Research concentrated on slow fission for power production, but with a growing interest in isotope separation.[22] On 12 June 1940, Vannevar Bush, the president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Harry Hopkins, a key advisor to the president, went to the president with a proposal to create a National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) to co-ordinate defence-related research.[23] The NDRC was formally created on 27 June 1940, with Bush as its chairman.[24] It absorbed the Advisory Committee on Uranium which had gone beyond its original role and was now directing research.