The National Science Foundation's Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers Program Looking Back, Moving Forward (2007) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Overall Context of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers Program
2 The Overall Context of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers Program
Pages 45-70
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From page 45... ...
The benefit of broad-based, long-term efforts across many subfields of materials science is the only way to ensure a healthy, continuous rate of scientific accomplishment. This model is one that has traditionally been supported by the federal government to complement science in general, including the materials science research conducted in academic venues.
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From page 46... ...
. In fact, the 1999 National Research Council report Condensed Matter and Materials Physics: Basic Research for Tomorrow's Technology stated: "New facilities and instrumentation create new opportunities in condensed-matter and materials physics, and continued support for facilities and for broad access to them must be emphasized."2 The current guidelines for competition for MRSEC funding have had two ef fects.3 The size of the average MRSEC award has shrunk, and the funding has been divided into smaller increments that are too small to adequately support the needed analytical and synthetic centralized facilities.
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From page 47... ...
Recently, there has been a trend in the materials research community toward addressing "grand challenges" of materials research.5,6 Given the mission and structure of the MRSEC program, the centers are encouraged by NSF to conduct such "transformative" research. As an exercise, the MRSEC Impact Assessment Committee developed a list of grand challenges for materials research -- energy, health care, water purification, information technology, national security, and so on -- in addition to "hot" technologies that could result from materials research.
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HISTORICAL CONTEXT The MRSEC program is descended from a long history of federal investment in institutions designed to promote and support materials research as part of the nation's research enterprise. Because of the important context set by the history of the program (and its evolution)
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, into which were integrated some of the more traditional materials programs in areas of physics and chemistry. Focused research in areas of particular complexity that required a team approach of several scientists in different disciplines became more and more common 8Work statement from Advanced Research Projects Agency Interdisciplinary Laboratory program contracts, 1960.
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, and Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs)
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the overall context mrsec Program of the 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 MRLs MRSECs Chicago Harvard MIT Purdue Stanford UMass Stanford/UC Davis UCSD MichiganSt Princeton Alabama ArizonaSt Houston Cornell UPenn Northwestern Brown Maryland CMU UCSB Hopkins SUNY- 1 SUNY- 2 Wisconsin UColorado Minnesota Kentucky Columbia Okla/Ark PennSt Caltech Virginia SMiss Nebraska UWash Yale OhioSt 14 14 13 14 14 14 14 14 14 10 9 9 9 9 4 11 11 24 24 28 25 29 27 29 27 27 29 26
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To provide materials departments with fleeter response to rapidly developing opportunities and developments within thrust groups, the NSF added another program, the Materials Research Groups (MRGs)
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In response to these pressures, NSF reorganized its interdisciplinary MRL and MRG programs into the current MRSEC program. In the shift, the program began to focus on several aspects that its predecessors did not.
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and two NASA labo ratories sponsored under their IDL programs. The MITRE study had conducted extensive peer review of 690 research papers "selected by statistical sampling techniques from MRLs and project-funded institu tions." Citation analysis was then undertaken on more than 2,000 published papers.
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The current report returns to these same questions with some more recent information in Chapter 3. BUDGET CONTEXT To fully understand the impact of the MRSEC program, the committee found it necessary to compare the scale of effort undertaken by MRSECs to the broader context of materials research.
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6 $700,000,000 As-Spent FY 2006 $600,000,000 $500,000,000 $400,000,000 $300,000,000 $200,000,000 $100,000,000 $0 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 FIGURE 2.2 History of federal support for basic materials research, 1983-2002, excluding facilities construction and operations. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the federal investment in basic materials research has grown by more than 80 percent since 1983 but has remained essentially constant since 1996.
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Federal State/local 80 Industry Academic Nonfederal 70 Other 60 50 40 30 Percentage Contribution 20 10 0 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 FIGURE 2.3 Sources of academic research and development funding for all research, 1972-2003. The funds provided for academic research and development by the industrial sector grew at a faster rate than funding from any other source during the 1972-2003 period.
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. The committee estimated the university inflation index by determining the basic cost of a graduate student, taken as tuition, stipend, and overhead incurred 15The committee acknowledges that an inflation index for university research is not standard practice.
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. Using the OMB index, this adjusts to $3.65 million per year or, using the university inflation index, adjusts to $5.0 million per year.
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to 990 + 319 (PD) , or an overall increase of 400 percent, although the "start-up time" of matriculating graduate students into the MRSEC program at the time of its inception causes significant distortion (see Figure 2.8)
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and the MRSEC program (starting in 1994)
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, the centers by 20 percent, national user facilities by 45 percent (but the committee has data only for 8 of the 10 years) , and instrumentation (Instrumentation for Materials Research program and Major Research Instrumentation, although the latter is non-DMR funds)
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While this plot suggests that MRSECs have been essentially flat-funded for the past 12 years, the estimated average university inflation index 2.7 Broadside suggests a decline in spending power. SOURCE: Division of Materials Research, National Science Foundation.
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program specifically (as recorded by NSF's tabulation of annual reports from each MRSEC)
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, it has not kept pace with university inflation (an average of 70%) and is much less than the overall increases in the NSF budget in as-spent dollars (more than 100%)
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The importance of shared experimental facilities and the availability of capital and operating funds cannot be overestimated.17 NSF plans for the future of the materials center program must address this issue or the materials program will soon be noncompetitive on the international level. The National Academies report Experiments in International Benchmarking of US Research Fields states that "there continues to be concern among top university researchers that facilities and equipment for materials research in several foreign 16The committee heard testimony during its site visits that research groups proposing MRSECs were backed by as high as a 30% cost-share from the host institutions alone.
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annual budgets as reported in their FY 2005 annual reports versus the age of the materials center at the host university. Of the 15 centers in the 10- and 12-year bins, 9 centers received funding beginning with the Interdisciplinary Laboratory or Materials Research Laboratory program.
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A total of 292 draft proposals for graduate schools and centers of excellence were reviewed in different panels. As a result of this first evaluation step, 41 initiatives for clusters of excellence and 38 initiatives for graduate schools were invited to submit full proposals, among these are 3 clusters of excellence and 3 graduate schools in the field of "Condensed Matter Sciences." After a total of 88 proposals for the three funding lines were evaluated and discussed by international review panels and the Joint Commission of the German Science Council and the DFG, the Excellence Initiative Grants Committee awarded funding to 18 graduate schools, 17 clusters of excellence, and 3 institu tional strategies.
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. The Japanese facilities, like those in the major national universities, reside largely in the groups of individual investigators rather than being multiuser operations.
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22National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, International Benchmarking of US Materials Science and Engineering Research, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998, pp.
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