Vice President Discusses MIT's Research Mission

Vice President Discusses MIT's Research Mission
(Kenneth A. Smith is associate provost and vice president for research 
at MIT. Following is an interview Naomi F. Chase of the News Office 
conducted with Dr. Smith concerning the overall thrust of research at 
MIT.)
	
NFC: How much of MIT's budget is sponsored research?
KAS: MIT's on-campus sponsored research this year will total about $300 
million. That's 50 percent out of a total on-campus budget of 
approximately $600 million.
 
NFC: What are the most important considerations for MIT about sponsored 
research?
KAS: Whether or not it's appropriate research, and, in particular, 
whether or not it is appropriate to MIT. A lot of valuable research will 
not contribute toward the education of young people. If that's the case, 
we should not engage in it. For example, it could be inappropriate for 
education because it's too short range, too large scale, or because of 
what it would take to implement it.

NFC: Have we turned down research for those reasons?
KAS: We have certainly decided not to seek certain kinds of research for 
those reasons. For instance we decided that the software institute that 
DOD (Department of Defense) wanted to place at a university  several 
years ago, and did eventually place at another university, was 
inappropriate here. We've also decided that we shouldn't run a fusion 
machine on this campus much larger than the ones  we have now.
	
NFC: Recently MIT turned down a very big research project involving 
transportation that eventually went to another university. Why did we 
turn that down?
KAS: It was an interesting project but it was too commercial. There's a 
lot of dollars, obviously, and there's some interesting software 
development involved. But I thought that too large a fraction of the 
effort would be engaged in just developing it, as opposed to learning 
something from it. I was also concerned that we would be too constrained 
in the ability to disseminate results.
	
NFC:. Because it's commercial?
KAS: No, because the defense aspects could limit dissemination.

NFC: Where does money for sponsored research come from?
KAS: The largest single sponsor of on-campus research is the Department 
of Energy (DOE), which provides about 19 percent; then the Department of 
Health and Human Services (DHHS), about 18 1/2 percent. The lion's share 
of that is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) I think HHS is 
destined in a few years to be the largest sponsor of on-campus research. 
Third is DOD, about 17 percent; then industry, 15 percent; National 
Science Foundation (NSF), about 14 percent; and NASA with about five 
percent. The rest, mostly combinations of non-profits, is in the 
ballpark of eight percent. It's remarkable that we have as many 
important sponsors as we do without depending on any single one. I think 
that is a strength.

NFC: Was that calculated? 
KAS: No. I wish we could take credit for it. 

NFC: Would you take pains to maintain that distribution if it were 
threatened?
KAS: I'd love to see it maintained, but I think our ability to influence 
it, if there were to be major impacts, would be extremely limited. For 
instance, we have two major DOE contracts: one at the Plasma Fusion 
Center and one at the Lab for Nuclear Science (LNS). If, for some 
reason, the DOE should decide to get out of the fusion business, our 
ability to influence that decision would be zero.

NFC: If that happened, would MIT pick up the tab?
KAS: No. We would have to get out of that business. We'd try to phase it 
out. There I think we might have some control.

NFC: In other words, we are very dependent for the kind of research we 
do on who pays for it.
KAS: Yes, there is no totally benign patron.

NFC: They are all like the Borgias.
KAS: Exactly.

NFC: Which are some of the more interesting or significant research 
projects, and how do they originate? For example, we know that  crystals 
are important in research and that there are not enough Americans 
growing them. Suppose MIT decides we'd like to grow them, but we need 
outside money to do it. How would we go looking for it? Could we go 
looking for it?
KAS: That is a difficult one, and therefore, in some ways, a good 
example, because it shows the different tensions that exist. The ability 
to grow crystals has been quite important for the conduct of good 
physics in semiconductors and other solid state materials. It's hard 
work, and doing it does not garner a lot of glory for the researchers. 
It's not the sort of thing for which you would hire a faculty member and 
make a 30 year commitment to a tenure position.

NFC: Because it's not glamorous?
KAS: Right, and because the need may not be constant for 30 years. Yet 
to do good physics, it's critical to have good crystals. MIT has done 
better than most US universities there. We've maintained a good crystal 
growing effort within the Center for Materials Science and Engineering 
with very strong non-faculty research staff. That put us in a very 
strong position when the high temperature superconductivity came along. 
The  people here hadn't been working with those materials previously, 
but they could switch over to them and grow the best material in the US 
faster than anybody else, by far. That led some of our theoreticians to 
suggest experiments which provided very early insights concerning the 
fundamental physics. We were there before the fact, partly by luck, and 
partly by foresight. But we were there. 

NFC: What are some of the most interesting sponsored research projects 
at MIT?
KAS: One of the most exciting programs we've had in the last ten years 
is in brain and cognitive sciences. For the first time we have a chance 
to understand how the mind works at the molecular, algorithmic levels. 
We are exploring how the mind processes and integrates individual bits 
of information, and then derives a concept from those bits. Why is it 
that I am not aware of seeing every hair on your head, but I instead 
integrate over them and perceive a head in its entirety?

NFC: How does that happen?
KAS: There are a number of individual molecular events which start with 
a photon hitting the retina. We are looking at the kind of chemical 
change that results and how that propagates through other chemical and 
electrical changes to a variety of neurons in the brain. The optic nerve 
alone has a million neurons coming out of the back of each eye. How does 
all that information get processed? What rules are used to process it? 
And finally, how does that result in an integrated concept? In the last 
ten years, we have made enormous progress in each of those areas.

