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The Influence of the Government and Military-Industrial Complex in R&D and Innovation Throughout the History of Science and Technology
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) was the government's key university science funding for five years after WWII, until the creation of NSF. It has lost some importance over the years and is now to some extent struggling to find its niche in the world. ONR is undergoing the same "re-discovery" pressures — how to balance long-term funding of basic research with the short-term pressure to make a difference now — that industrial labs went through about a decade earlier.
This project is to write a post-Cold War narrative history of the Office of Naval Research to understand the post-cold war pressures on ONR and how that fits into the bigger picture of R&D funding in America. Furthermore, Buderi plans to identify the key success and failures during this period and try and understand how organizational changes have shaped these successes and failures. Unlike many histories, this will be a narrative work, profiling some major personalities and going in-depth into innovative projects in a more journalistic style. Buderi will be interviewing all the chiefs of naval research and other top officials, spending time at Naval Research Lab, and also looking into policy issues surrounding ONR.
Robert Buderi, MIT SSP
Research Fellow, spearheads the research project on "The
Influence of the Government and Military-Industrial Complex in R&D and
Innovation Throughout the History of Science and Technology."
