CERT falls under the Software Engineering Institute, which is a Federally-Funded Research and Development Center sponsored by the Department of Defense. CMU administers the SEI in the same way MIT administers Lincoln Laboratory.<p>This kind of thing happens in private industry as well. For example some CMU professors also hold positions at Google (while still remaining active CMU professors doing public research, i.e., not on sabbatical) and do work that might not get released to the public.<p>Admittedly, the line between SEI and CMU is rather fuzzy, so the line between contract work for the government (or whoever else) and academic research is fuzzy.<p>Should there be a brighter line between contract work and academic work?