NFC: Are we a key place for doing research in these areas?
KAS: Yes. We are perhaps premiere in research on vision.

NFC: Do we have a real chance of solving some crucial problems in that 
area? If so, could you predict when that might be and tell us  what's 
involved?
KAS: It's important to separate issues of disease from issues of 
understanding events. Along with the process of understanding there is 
always the hope that we will be able to do something about Parkinson's, 
Huntington's or Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and other neuro-
degenerative diseases.

NFC: Are we working on all of those?
KAS: With the exception, perhaps, of MS, which is an auto-immune 
disease, we're working on all of them. For instance, Sue Corkin is 
working on problems related to Alzheimer's. Some of Ann Graybiel's work 
is related to Huntington's. Thus, there has been work on certain disease 
etiologies, but the main thrust has been on understanding events rather 
than on disease. Eventually they'll shed light on disease much as 
molecular biology has. I think Alzheimer's and Huntington's are more 
likely than schizophrenia or manic depression to yield first.

NFC: Were those projects initiated by the NIH, or did somebody at MIT 
say, "This is really fascinating. Where do I get the money to explore 
it?"
KAS: It's a complicated feedback. For example, NIH sees some important 
advance here or at other key research labs and that convinces them to 
provide a little more research funding in that area. That leads to 
another advance, and so forth. That's been the pattern over the last 
decade. It's no mistake that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has 
chosen brain research as one of its key areas. 

NFC: Is this an example of an area where universities like MIT have been 
accused of giving away government sponsored research?
KAS: Not yet.

NFC: Are questions of guidelines or conflict of interest as they relate 
to sponsored research applicable here?
KAS: Sure, because this research will have an impact on disease, and 
therefore there's a commercial impact.

NFC:	The question of how much of our sponsored research money comes 
from industry became an issue in the media this year. Do we have any 
ceiling on that?
KAS: We have no specific guidelines on that but we've stayed under 15 
percent and I don't think we're going to grow much beyond it. However, I 
think it's important to discuss the significance of industrial support 
for students, particularly in the School of Engineering. Those are 
students who by and large go to work for industry. 
It's useful for them to have an exposure to what industry believes to be 
important values before they leave MIT. Industrial support tends to 
influence values and attitudes of both the faculty and the students 
precisely because no patron is benign. The same thing holds for  
government supported research.

NFC: Could you give me a specific example in government or industry of 
how the patron's attitudes and values are important either in being 
accepted or questioned?
KAS: In the sixties, support was predominantly federal. The federal 
agencies that supported research in the School of Science and in the 
School of Engineering were interested largely in scienceÄand that 
interest was an important factor in the evolution of the notion of 
engineering science. Conversely, lack of government support made 
activities such as engineering design more difficult to conduct on a 
campus, any campus. There was a certain unhealthiness to that situation, 
because engineering has a role in its own right, which is somehow to 
make science more useful. By and large government hasn't played that 
role very well. 
So in that context I think industrial support is very useful precisely 
because it influences attitudes, even if it doesn't make a big impact on 
certain specific projects. This example also shows that what happens 
here at MIT is a real reflection of what's going on in society. And 
what's considered important.

NFC: Is that true at other kinds of universities? And is it true in 
areas other than research?
KAS: It's surely true in areas other than research. You see it in 
education, you see it in what the students want, you see it in what the 
faculty want to do. We influence society and we are influenced by it.

NFC: I guess that's like saying it's hard to keep on teaching Latin if 
nobody wants to learn it?
KAS: Right. So, yes, our interaction with society is important in lots 
of areas,  not just research. In the context of research, I think it's 
more important for engineering than it is for science. Science tends to 
look at fundamentals, and is therefore somewhat insulated from swings in 
what society believes its needs might be. Engineering, by definition, is 
intended to help society address its needs.

NFC: What should we be most  concerned about in the area of sponsored 
research?
KAS: I'm most worried that we may become a victim of our success.  And 
by "us" I don't mean just MIT, but the whole US university research 
enterprise. That enterprise has been enormously successful. We complain 
a lot about the short rations that are given us, but in some ways we've 
been treated better than a lot of other segments of this society, and we 
shouldn't forget that.
It's also true that our research successes have by all measures been 
very important to the US economy. Every important industrial country, 
whether it's West Germany or the UK or Japan, wishes it had a university 
research enterprise that is as vigorous as ours. I don't think there's a 
lot of debate about that, in the Congress or anywhere else. It's partly 
because we're so successful that we find ourselves hit around the head 
and shoulders on all these other issues: how much of our research is 
leaking abroad; is the public getting its fair share; are we conducting 
our animal research ethically; is our use of human subjects appropriate? 
And then there are all those issues of fiscal accountability. 
The demands for accountability of all kinds will increase. As they do, 
I'm concerned that we may all forget what made the system work, i.e. the 
conduct of education and research as a single effort. If we get pulled 
away from that, distracted by short term research and issues of 
accountability, then we'll lose it all. And yet the whole reason that 
people are focusing on us and asking us to be accountable is that they 
agree we've been successful.
It's a paradox, but my greatest worry is that we'll be distracted by all 
the brush fires and lose sight of what's really important.