3. Results of Data Collection: Federal Government Spending on International Cooperation in Research and Development

The U.S. federal government spent approximately $3.3 billion on projects involving international cooperation in research and development in fiscal year 1995.[1] This amount constitutes 4.5 percent of the $70+ billion of government R&D spending in FY95. Ten agencies of government actively supported more than $1 million of ICRD. Over 100 countries are listed as a partner, or as the location, for cooperative research activity. Cooperation spans most areas of science and technology but is heavily concentrated in aerospace research and the earth sciences.

This chapter presents the results of our data collection and analysis. The analysis focuses on

The Character of International Cooperation in Research and Development

Collaborative research is by far the largest single ICRD category being funded by U.S. government agencies. Figure 3.1 shows the breakdown by the character of the activity classified for the purposes of this analysis.

Figure 3.1--Spending by Nature of Activity

Multinational and Binational ICRD Activities

Multinational cooperation claims $2 billion of the $3.3 billion we identified as ICRD activities. Multinational spending dominates ICRD because of the huge financial investments required by "big science" projects such as a space station, global climate research, fusion research and other high-energy physics activities, polar research and ocean drilling, and health-related research in such areas as human genome and infectious disease control.

Binational projects account for about $1.3 billion of FY95 ICRD spending. Figure 3.2 illustrates the share of binational cooperation by country. Funding for binational cooperation was approximately $8 million or less with each of the following countries: Russia, Australia, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel, China, and Mexico. All parts of the world are represented in binational research, as illustrated in Figure 3.3: Countries in Eastern Europe account for the largest regional share (39 percent), because of spending on research with Russia; Asia accounts for 18 percent of binational cooperation; Western Europe accounts for 15 percent, and all other regions account for 10 percent or less of U.S. government funding on binational cooperation. Table 3.1 shows regional spending by agency.

Figure 3.2--Binational Cooperation by Country



Figure 3.3--All Parts of the World Are Involved in ICRD

Table 3.1
Agency Spending, by Region
(in dollars)

Agency Africa Asia Eastern Europe Middle East North America Oceania Russia & FSUe South/Central America Western Europe Other
AID 73,343 17,019 11,250 8,509 0 0 11,250 20,758 0 0
DoCa 50 189 0 0 46 0 145 152 0 2,241
DoD 0 667 0 6,372 115 83,342 9,703 341 14,372 349,681
DoE 0 17,174 0 0 1,070 177 7,330 0 8,062 87,201
EPA 0 174 0 0 344 0 429 160 0 3,500
HHS 7,531 28,253 680 3,342 15,449 1,571 754 6,203 4,102 4,070
NASA 0 183 0 63 1,063 83 80,875 60 831 190
NRCb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
NSF 1,693 16,678 938 528 4,253 3,373 4,269 5,765 8,101 129,066
Smithsonian 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 27,750
USDAc 0 157 0 409 3,871 444 578 138 200 1,006
DVAd 0 539 0 0 406 0 47 446 411 0
Grand Total 82,617 81,031 12,869 19,224 26,618 88,989 115,381 34,025 36,079 604,705

aDepartment of Commerce.
bNuclear Regulatory Commission.
cU.S. Department of Agriculture.
dDepartment of Veterans' Affairs.
eFormer Soviet Union.

Binational Research

ICRD with Russian scientists and Russian research institutes accounted for the largest share of ICRD binational spending: Over $100 million was spent on binational cooperative research with Russia alone. NASA accounted for the largest amount of cooperative spending on projects with Russia, followed by ICRD projects funded by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. These projects focused heavily on space-based life support, nuclear waste containment, energy storage, and environmental pollutants. U.S.-funded cooperative research with Russia led to the filing of at least 16 inventions with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office between 1991 and 1996.

Australia's presence in the top eight cooperating countries, with $88 million of ICRD spending, is the result of several large DoD contracts to conduct R&D with Australia on a shared control and ground station satellite system that will be located in Australia. Without the DoD contracts, Australia would not be on the top-10 list of primary ICRD binational partners. Aside from the DoD contracts, NSF funds about $2.8 million in cooperative research with Australia, and HHS cooperates in about $1.6 million of research with Australian scientists.

