JASON Back in Business with New Defense Contract

The unique science advisory group known as JASON has signed a $3.3 million contract with the Defense Department’s Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, ending a dispute with another defense agency that had threatened the future of the 42-year-old organization. “We’re back in business,” said physicist Steven Koonin, provost at Caltech and chairman of JASON. The agreement with DDR…E, signed on 10 May and running through the end of the year, will be managed by the MITRE Corp, as was the organization’s previous contract.

JASON is an independent group of about 50 top scientists from a variety of fields, all tenured professors from major research universities, who meet for several weeks each summer to tackle difficult scientific problems posed for them by several federal agencies. The organization began as an elite advisory group for the government in the early days of the cold war.

Late last year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which had held the JASON contract for many years, insisted that two executives from Silicon Valley high-tech companies and an engineer be granted membership to JASON. The organization balked, saying the three did not meet the rigorous membership standards. DARPA officials then charged that JASON was too physics-oriented, and canceled the contract (see Physics Today, May 2002, page 29 .)

Although JASON will work through DDR…E, initially on aerospace and fuel-cell technology problems, the organization will also study issues for the Department of Energy and other agencies, Koonin said, including some related to counterterrorism. “We have about 15 studies to work on right now,” he said, “and about 50% of our work is classified.” As they have for many years, JASON scientists will meet in La Jolla, California, from mid-June through early August.