When planetary scientist Alan Stern gave up a prized post at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., to take charge of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in April 2007, he made it his quest to get more out of the office's $5 billion annual budget, principally by exercising greater vigilance on cost control. Stern put fellow principal investigators on notice that they would be held accountable when projects went over budget and called on scientists and contractors alike to halt the practice of underestimating projects' costs in order to get them approved. "I want to turn heads while I am here;" Stern- told the House Science and Technology Committee at the start of his second month on the job. "I want to produce landmark scientific achievements and to make my directorate and its various projects run more efficiently and stay within their cost boundaries."
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