Binational ICRD with Japan, totaling $24 million, focused on energy research and earth sciences. The Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation accounted for the largest shares of funding for cooperative projects when Japan was our sole partner. Joint U.S. government-funded research with Japan led to at least 11 patents being filed by U.S. government agencies over the six year period of 1991-1996.

Other nations represented included the following:

Fields of Science Represented in ICRD

Aerospace, avionics, and aeronautics accounts for more than half of the bulk of research dollars committed to a single field of science, as shown in Figure 3.4. A distant second to aerospace are the combined fields of the earth sciences (including geosciences, natural resource research, and environmental research), which, when added together, make up 15 percent of all ICRD activities--the second largest category behind aerospace.

Figure 3.4--Cooperation in Areas of Science, Including the Area of Aerospace

The next largest category--physics--is 5 percent of ICRD activity spending. Less than 5 percent each are biomedical and biology, followed by engineering and materials, and other social sciences. Figure 3.5 shows how spending on sciences is distributed when aerospace is removed.

Figure 3.5--Cooperation in Areas of Science, Excluding the Area of Aerospace

Agency Support for ICRD

Ten agencies dedicate significant portions (more than $1 million each) of their federal R&D budgets to international cooperative activity. These are, in descending order of total ICRD spending: NASA, the Department of Defense, the Agency for International Development, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, Health and Human Services, the Smithsonian, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce. A breakdown of agency-by-agency funding is shown in Figures 3.6 and 3.7. Appendix A contains a summary table showing the breakdown by agency and by program.

Figure 3.6--Agency ICRD Funding, Including NASA Funding

Figure 3.7--Agency ICRD Funding, Excluding NASA Funding

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

NASA leads government agencies in total ICRD dollars spent: approximately $1.9 billion, or 20 percent of its total R&D spending, is devoted to ICRD activities. International cooperation is a charter mission of this agency.[2] Activities such as the International Space Station, the Cassini Satellite Program, Mars '94, Earth Observing Satellite System, and the advanced space transportation program are funded by Congress with the understanding that these activities will be conducted in cooperation with foreign space agencies and international entities.

The programs within NASA that have the greatest commitment to ICRD are Mission to Planet Earth, Space Science, the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and Life and Microgravity Science. The International Space Station represents a very large portion of NASA's R&D budget. In our consultations with NASA, it was decided that this inventory should count only one-fourth of the Station's total program budget toward the total. NASA's main international partners include countries with advanced space programs: Russia, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Brazil, and also the European Space Agency.

In FY95, NASA reported 60 international agreements to the Department of State (Title V Report). The agreements were signed by NASA to encourage and support cooperation in science and technology. When sponsoring international science endeavors, NASA's work involves the exchange of scientific data and information. When building systems and spacecraft, NASA's collaborative activities often involve parsing out to different partners the research and development of specific components of large systems or cooperating on the accomplishment of a specific mission originating either at NASA or in a foreign space agency. NASA's partners provide specific components to NASA, and the final product is incorporated into a larger system, spacecraft, or mission. Each of the international partners expects to benefit from the scientific data generated by the cooperative efforts.

Because of the nature of its international cooperative R&D activities, NASA research does not produce jointly held invention-based intellectual property. NASA scientists co-author scientific papers with their counterparts from other countries, but, according to NASA, this activity rarely translates into patentable activity. The NASA Administrator files, on average, 110 patents per year,[3] of which some are held jointly between U.S. citizens and foreign researchers who have worked in the United States on NASA-sponsored research.

Department of Defense (DoD)

The Department of Defense devotes a significant amount of funding to ICRD, $450 million in FY95, but the intensity of ICRD activities is low compared with its FY95 R&D budget of $36 billion. The ICRD counted in this inventory was limited to those activities classified by DoD as 6.1-6.3, which are roughly equivalent to the OMB's basic and applied research and development categories.[4] The low level of DoD's ICRD intensity may be due largely to the absence of a mandate for DoD to conduct R&D jointly with other countries, in contrast to that of NASA or the National Science Foundation. The Department of the Army leads other DoD units in its commitment to international cooperation, with over $240 million in ICRD spending, followed by the Air Force, the Navy, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Defense Nuclear Agency, and the Department of the Navy also commit approximately $1 million each to international cooperation.

