INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIVE SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES $25,120,000

The FY 2002 Budget Request for the International Cooperative Scientific Activities (INT) Subactivity is $25.12 million, a decrease of $610,000, or 2.4 percent, from the FY 2001 Current Plan of $25.73 million.

(Millions of Dollars)

1FY 2002 includes a transfer of $15.4 million from the U.S. Department of State for an award to the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation.

The INT Subactivity provides the expertise and networks to stimulate research cooperation with scientists and engineers in virtually all of the developed and developing countries of the world and in all fields of science and engineering supported by the Foundation.

INT facilitates the advancement of NSF's goal of developing and maintaining a diverse, internationally competitive and globally engaged workforce. INT supports research and related activities that promote partnerships between U.S. and foreign researchers, enhance access to critical research conducted outside the U.S., and broaden the base of knowledge about mutually beneficial science and technology opportunities abroad. INT supports U.S. participation in both bilateral and multilateral workshops and symposia, the exploratory phases of collaborative research, key selected multinational scientific bodies, and individual and small group research training.

INT provides valuable international experiences to U.S. researchers in the early stages of their careers. Specific INT-supported activities include:

• summer research experiences for students in selected regions of the world;

• postdoctoral research opportunities abroad;

• inclusion of students in international cooperative research projects; and

• opportunities for U.S. researchers to develop collaborations with their counterparts in other countries.

Together, these activities will enable the next generation of U.S. researchers to maintain leadership in an increasingly global research environment.

With the continuing growth of scientific resources worldwide, there are increasing opportunities for international cooperation in areas of mutual interest or concern. The year 2000 Nobel Prizes demonstrate the importance of international collaborations. Over the previous decade, the INT subactivity supported three international research projects, each involving an American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for discoveries related to those collaborations. INT awards in the early 1990s enabled American chemistry laureates Alan MacDiarmid and Alan Heeger to work with French and Belgian scientists, respectively, on the conducting properties of polymers. Another award enabled physics laureate Herbert Kroemer to work with German scientists on the dynamic conductivity of superlattices, with applications in information technology. In addition, a decade earlier, INT had also supported collaborative research on the electronic properties of polymers between MacDiarmid and Japan's Hideki Shirakawa, who shared with MacDiarmid and Heeger the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In FY 2002, INT will maintain its emphases on:

• Encouraging opportunities that provide future U.S. scientists and engineers with international research experiences early in their careers;

• Fostering collaboration between NSF-supported research centers and equivalent research institutions in other countries;

• Promoting networking and connectivity in research collaboration through the use of advanced information technology; and

• Developing new types of international research and training experiences, primarily in East Asian countries that are investing heavily in scientific research and are rapidly developing knowledge-intensive economies.

Support for U.S. participation in key selected international scientific bodies will continue, including $1.0 million for the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation, which gives grants to support collaboration between U.S. researchers and those in Russia and other successor states.