When NASA solicits the next round of proposals for its university space engineering centers it is ‘highly likely” that the space agency will drop the requirement that faculty who receive direct funding from the program must be U.S. citizens, says Steven Hartman, a NASA program manager for university programs. This decision comes after the Association of American Universities and 11 individual universities complained that the citizenship requirement forced the schools to discriminate when they hired scientists. Unchanged, however, is NASA’s ruling against foreign students, who are not permitted to work in the engineering centers. NASA selected nine sites for its space engineering centers this spring and anticipates soliciting proposals for eight to 11 more sites in the fall of 1989.
University of Illinois scientists don’t spew out inventions in such profusion that they need an in-house tech transfer team, but there’s enough innovating going on to suggest that money can ...
