GRANT FOR AN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SEC. 243. GRANT FOR AN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (a) Authority To Make Grant.— Of the amount authorized to be appropriated pursuant to section 201 for the Defense Agencies, $10,000,000 shall be available for a grant to be awarded through the use of competitive procedures to an institution of higher education to establish an institute for advanced science and technology. (b) Qualifications.— The Secretary of Defense shall select an institution for award of a grant under subsection (a) based upon demonstrated competence of the institution’s faculty. The institution selected for the grant must— (1) be a nationally recognized center conducting artificial intelligence research and education in the areas of natural language and speech processing and task oriented computer animation; (2) be carrying out research on electronically and ionically conducted organic polymers; and (3) have demonstrated competence in research and education in nonlinear optics and visual analysis. (c) Cost-Sharing Requirement.— The grant shall be available for initial construction of a facility, the Federal share of which may not exceed 50 percent of the total cost. (d) Purpose of Grants.— The grant shall be designed to support development of critical technologies as identified by the Department of Defense in its Critical Technologies Plan as required by Public Law 100–456.