Dr. Carroll M. Williams, Bussey Professor of Biology, will be looking for new ways of exterminating 3000 harmful species of insects this year with the $69,000 in federal research money he recently received.

Williams, who has never suffered from lack of funding in this type of research, is working on what he calls a third generation pesticide--following the first two generations of arsenate of lead and DDT--that is unusual because it is non-toxic to mammals and is biodegradable.

James H. Shaw, professor of Nutrition at the School of Dental Medicine, is being given $32,000 by the candy company M&M-Mars to investigate the cavity-causing potential of certain candies produced by the company so that substitutes may be made to manufacture candies less harmful to teeth.

Shaw says it's too early for him to draw any conclusions from his research, which he has been doing for more than a year and which involves laboratory experiments with rats. He feeds the rats a well-balanced diet for part of the day and then candy bars for the rest of the day to get data which will help determine the cavity-causing potential of a Mars bar.

Williams and Shaw's research represents only a very small portion of the total funds researchers at Harvard receive. Last year, one-third of Harvard's overhead costs, approximately $68 million, was paid through research contracts and grants, both federal and private.

It takes 32 people in the Office of Research Contracts (ORC) on the fourth floor of Holyoke Center to administer all these funds. The office, run by Merton C. Barstow Jr., handles the legal and administrative side of research funds for all ten faculties in the University.

"We want to make sure that we're getting into an arrangement that we can afford," Barstow said. "The University's concern is that it be reimbursed. If the University had money for research it wouldn't have to ask for money."

The ORC works out the formal legal obligations for cost sharing between the sponsor and the University, according to Barstow. A typical agreement would involve the sponsor putting up 95 per cent of the funding for a project with Harvard kicking in the last five per cent.

Since research funding is arranged through the ORC, that office handles the incoming money for the researcher placing it in accounts for the researchers so that they never have to deal with cash, Judith O. Semper, assistant director of ORC, says.

In addition to purely financial negotiations, Barstow says that his office makes sure the terms of any research contract do not contradict the University's policies.

"The basic problem we have to be concerned about is right to publish. Harvard doesn't allow any classified research. Sometimes the government wants to have the right to censor or edit manuscripts," Barstow says.

When a government agency does ask for the right to edit or censor research results, ORC negotiators "try to persuade the government against it. The task of the negotiators is to get rid of publication restrictions or anything that makes doing research difficult for researchers," Barstow says.

The ORC is constantly at work trying to resolve clauses in contracts which permit the government project officer to redirect research.

Barstow said that in one case negotiations with HEW over a clause calling for "technical direction" lasted a year before the government agreed to change it to a milder form allowing HEW to have "technical monitoring" rights, Semper says.

Shaw, like most Faculty members, is appreciative of Harvard's insistence on academic freedom. "I'm in a more secure place to be accepting money than in any other institution," Shaw says. "ORC protects the Faculty to an unusual degree...my hands would've been tied (when doing the M&M-Mars research) more if it weren't for the University policy," he adds.