DoD's international cooperative activities are dominated by a number of large contracts (more than $10 million) granted to foreign companies or research institutes to conduct R&D on large systems, such as missiles and space systems. In addition to its contracting activity, DoD laboratory-based researchers undertake joint scientific research with foreign counterparts for scores of small projects. DoD ICRD joint efforts were conducted primarily with researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia (satellite system development), Russia, Israel, and various European countries.

DoD has entered into hundreds of bilateral agreements to conduct joint research. The Department of the Army alone has over 300 letters of intent and memoranda of understanding about international scientific cooperation or agreements to share equipment with other nations.[5] Between 1991-1996 DoD's ICRD resulted in the filing of at least 12 patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Agency for International Development (AID)

The Agency for International Development's mission includes conducting R&D with, and for the benefit of, third country partners.[6] Accordingly, we included all of AID's FY95 R&D funding of $313 million toward the ICRD inventory. AID spends the bulk of its R&D money, $162 million, on global issues such as infectious disease, disaster prevention, and environmental issues. Spending on research with, for, or in Africa represents the bulk of AID's regional spending ($73 million), followed by spending in Asia ($25.5 million), Europe/the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) ($22.5 million), and Latin America and the Caribbean ($20.7 million). AID does not break down its budget below these broad categories, nor are project descriptions available, so additional analysis of AID activities was not possible for this study.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Among the government agencies, NSF has by far the most varied and extensive support for projects with an international component. While the total amount of funds being spent on projects featuring scientific cooperation, $220 million, does not approach NASA or DoD levels, NSF's activities represent 10 percent of that agency's FY95 R&D spending of $2.2 billion, making NSF a highly ICRD-intensive agency.[7] Moreover, in terms of total numbers of projects, NSF exceeds most other agencies. NSF funds hundreds of small grants to researchers taking part in collaborative research, technical data exchange, or conferences with foreign researchers. NSF reported 15 bilateral ISTAs with foreign countries to the Department of State in 1995. When scientific projects were conducted on a binational basis, major collaborators on NSF-funded projects were Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. Since 1991, NSF's ICRD activities have resulted in the creation of at least 10 reported inventions.

In addition to funding grants that support ICRD, NSF funds the operation of four centers that serve as focal points for international research: the National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. These centers house researchers from around the world and provide data that support the work of scientists in dozens of countries. NSF's contribution to "big science" projects includes funding ocean drilling and polar research.

Within the NSF directorates, Geosciences leads other directorates in funding projects for international collaborative functions, awarding grants of over $28 million to international activities, an amount representing 7 percent of total R&D funds for this directorate. Geosciences supports large international projects such as ocean drilling, global climate change, and scores of smaller projects on earthquake sciences and seismology.

The Directorate on Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences follows closely behind Geosciences in total commitments to projects with an international component, in large part because this directorate contains the Division on International Cooperative Scientific Activities, a division of NSF with FY95 R&D spending totaling $15.8 million. Mathematical and Physical Sciences also contributes significantly to ICRD activities, devoting more than $12.5 million to international research in physics alone. The Directorate on Biological Sciences spends nearly $10 million on international environmental and biological studies.

Department of Energy (DoE)

The Department of Energy (DoE) spent $180 million in international cooperation on high-energy physics, nuclear waste containment, and energy storage and generation. DoE's ICRD spending is a small portion of its FY95 R&D budget of $6 billion. DoE's official report to the Department of State on bilateral cooperation cites 54 international science and technology agreements to conduct ICRD in effect in 1995. The agency's international office reported to RAND that DoE has active more than 500 international science and technology agreements at the treaty and subtreaty level. Unlike most other agencies, DoE has statutory authority[8] to enter into executive level cooperative agreements, such as those supporting ICRD, without requesting approval from the Department of State. When DoE projects involved just one other nation, Japan, Russia, and Germany were DoE's largest partners. DoE's official ICRD activities since 1991 have resulted in at least 23 patentable inventions.

Within the departmental programs, High Energy and Nuclear and Plasma Physics programs committed the largest amount to projects involving international cooperation, at about $20 million. These programs include commitments to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a large international fusion research project.

