San Francisco

Leaders of the US scientific community are developing plans to work closely with government agencies and the military in the fight against terrorism.

On 26 September, for example, Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, convened a meeting of 30 prominent scientists and security experts to discuss the role of science in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.

Those attending included Norman Augustine, chairman of aeronautics company Lockheed Martin; John Marburger, director of the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and President George W. Bush's nominated science adviser; Wolfgang Panofsky, a director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; former senator Sam Nunn; and James Woolsey, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“All were clearly concerned that the scientific and technical community hasn't played an important role in the issue of dealing with organized terrorism,” says Kumar Patel, a former president of the American Physical Society, who also attended the meeting.

Several federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, currently fund counter-terrorism research. But according Maxine Singer, president of the Carnegie Institution, who was present at the meeting, they sometimes fail to draw on the full creative potential of the academic community. “Things have become institutionalized,” she says.

Both the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Pentagon's Technical Support Working Group have approached the academy complex to ask for input, says Bill Colglazier, executive director of the National Research Council. “They want cutting-edge people to help with brainstorming and advising,” he says.

To coordinate this input, the academies are planning to spend $500,000 of their own money to help create a task force with an anti-terrorist research agenda, called the Multi-Agency Program Plan for Science and Technology. Lewis Branscomb, a technology-policy specialist at Harvard University, and Richard Klausner, a former director of the National Cancer Institute, are leading the project.