Mr. Chairman, I would like now to call on Dr. Hackerman for his remarks. After his testimony, I will highlight some of the key features of our authorization request for FY 1980.

(Dr. Hackerman's Testimony to Appear Here)

Let me turn now to specific items in the NSF program for FY 1980. I intend to limit my comments to overall features of the program, indicating how they relate to the needs for increased investment in FY 1980. I plan also to cover some of our management procedures and accountability measures. Later in these hearings, NSF Assistant Directors will discuss programs in detail. For the record, Mr. Chairman, I have also included historical material on the establishment, role and purpose of NSF.

(Insert for the Record)

The National Science Foundation's budget request of one billion, six million dollars is distributed among the following nine line items of the budget:

Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering;
Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences;
U.S. Antarctic Program;

Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences;

Applied Science and Research Applications;

Scientific, Technological, and International
Affairs;

Program Development and Management;

Science Education; and

Special Foreign Currency.

Support of basic and applied research is included in all of the above activities. In the proposed budget for FY 1980, basic research totals $828.3 million, or 11.8 percent more than the $741 million allocated for this purpose in FY 1979. Of the total FY 1980 budget, applied research amounts to $72.8 million, or 4 percent more than the FY 1979 amount of $70 million.

and

Three budget activities--Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering; Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences; Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences--make up $712.5 million, or nearly 71 percent of the Foundation's total program. These are the major basic research components of NSF. They include research support for all of the science disciplines and engineering, support for six national research centers, and a major share of the support for the 29 ships of the academic research fleet.

The Foundation is responsible for the management and funding of the U.S. Antarctic Program.

Research applications is another significant area of NSF activities. Our purposes are to improve the coupling between basic and applied research and to stimulate the application of science to recognized problems.

The Foundation also has legislative responsibility for strengthening science education at all academic levels.

Additionally, the NSF program includes information science and technology; science policy research and analysis, and science resources studies.

for NSF effort is international program is designed to strengthen

Another important area cooperative science; our U.S. science and to aid in achieving U.S. foreign policy objectives related to science and technology.

The Special Foreign Currency program uses credits in foreign currencies declared excess to U.S. needs by the Treasury. The Foundation uses these funds in obtaining translations of foreign scientific documents and in various cooperative research endeavors. The work funded is important and benefits the United States.

I would now like to highlight each of our major budget activities.

Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering

The proposed program in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering is increased by $28.0 million, to a total of $295.7 million in FY 1980. Increased emphasis is given to research underlying efforts to improve computer software and to research on submicron structures and laser chemistry. We are also expanding materials research that can improve understanding of the problems of catalysis, corrosion, wear, and brittleness of materials, as well as environment related chemistry and engineering research.

The Foundation's continuing thrust in instrumentation and equipment, to which I referred earlier, is reflected in the MPE program. Of the $28 million increase proposed for the MPE activity, $16.3 million, or 58 percent, is earmarked for instrumentation and equipment. This brings the total for instrumentation and equipment for the MPE activity t $48.1 million for FY 1980.

Another feature of the MPE budget for FY 1980 is the establishment of separate budget line items for Regional Instrumentation Facilities and Industry/University Cooperative Research.

You may recall that, beginning in FY 1978, the Foundation developed and funded equipment centers as a part of the Chemical Instrumentation program. Large, complex, and expensive instrumentation is required for research in several Because such instrumentation is costly and funds are it is it is not realistic to provide state-of-the-art instrumentation to more than a few locations in the Nation.

fields. limited,

We have found that the concept of regional instrumentation facilities is a sound approach for chemistry and for several other fields of science. I have already advised this Committee and our other authorization and appropriation committees of action taken in FY 1979 to establish Regional Instrumentation Facilities as a separate program and budget subactivity. This FY 1979 reprogramming action is reflected in the Foundation's FY 1980 budget as presented to the Congress. The amount of $3.8 million is requested for Regional Instrumentation Facilities in MPE for FY 1980. There is another $500,000, each, in the Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences activity and the Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences. The total for these regional facilities amounts to $4.8 million.

In FY 1978, regional instrumentation facilities were established at Colorado State University, the University of South Carolina, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Nebraska, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Arizona. We expect to establish four to six new facilities in FY 1979 and an additional three in FY 1980 at appropriate locations throughout the country.

As I have indicated, the FY 1980 budget establishes Industry/University Cooperative Research as a separate budget subactivity. Leaders of the U.S. science community have recognized the need to take advantage of such cooperation. As science career opportunities in the colleges and universities level off, more and more young scientists and engineers are entering industrial laboratories. At the same time, U.S. high technology firms are facing stiffer competition from foreign companies. There is a growing need for closer collaboration between industry and university scientists so that the United States can take advantage of the most recent advances in science and technology and linkages can be strengthened between industry and university scientists.

Research

The Foundation's Industry/University Cooperative effort is an attempt to stimulate such collaboration. Through this program, joint proposals submitted by researchers from a firm and a university are given special emphasis. We expect that the cooperative research supported in this program can lay the foundation for further improvements in technology and can build better linkages of the type I mentioned. These cooperative efforts are being funded through the Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering activity and its Applied Science and Research Applications activity.

In 1977 NSF funded the establishment of a national user resource center for micro-fabrication research at Cornell University. Το achieve the objective of controlled reproducible micro-fabrication at this scale (well beyond the industrial state-of-the-art) requires basic research across many disciplines--materials, physics, chemistry, computer science, electrical systems science, to mention the main