Among DoE's contract laboratories, 13 list programs or projects that involved cooperating with foreign researchers or research institutes. Due to the nature of DoE's research, there may be additional international cooperative activities not captured in this inventory--for example, foreign scientists often spend months or years at DoE labs, but these activities would not be counted in this inventory. In addition, DoE laboratory scientists may be working with foreign partners on specific unreported projects. Among the projects we identified at the labs, Argonne National Laboratory's research base had the largest number of projects with foreign partners, with cooperative research programs accounting for more than $35 million. Sandia (ICRD--$22 million), Lawrence Livermore (ICRD--$24 million), and Pacific Northwest (ICRD--$15 million) Laboratories also had significant international cooperative research activities.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Among the agencies of HHS, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends the largest amount on projects involving international collaboration and cooperation. Other HHS agencies participating in ICRD are the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. In 1995 HHS reported 61 executive-level agreements for conducting bilateral research to the Department of State. In addition, the agency annually signs scores of letter agreements with foreign governments to exchange information and equipment.

NIH's international cooperative programs and projects total more than $110 million in FY95 R&D funds. Included in this total is the FY95 R&D funding of $14.2 million for the Fogarty International Center to support a range of international cooperative research projects, conferences, and educational activities. Among the institutes, the top five ICRD spenders are the National Cancer Institute (ICRD--$22 million), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (ICRD--$13 million), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (ICRD--$13 million), the National Center for Research Resources, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (ICRD--$6 million). These institutes are also among the top eight institutes in NIH's funding in the FY95 budget.

The ICRD spending figures for NIH do not necessarily include the amounts spent on the activities in which foreign scientists take part in NIH laboratory-based research. In 1995, NIH hosted more than 3,000 foreign scientists as visitors or guest researchers to conduct research. Recall that unless the program reported international cooperation as a principal focus of research, it was not counted toward the total inventory. Accordingly, all of NIH's international collaborative activities are not represented in the inventory total.

CDC spent close to $15 million of its $217 million FY95 R&D budget on international cooperative projects. In addition to direct spending on ICRD, CDC provides reimbursable support to other countries on infectious diseases and epidemiology that is only partly reflected in the $15 million total. The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research also spent about $2 million on ICRD activities.

HHS researchers collaborated most often with researchers representing Canada, China, Japan, Israel, and Europe. Since 1991, HHS-sponsored intramural ICRD has resulted in the filing of at least 10 patents.[9] Extramural research, which accounts for about 80 percent of NIH's R&D funds, has resulted in hundreds of patents held by private and university-based researchers, an unknown number of which may be the result of international cooperation.

Smithsonian Institution

Although not a government agency, the Smithsonian Institution received a direct appropriation of $136 million in FY95 federal government R&D funds, of which a significant portion went to support ICRD projects and the operation of laboratories for the conduct of cooperative research. In consultation with Smithsonian staff and on examination of Smithsonian's budget, we estimate that the Smithsonian committed about $30 million to ICRD in FY95. The majority of this funding was spent in the Smithsonian's Science Programs, specifically the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, located in Costa Rica, and in the International Environmental Science Program. The Smithsonian also funds an international center for research and development and maintains the Canal Zone Biological Area Fund in Panama--both centers of international scientific research. The Smithsonian has registered with the Department of State two executive-level agreements to conduct joint scientific activities.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The Environmental Protection Agency participates actively in the Global Climate Change project to facilitate international scientific data exchange and cooperative research. In FY95, EPA devoted $26 million to ICRD, of which $25 million was dedicated to some aspect of global climate change research. This activity was managed largely by EPA's Air Quality division. The Toxic Substances and Water Quality divisions also sponsored ICRD activities. In 1995, EPA reported to the Department of State that it had 24 ISTAs in place. Over the past six years, EPA has registered three patents that resulted from international cooperative research.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

The USDA has an extensive international program that includes ICRD activities sponsored in or with other countries. In FY95, the USDA sponsored about $7.5 million in international cooperative research activities through five bureaus: the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service; the Forest Service; the Foreign Agricultural Service; the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service; and the Agricultural Research Service. The majority of USDA support took the form of grants to university-based researchers and technical support funds for international cooperative research. In 1995 the USDA reported 30 ISTAs to the Department of State. When USDA projects were conducted on a binational basis, those countries that accounted for the greatest dollar amount were Mexico, Russia, New Zealand, and Israel.

