved shortly before Bloch retired in August, with budgets that far exceeded NSF's ability to pay for them. In November each finalist was told to draw up a new budget that took into account the reduced level of NSF support. If the new configuration passes muster, says Bill Harris, who directs the STC program, then the proposed center will receive final approval. The centers at Kent State and Michigan were the first to meet that test. The $1 million award to each center represents a little more than half the funding that had been tentatively approved in August. With overall annual budgets of about $3 million, each center will now draw a majority of its support from other sources. But scientists at both centers don't feel that their research will be crippled by the shortfall. "We ended up making about a 20 percent cut in our level of activity in the first year," explains chemist John West of the Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials at Kent State. "We've managed to keep all the research staff but we'll delay purchases of major equipment and some materials." NSF has pledged $9.3 million over five years to the center. One of the strengths of the Kent State proposal, according to Harris, was its membership in a $12 million optoelectronics research consortium with four other universities. And the $1.2 million over three years the school is getting from the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency for that project, called the National Center for Integrated Photonic Technology, will help it overcome the NSF cut. In addition, the state of Ohio is contributing more than $1 million, and several private companies are also supporting the work of the 26 senior staff members from Kent State, Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Akron. The Michigan center, which will focus on ultrafast optical science, still expects to receive $14.3 million over five years from NSF Its original proposal called for $2.5 million in the first year, and associate director Janis Valdmanis says that he and his colleagues worked hard to reach the $1 million target. "We could have dropped the center approach entirely," says Valdmanis, "but this center allows us to expand a laboratory [for ultrafast research] begun two years ago, and nobody wanted to lose that momentum. Instead, we've pared down our scope somewhat, but kept everybody together." Michigan is also receiving substantial support from the state and from private industry, as well as Tom a Canadian research institute and a French government agency on atomic energy. That close association with industry, and the fact that some centers are pursuing work with direct applications to commercial products, is one reason why many scientists look askance at the program. Another is the enormous attention that Bloch gave to it -- citing it repeatedly in speeches and congressional testimony as an example of the economic payoff from basic research -- at a time when the research budgets here in the foundation were growing slowly or not at all. "If I have regrets about the program, it's that NSF picked a name with a lot of baggage," Lineberger says. "The word 'technology' has made it hard for people to focus on the science, and it implied some sort of activity that was anathema to those of us who do small science. But it was never the intent of the program to do anything other than support good science." Stanford University chemistry professor Richard Zare, chairman of a 1987 National Academy of Sciences panel that offered guidelines for the program, also thinks STC has kept to its original goals. But he points out that his panel endorsed the program only if the agency budget was doubled over five years, a promise that both the Reagan an(l Bush administrations made, but has yet to be fulfilled. Still, Lineberger and others praise Bloch for his ability "to get the foundation out of the budgetary background noise and give it its own identity" by advocating such politically popular ideas as the centers to boost U.S. competitiveness. At the same time, Zare predicts that the arrival of Walter Massey, awaiting confirmation as the next NSF director, may help to cool passions on the subject. "Bloch pushed the program very hard, and that hardened the opposition," says Zare. "I would hope that the next director will take a more balanced approach to new research initiatives." s of about $3 million, each center will now draw a majority of its support from other sources.

NSF Cuts Back On Faltering Science, Technology Centers

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