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,...
