tom (12/10/82)
The following are the replies I recieved regarding a question I posed to the ARPAnet Arms Discussion Group, regarding the degree to which U. of Wash. was funded by the DoD. They have been "digestified." Please send responses to me and I will digestify further. From: JLarson at PARC-MAXC You might contact Alan Borning there. (Borning@Washington) He is on the faculty of the UW Comp. Sci. department, and is a member of CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility). His interests include creating a course investigating the reliability of computerized strategic nuclear systems. John Larson ------ From: David Jacobson <DMJ at WASHINGTON> If we are heavily defense oriented it sure is news around here. We do have a big NSF grant for the Eden project in distributed computing. A year or so ago Mike Fischer (now at Yale) had an Office of Naval Research grant to do some theory stuff. It was *very* pure research. I think the topic was something about the efficiency of various kinds of aribiters based on token passing. I once heard a rumor of Steve Tanimoto (now on leave) trying to get a grant or working with Boeing or something on scene recognition using some kind of pyramid architecture special processor that was going to have definite military applications. We have a strong group of people here who are concerned about the dangers of nuclear war, etc., and run a seminar on the subject. Let me assure you that right now I wouldn't know how to find an RA position that was military related or DOD funded. I just thought of one thing that you may have heard about. There is a place here called the Applied Physics Lab that is very military related. They do lots of classified underwater stuff for the navy. However they have *absolutely nothing* to do with computer science. -- David ------- From: Calton Pu <CALTON at WASHINGTON> I have been a graduate student here for more than 2 years. Quite a lot of money comes from the large corporations, like DEC-Pascal project, or the (canceled) Intel-432-Pascal, or IBM. The only major project related to the DOD is the Northwest VLSI Consortium, which does not have any classified research by the insistence of involved investigators. Since we are having a weekly seminar on Nuclear War and Computer Reliability, you have raised a hot issue. -Calton- ------- From: Andrew P. Black <Black at WASHINGTON> The Computer Science Department at the University of Washington has just gained its first DARPA funded research grant. The VLSI consortium has been established (with funds from DARPA, the University and local industry) to collect, create and distribute VLSI design aids. Better chips will help the military, but they will help civil applications just as much. The bigest research grant at UW is the Eden project, a 4M$ NSF grant to do research in distributed computing. Even this ARPANET connection is due to Eden and NSF, not ARPA. As far as I know, none of the faculty members have individual grants from any military source. Compare UW with Stanford, Berkeley, etc.: I think you will find that there is much more military funding elsewhere. Several Faculty members at UW are worried by the shift of public funding away from NSF and towards the military. At present there is no departmental policy about taking military funding, but the subject will be discussed next month at the annual planning meeting. We are at least aware of the problem. You may also be interested to hear that we are currently running a 1.5 hr. per week seminar on the interaction between computer reliability and nuclear war. We hoped to try to get some hard technical facts about the likelyhood of a malfunctioning computer system causing an accidental war. Predictably, most of what one would like to know is classified, but we've done our best. ------- From: Herb Lin <LIN@Mit-Mc> Computer sci. dept also has a real good peacenik asst. prof., name of Alan Borning (borning@washington). Currently, he's teaching a course on fault-tolerant computing, and how it relates to implications for national defense. ------- From: Michael S Kenniston <CSD.MSK@Su-Score> I have no specific information about the U. of Wash., but can give you some info about Stanford that might be useful. I'm a fifth year Ph.D. student here, and was working with a DOD-funded project last year. Once I decided to switch, I managed to become a teaching assistant without much trouble, so you should check out that alternative wherever you go. Of course, a lot of the machines I still use were purchased by DOD, the people I work with are paid by DOD, and the half-time work that pays my rent is not part of my thesis, so this is by no means a perfect solution. Although about 2/3 of our research funding is DOD, there are other grants (e.g. NSF) here, so even in a school that depends on DOD YOU may not have to. It's easier to flow with the crowd, but it is possible to be different. Wherever you go, I would suggest finding and talking to other grad students who have similar feelings about their funding source, especially if you are in the minority. The discussion group we have at Stanford has helped me a lot, both in terms of prodding my thinking and for providing peer support. You might want to contact: High Technology Professionals for Peace 52 Walker St. Newtonville, MA 02160 (617) 332-9457 They concentrate on running an employment agency, but may have other information that would be useful to you.