Personnel Resources for Science and Technology There are approximately 900 experienced science and technology associates in the AID/Washington bureaus and offices and in the overseas missions. In addition, the Agency also utilizes the services of consultants and contractors, as well as other government agencies, to provide technical expertise in specific technical disciplines. Centrally funded science and technology activities totalled $294.8 million in FY 1985. Chapter 15 Basic Science and Engineering Overview of NSF International Activities The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent Federal agency established by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 (P.L. 81-507) to promote and advance scientific and engineering progress in the United States. The Act also assigns to the Foundation broad responsibility for encouraging participation of U.S. scientists and engineers in international activities and grants authority to the NSF Director to engage in science and engineering negotiations with foreign countries and multilateral bodies, consistent with U.S. foreign policy, as defined by the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress [Sec. 13(b)(1)]. The Foundation supports international activities of U.S. scientists and engineers to further three related objectives: 1) to facilitate access by U.S. scientists and engineers to unique research facilities, unique localities, and outstanding foreign scientists and engineers; 2) to facilitate the study of large-scale natural phenomena (such as atmospheric, oceanic circulation, or geological features) that transcend national boundaries and thus define research fields that are intrinsically international, and 3) to help advance specific U.S. foreign policy objectives, as defined by the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress. In addition to supporting science and engineering research, the NSF is required by law to collect, analyze, and disseminate a wide variety of research and development (R&D) data. These data are published biennially in the National Science Board's Science Indicators series, as well as in other interim publications. The scope and detail of the Foundation's international data collection and analysis program continued to increase during 1985, particularly for Western Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union. NSF also continues to assist the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its data collection and analysis efforts and with standardizing definitions of various classes of R&D data to facilitate better cross-national comparisons. As part of its objective to assist the Director of NSF with international policy matters, the Committee on International Science of the National Science Board strongly encouraged during 1985 the development of approaches to assess more systematically "areas of excellence" in science and engineering outside of the U.S. Also, the Committee and an ad hoc task force report on the Foundation's international activities recommended that the Director of NSF designate a high level official to assure that international policy issues receive adequate and immediate attention. Consistent with these recommendations, the Deputy Director of NSF was designated Chief International Affairs Officer for the Foundation, which includes responsibility for chairing a cross-Foundation steering group on international programs and NSF links with domestic and foreign organizations. Overall, approximately 20 percent of 12,000 research grants awarded annually by NSF have an international component, ranging from support for the participation of U.S. scientists and engineers in international meetings to participation in large multinational collaborative research projects. These grants can be divided into three categories: 1) Grants whose international dimensions are an integral component of the research. This category, which accounts for the largest number of NSF grants with international components, receives support from the full range of NSF disciplinary units--engineering, the mathematical and physical sciences, the astronomical, atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences, and the biological, behavioral, and social sciences; 2) Grants for research in fields where the scientific problems are typically regional or global in scope. This category includes research supported by NSF units in earth, polar, ocean, and atmospheric sciences; in environmental and tropical biology, and also in some of the social sciences, particularly economics, and 3) Grants in which cooperation with a foreign scientist or institution is essential and which meet the mutual benefits terms of the more than 30 bilateral science and technology agreements managed by NSF's Division of International Programs (INT). Grants with International Dimensions Basic Science With an abundance of high-quality researchers and research activities in other countries, international activities have become an integral part of research in the mathematical and physical sciences. Today, more than ever, the main impetus for most international collaboration in major areas of physics is the uniqueness of facilities and the need for scientists to obtain access to international centers such as CERN in Geneva. In 1985, NSF supported the work of U.S. elementary particle physicists at CERN, the Deutsches Elektron Synchrotron in Hamburg, and the KEK High Energy Physics laboratory in Japan. Also, along with the Department of Energy, NSF contributed support for some of the experimental apparatus used by these physicists. Likewise, counterpart organizations abroad supported the activities of foreign physicists at U.S. elementary particle research centers including the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) Laboratory, the Fermi Lab near Chicago, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). International collaborative efforts are becoming more common in intermediate energy nuclear physics which is increasingly characterized by the complexity of instrumentation. Instrumentation and facilities in other areas of physics and in chemistry and materials research, while complex, are rarely so expensive as to require international cost sharing. However, there are many unique facilities and excellent people working in these fields abroad, particularly in the industrialized countries. Therefore, the focus of NSF's international support in these fields continues to be on smaller scale cooperative research projects, support of international conferences, seminars, workshops, and travel support for scientific meetings abroad. In chemistry, for example, NSF initiated many seminars and workshops in catalysis and bioinorganic chemistry throughout the world. These meetings were held in China, Japan, Australia, England, France, Italy, Belgium, Venezuela, and Poland. A recent international workshop on the subject of oxidation