Today’s New York Times outlines Los Alamos National Laboratory’s up-for-grabs contract, a hot competition between the University of California system, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Several in the article worry that a shift from UC would lead to a shift away from science, technology, and innovation. “[T]he struggle is over Los Alamos’s mission - whether it should turn away from its traditional role as a center of scientific excellence toward a narrower one focused on weapons design and production, in essence a bomb factory,” says the Times.

The recruiting and staffing implications are huge according to Hugh Gusterson, an analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the nation’s nuclear arms laboratories:

“If you’re trying to recruit a young Ph.D. from Princeton, and you tell them you’re working for the University of California and not a bomb shop, it really matters…People were just stricken,” he said. “They’re worried that Los Alamos will increasingly become a manufacturing facility. A lot of people were talking about early retirement.”

Once again, politics rears its ugly head. On one side, the folks charged with discovering and delivering the innovations (namely the researchers). On the other side, the folks charged with investing the nation’s IT research capital (namely the legislators). InfoWorld has an interesting article from last week in which the government attempts to explain the new IT spending initiatives. The fact that DARPA funding is now being channeled in new directions compared to the past is disturbing to many in the academic community. But according to Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California

The question is whether we should channel the amount of money being spent on research into esoteric projects at the universities that may or may not ever come to fruition and help anybody

Evidently, the academians and researchers called upon by the administration for advisory/recommendation purposes either aren’t being heard or are being ignored. Let’s hope that Rep. Rohrabacher’s understanding and opinion of research aren’t shared by the majority of his colleagues. Most academic researchers do meaningful research and they take it seriously as well. Furthermore, basic research has served as the foundation for the multitude of technological accomplishments achieved in this country. Federal budget repositioning isn’t new and no one wants to needlessly throw money away, but new directives issued by the administration are worrisome. The archive for webcasts by the House Committee on Science can be found here http://www.house.gov/science/webcast/index.htm. Check out the Computing Research Policy Blog as well as this ACM blog, which has more information on congressional hearings.

Previous CTWatch blog entries about the IT funding issues are below:
Revitalize HPC, but do it frugally
Federal supercomputing funding: Is it a consensus problem?
Former SecDef on the “technology base”

It should come as no surprise that the global IT markets have an increasing Asian presence. It has long been held that educational systems in countries like China and Japan place a greater premium on math and science than the US. The accuracy of that might be debatable. What’s not debatable is the commitment by the Chinese government to reach new levels of international technological strength. An article at SiliconValley.com describes the effectiveness of some of that country’s policies toward improving its technological standing.

While the article asserts that some of China’s new technological prowess has been both unethically and illegally obtained, it also exposes a potential weakness of our own domestic IT policies - lack of unification. Several blog entries on this site have discussed some of the problems with US policies and the seeming lack of commitment by the US government to clearly understand the importance of adequate funding for all of the components of cyberinfrastructure.

The latest notable op-ed on the decline of funding for basic research brings up the question: Is there anyone actually raising their voice in favor of the general reduction in Federal funding for basic research, or for the “repurposing” of DARPA funding for basic Computer Science reseasrch in particular? Arguments defending such cuts are certainly no where in evidence in coverage of this issue recorded by CRP Blog, but I suppose that’s not surprising. This CTWatcher would be very interested to see any pointers to people who argue the other side.

Look for an article in the April 15th edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) titled “Presidential Panel Recommends Steps to Promote Computational Science” that focuses on an as yet unreleased report about research and funding evolution for computational science. In the report, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Panel is calling for new approaches to computational science research. The report states that

universities and federal R&D agencies must make coordinated, fundamental, and structural changes that affirm the integral role of computational science.

Dan Reed of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who chairs the panel subcommittee that authored the report, calls for new ways of thinking and new ways of working together that will likely require new federal funding incentives to accomplish.

The report calls for both universities and federal agencies to restructure the way they coordinate and conduct joint research to better accommodate cross discipline efforts involving computer science and such fields as chemistry and biology. This line of thinking isn’t really new, but making it a higher priority on the national research agenda is. Word has it the report, “Computational Science: America’s Competitive Challenge”, could be released in a few weeks.

In a commentary posted by HPCwire, the issue of federal funding for supercomputing R&D is once again at the forefront. It’s no secret, as we’ve pointed out in several posts here, that the hpc community, especially in academia, is reeling somewhat from the continued reduction in federal funding. A NY Times article (registration required) published today points out that

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon’s budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million.

The cuts are going beyond hpc, however. In an article titled “Pulling the plug on science?” published yesterday by the Christian Science Monitor, the American Association for the Advancement of Science states:

…while the overall budget for federally funded research and development (R&D) is rising by 0.1 percent, far short of inflation, there are more losers than winners.

More fallout regarding the funding problems can be seen at the Computing Research Policy Blog.