GAITHERSBURG, Md. — ON her way to becoming the first woman to win a

Ph.D. in applied physics at the California Institute of Technology, Arati

Prabhakar realized what she did not want to do: immerse herself in narrowly

focused research. "If the worst thing you learn in graduate school is what you

don't want to do, that is not all bad," she said.

 

Instead she and her thesis adviser decided she should apply her learning to

public policy. "We had this problem of deciding what to do about me," she said.

"Finally he suggested that I should become a Congressional intern, even though

neither of us was quite sure what a Congressional intern did."

 

That was in 1984, and the conversation changed her life. Ms. Prabhakar, who

was born in India and whose name is pronounced AR-ah-thee pra-BAH-kar,

took her adviser's advice and began a decade-long career as a technology

analyst for the Government. Her reward came this year, when President Clinton

named her the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology,

formerly the National Bureau of Standards.

Ms. Prabhakar wants the institute, once simply a setter of technical standards

like weights and measures, to play a big role in channeling to small and

medium-sized American manufacturers technologies that can make them faster

and more efficient.

 

The appointment of a 34-year-old woman from outside came as something of a shock in a 3,000-employee agency where advancement had historically been from the inside and by seniority.

 

"This was quite a departure for a staid old institution that a lot of people still

refer to as 'the Bureau,' " said Daniel S. Greenberg, publisher of the newsletter

Science & Government Report. "Most of her predecessors were products of the

agency and spent most of their careers there."

 

Unlike the Reagan and Bush Administrations, which opposed most Federal

efforts to assist American industry, the Clinton Administration enthusiastically

supports technology policy and has selected the National Institute of Standards

and Technology as the civilian agency to help manufacturers.

 

If the Administration has its way in Congress, the agency's budget will grow from about $380 million to $1.4 billion over the next four years. The additional money would go to enlarge a group of seven manufacturing technology centers into a nationwide network of 30 centers with 100 smaller outreach offices in smaller cities. [These are the Trojan Triangles - on the surface, university connected research and development, small businesses with preferential government contracts, sub rosa - the "businesses" that will run the technology for the fusion centers - which are in fact, the cyber equivalent of the East German Guard Towers for Prison Camp, USA.  ]  

 

One example, Ms. Prabhakar said, is underwriting the process of adapting composite materials developed for the space program for use in sporting goods.  [The sports connection - see if you can figure it out.]

 

The intent, she said, is to make the agency a partner with American manufacturers and to underwrite developments that no single company would find practical.

 

Ms. Prabhakar came to the United States at the age of 3 with her mother, who was seeking an advanced degree in social work at the University of Chicago. When she was 7 the family moved to Lubbock, Tex., where she grew up. She breezed her way to a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Texas Tech University but then found the going a lot tougher at Cal Tech, one of the nation's premier technical schools.

 

"I went from being at the top of my class, like everyone else in the program, to being in the middle of my class -- on a good day," she said in an interview with Science magazine earlier this year. That was where she also discovered her lack of appetite for the meticulous investigation of highly specific subjects that is the focus of traditional research.

 

"I didn't want to do deep and narrow," she said. "I like learning a little about a lot of technologies and making connections." Nevertheless, she pressed on to get the Ph.D., convinced that it would open doors.

 

Afterward, she headed for Washington as a Congressional fellow in the Office of Technology

Assessment. Once there she delved into issues where technology and policy meet, preparing reports for Congress on subjects like "Microelectronics Research and Development" and "Intellectual Property in an Age of Electronics and Information."

 

HER work was noticed at the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Darpa, now known as Arpa, has helped keep American manufacturers in the electronic and microchip industries by financing research into advanced technology and production methods. Unlike N.I.S.T., its projects must have military applications.

 

Craig Fields, [should be hung for treason] a former director of Darpa, said Ms. Prabhakar has the unusual combination of technical knowledge, entrepreneurial flair and ability to get things done within government in an agency that emphasized individual responsibility.