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Ms.\ Grace Ostenso
Staff Director, Science, Research and Technology subcommittee
U.S. House of Representatives
2319 Rayburn
Washington, D.C. 20515
\body
Dear Ms.\ Ostenso:

	Please transmit the following to people concerned with computer
science research.

	We and many of our colleagues in the Stanford Computer Science
Department at Stanford University are concerned that the present NSF
emphasis on supercomputer centers and engineering research centers is
having an adverse effect on research in computer science by drastically
reducing NSF support for individual and small group research in computer
science.  The symptom noted is that proposals with the highest ratings by
the reviewers are often not funded or funded at very reduced levels.

	As in other sciences, almost all of the advances in computer
science to date have been the result of research by individuals and small
groups.  This is the most flexible way of doing research and the one that
gives the best opportunities for young researchers to make innovations.
The main justification for a large basic research organization is when
an expensive research facility, e.g.\ a particle accelerator, is necessary
to do the research at all.  In the early days, laboratories with
tens (but not hundreds) of researchers played an important role
in computer science, because laboratories of that size were necessary in
order to afford adequate computer facilities.  With the advent of
computer workstations, the cost of providing an individual researcher
with individual computer facilities for most kinds of computer research
is now in reasonable relation to his salary.  Departmental facilities
provide an important supplement.

	An emphasis on research centers can lead in the long run (ten
years) to domination of research by established ideas and by the most
active administrators rather than by the best researchers.
Further, the supercomputer centers have, for several years,
been regarded as contributing to computer science research.
In reality, they support primarily research in the physical
sciences, but have had little if any impact on computer science.

	Because of the late date of drafting this statement, we aren't
incorporating the names of colleagues who said they supported an
earlier version of this letter, but whom we haven't had time to contact
about this final version.

\closing
Sincerely,
John McCarthy
Professor
\bigskip\bigskip\bigskip
Jeffrey Ullman
Professor
\endletter
\end