Department of Commerce (DoC)

The Department of Commerce has a comparatively modest FY95 R&D budget--$1.2 billion--of which $4 million was devoted to some form of international cooperation activities at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As for the NIH, this amount understates the total international cooperation and consultation between NIST and NOAA researchers and their foreign counterparts. NOAA's ICRD activities account for the bulk of the Department of Commerce international cooperative activities. NOAA spent close to $2.5 million on ICRD in FY95. This funding contributed to global climate change research, ocean drilling research, and hurricane research.

In contrast to the small amount of funds spent on ICRD, the Department of Commerce reported to the Department of State the largest number of international science and technology agreements--299--of any of the R&D-sponsoring agencies. These ISTAs are memoranda of understanding with other countries to conduct data exchanges. In addition, DoC ICRD spending was the most productive of any R&D agency, accounting for 33 patents from 1991 to 1996--the most of any agency examined in this study. The patents resulting from international cooperation sponsored by DoC were mainly registered by scientists from NIST.

Other Agencies

Smaller federal R&D agencies also conduct ICRD or share scientific data as part of their science and technology program. In FY95 the Department of Veterans' Affairs sponsored about $2 million of ICRD in its Medical and Prosthetic Research division. The Department of the Interior (DoI), which had 102 ISTAs[10] in effect in FY95 with 46 countries and two regions, committed R&D funds of about $380,000 for ICRD in earthquake sciences and hazard prevention. In FY95 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which reported 73 agency-level ISTAs with 32 countries and two regions for the 1995 Department of State Title V Report, contributed $12,000 for international nuclear safety research.

Mechanisms for Conducting ICRD

The majority of government-funded R&D--between 50 and 90 percent depending upon the agency--is performed under government contract or grant and takes place in laboratories outside of the government. Contractors and grantees tend to be in the private and academic sectors, thus the majority of federally supported ICRD is conducted by private or academic researchers. Other parties conducting ICRD are government agencies, such as AID, and government employees, such as NIH researchers who have foreign collaborators.

ICRD is funded in five ways: (1) through program based activities, such as research within NASA labs that support an ICRD program; (2) through awards--contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements; (3) by funding and maintaining the operation of centers for international research, such as the Smithsonian tropical research center or NSF's atmospheric lab; (4) through funds provided or reimbursed by foreign countries, such as funds provided to a foreign researcher to participate in a U.S. Geological Survey project or funds paid to the Centers for Disease Control to conduct infectious disease testing side-by-side with African research scientists; and (5) funds paid in remission of debt held by the United States, such as the P.L. 480 funds available for USDA research with India. The way in which the government funds ICRD reflects the nature of the benefit that the government expects to receive from the activity. This is discussed in detail in the next chapter.

[1]This includes only one-fourth of the funding appropriated for the International Space Station, even though, in its essential mission, the space station is an international project. However, much of the R&D for the International Space Station is done by U.S. researchers, and including the total $1.9 billion of Station funding skews the final number and misrepresents the extent of international research activities.

[2]The summary table in Appendix A lists the legislative authority for NASA's international science and technology cooperation.

[3]This number is some fraction of the patents that result from NASA-sponsored work. Under U.S. law, contractors who invent a new product or process may retain rights to an invention for the purpose of commercializing this invention, even if it is developed with government money.

[4]The Department of Defense reports seven stages of R&D to OMB as part of its accounting for the $36 billion: 6.1-6.3 correlates with the OMB definition of basic, applied, and development. 6.4-6.7 accounts for testing, evaluation, and design activities.

[5]The summary table in Appendix A lists the legislative authority for this activity.

[6]The summary table in Appendix A lists the legislative authority for this activity.

[7]This amount also does not include capital investment projects that NSF has funded in other countries, nor does it include education and training moneys spent on international projects, since these expenditures are not accounted for as R&D.

[8]The summary table in Appendix A lists the legislative authority for this activity.

[9]Patent applications list the current address of the inventor. In an uncountable number of cases, foreign researchers residing in the United States listing a U.S. address and participating in NIH research have co-filed patents with U.S. citizens. This makes counting foreign co-inventors very difficult. Thus, the number of patents resulting from ICRD conducted in NIH labs is almost certainly understated.

[10]DoI international agreements largely covered the installation of the global seismographic network (GSN), an FY95 $20 million government investment in a network of seismic monitoring sites being paid for by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force. Capital investments like the GSN are not included in government R&D spending data.

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