WASHINGTON -- Speaking today at what was billed as the first annual NASA/University Cyber-Conference, NASA chief, Daniel Goldin, outlined many challenges that face the agency in the next 15 years.

Research is needed, Goldin said, in such areas as spacecraft automation, advanced materials, increasing the safety of human launch vehicles, and the ability for robotic devices to work in extremely hostile environments.

Goldin said he wants to ramp up monies spent, and invest more heavily in universities and colleges. By establishing new partnerships, "the furnace of innovation" resident within the university and college system can be strengthened, he said.

"This is a battle worth fighting," Goldin said.

The effort is seen as an urgent priority by Goldin. He kicked off the initiative today, as part of a three-hour outreach to academia, also broadcast via the internet.

Today, NASA spends about $1 billion dollars a year in grants to universities, cooperative agreements, and contracts, Goldin said. "But a billion dollars is no where near the level of support that we feel is essential for the vitality of our space programand the vitality of our nation," he said.

In recent months, Goldin has underscored a worrisome brain drain of talent going to higher-paying jobs in computer and software businesses and any number of start-up dot-com firms.

Improved cooperation with universities, stresses Goldin, could help in recruiting the best and brightest talent to enhance the NASA work force.

While details are hush-hush, monies to fuel NASAs new university campaign are in discussion, with a NASA action plan at the ready for presentation to Congress and a new president.

"This initiative is an opportunity to add money to our program, and well explain what we would do with those monies," said retired Air Force General Spence Armstrong, senior advisor to Goldin. Armstrong led the NASA look-see on how best to further space agency partnerships with colleges and universities, including large research institutes, along with smaller colleges and minority institutions.

The plan, Armstrong told SPACE.com, will offer to a new administration an ability to have an "immediate and widespread impact" in enhancing NASA-university cooperation. As example, a doubling of graduate-student researchers at NASA is one hoped for outcome, he said.

A key complaint voiced by universities, Armstrong said, is how NASA has handled its grant programs in the past, as well as the stability of funding.

A NASA white paper on ways to help build bridges between the space agency and academia suggests:

• Sponsorship of longer-term research efforts to provide universities with planning assurances. Doing so would allow universities to establish the resources to attack more difficult research problems.
• A need for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. This includes traditional aerospace science and engineering departments; biological and medical departments; as well as non-traditional departments such as economics, industrial psychology, policy, law, etc.
• NASA should collaborate with other government agencies and industry to leverage the taxpayers dollars sent to universities.

Some of the thorniest matters still-to-be-tackled are export-import control laws, national security worries and technology-transfer issues -- topics of late that spark more heat than light, given the openness and free-exchange of scientific and research information normally ascribed to the university setting.

"We are making progress along with the White House science office and the State Department," Armstrong said. "This is obviously a large area to worry about, with lots of players in national security. But we hope to get some clarification that will help the universities," he said.

Late last month, NASA established an Office of Biological and Physical Research, a new NASA enterprise focused on molecular biology, nanotechnology, information technology and genomics.

"Through this new enterprise, the best and brightest from across the sciences and across the country, can focus their talents on meeting the challenges NASA faces in our future missions," Goldin said.

Furthermore, on October 16, NASAs Goldin tapped Nobel Prize laureate, Baruch Blumberg, as senior advisor to help guide the newly created biological and physical research enterprise.

Blumbergs key task is to help integrate biological research and technology throughout NASA, and will draw upon strengths of the university community.