NATIONAL SECURITY SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING FACULTY FELLOWSHIP

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The National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF) program The National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF) program’s name is hereby changed to the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program. Dr. Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) was a forward-thinking policymaker who served as the director of the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, coordinating the work of thousands of scientists in the service of ending the war. In his 1945 report to the President of the United States, Science, The Endless Frontier, Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Bush was concerned about how the scientific research supported by DoD during WWII could be sustained with a focus on peacetime goals. He believed that basic research was "the pacemaker of technological progress". "New products and new processes do not appear full-grown," Bush wrote. "They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science.” https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm Prior to his DoD work, Dr. Bush was a professor and Dean of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founded a large defense and electronics company. Because Dr. Bush’s life work embodies the spirit of the NSSEFF program, the program name is being changed to the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program in his honor.

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