catalysis was held in Padova, Italy. With the assistance of the American Chemical Society, the NSF is currently negotiating a joint seminar program in catalysis with the Soviet Union. by unique facilities. Materials research is considered a combination of scientist-to-scientist collaboration and collaboration fostered NSF supported conferences and workshops, exchanges of U.S. and foreign scientists, and collaborative efforts in this area in 1985. With regard to exchanges, 30 to 50 foreign scientists came to the United States to use NSF-supported materials research and facilities, estimated at about ten percent of users. U.S. scientists also made productive use of facilities in other countries including the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Japan, and Denmark. Other countries of special interest to NSF because of their special capabilities in materials research are: Australia (solid state electrolytes, materials engineering); Federal Republic of Germany (ceramics and metallic systems, atomic microstructure studies of polycrystalline ionic and metallic materials, synthesis of solids); France (polymers, neutron scattering studies of metallic, amorphous, magnetic, and electronic materials, and synthesis and characterization of new materials); Japan (high performance ceramics, advanced composite materials); Scandinavia and the Netherlands (fiber composite materials, electron microscopy, high temperature structural materials research, and semiconducting materials); U.S.S.R. (strategic materials, condensed matter theory, low temperature physics, superfluids, and superconductivity); India (solar cell materials, solid state inorganic chemistry), and Peoples Republic of China (high performance ceramics, polymers, super alloys, and amorphous metallic materials). Project support for international cooperation in computer research has not been extensive to date, although scientist-to-scientist collaboration takes place. Most of this is with Western Europe and Japan, but activities with Israel and India also are significant. Collaborative efforts in 1985 included: Federal Republic of Germany (theoretical computer science and computer systems design); Finland (theoretical computer science and software systems science); Italy (theoretical computer science); Israel (theoretical computer science and software systems science); Scandinavia and the Netherlands (theoretical computer science and software systems science), and United Kingdom (theoretical computer science and software systems science). One influential mechanism for international collaboration has been the Computer Science Network (CSNET) project which has encouraged membership by computer research communities in other countries. At present, there are several member institutions in Israel and Canada and countries in Europe and Asia. U.S. Support for international cooperation in astronomy shares some of the characteristics of other physical sciences. and foreign astronomers cooperate in studies of stars, galaxies, stellar evolution, solar astronomy, cosmology, and the development of instrumentation to facilitate those studies. However, astronomy is also geography-dependent. Almost half of all astronomical objects cannot be observed from the Northern Hemisphere. NSF continues to support the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile and the use by U.S. scientists of this and other astronomical facilities in the Southern Hemisphere. International cooperation in mathematics is as old as the discipline itself. A measure of its current importance is that in recent years about thirty percent of all co-authored papers in the field involved authors from more than one country. Much of this international cooperation is for short stays and conferences or for academic terms at foreign universities. of particular interest are the Oberworlfach conferences in Germany and the American Mathematical Society's Short Summer Conferences and Summer Institutes in the United States. Another important form of international activity is centered at major mathematics institutes where programs involve foreign mathematicians. Included are institutes in Brazil, France, and Germany, as well as the Institute for Advanced Study, the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the Courant Institute, all in the United States. The fields of cellular and molecular biology also emphasize person-to-person exchange. Because these areas are significant to further advances in biotechnology, more international efforts were encouraged by NSF in 1985. Foundation activities in the field sciences are characterized by support for research in more than 50 countries. These include studies of unique physical, biological, and social systems throughout the world, such as the multilateral study focusing on the East African rift for which NSF provides partial support. Examples of other such studies in other areas of the world are described in last year's Title V Report. During 1985, NSF awarded grants to U.S. anthropologists to conduct studies in 58 countries and supported field research in systematic biology and ecology by U.S. scientists in more than a dozen countries, including Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, and Australia. A major effort in these fields focuses on the Organization for Tropical studies in Costa Rica, a consortium of thirty institutions which NSF has supported for more than 20 years. In the field sciences, many countries are restrictive of foreign scientific research at sites within their borders. For this reason, U.S. scientists working in these disciplines continue to rely on information and assistance provided by U.S. embassies abroad and by the Department of State in Washington. Government-to-government arrangements for scientific research also encourage access by U.S. scientists. Engineering Most of NSF's support for international work in engineering has involved participation in international meetings and short-term visits to foreign centers. During 1985, international engineering activities focused on projects involving five countries: Japan, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the People's Republic of China (PRC), and France. Cooperation with Japan and the PRC in earthquake hazard mitigation is carried out, in part, under formal bilateral agreements. Two fields dominate international engineering activities with industrialized countries. One is robotics and artificial intelligence work with Japan, the United Kingdom, and France. The second is automated manufacturing research with institutions in the FRG, the United Kingdom, and France. In August 1985, a small group of U.S. engineers met in Stuttgart with their German counterparts to discuss the organizational and institutional issues surrounding manufacturing research. Among other priorities and directions resulting from these deliberations, the group suggested the creation of a worldwide |