Funding is targeted to create 10 new tenured faculty positions and 100 positions for midcareer scientists and postdoctoral students conducting international security research.

MacArthur's commitment of $50 million over six years is its way of correcting the post-Cold War shortage of independent scientists and engineers able to advise U.S. government and elected officials on risks posed by weapons of mass destruction. The smart portal is a Science, Technology & Security Policy Center that will be set up in Washington, D.C., next year.

As envisioned, the center will be located in an existing institution such as the National Academies and will "hook up the needs and interests of policymakers with the expertise in the university and policy community," Kennette M. Benedict explains. Benedict, who directs MacArthur's International Peace & Security program, says talks with members of Congress and their staffs have revealed "an appetite for this kind of information," particularly savored since the demise of Congress' Office of Technology Assessment.

For nearly two years, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, MacArthur has been funding security research at nine universities, 17 U.S. policy institutions, and six foreign research centers to the tune of about $25 million. These all have been subsumed under the new initiative. But an additional $25 million or more will be spent to renew some existing grants and expand the institutional scope of the initiative.

The Monterey Institute of International Studies, for example, is using its MacArthur grant to support a young physicist, Charles Ferguson, as a scientist-in-residence, and a recent Ph.D. chemist, Margaret E. Kosal, who is interested in chemical weapons verification issues, says James C. Moltz, associate director of Monterey's Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

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