Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a useful scheme to evaluate the relative efficiency of a set of decision making units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and outputs. Using DEA, the main objective of this study was to compare the performance of R&D program between Space and Nuclear R&D program of Korea. This study only focused on R&D program based on bottom-up approach and two major Lab based program were selected: Basic Atomic Energy Research Institute from Nuclear R&D and National Space Laboratory (NSL) from Space R&D program. DEA scheme was adopted to investigate performance efficiency of both programs. We sampled 700 projects for both R&D fields between years of 2008 ???? 2013 and analyzed whether efficiency measure provides consistent results. For this purpose, two input and three output variables are considered to determine the efficiency. Using CCR model, the average efficiency of both fields over last 6 years is high 78.2% for space R&D and 86.8% for nuclear R&D. DEA projection also shows that 4% of budget and number of projects should be reduced and 6%~9% of SCI paper and 1%~2% patent should be increased for Space R&D program. The nuclear program should reduce 1%~2% of budget and 3%~4% of number of projects and should increase 3%~7% of SCI papers and 4% of patents. This study facilitates the management of space and nuclear R&D program: project evaluation, budget allocation and quantitative value for program evaluation. As a future remaining works, novel scheme or expert knowledge on technical issues on the performance evaluation should be considered

Keywords: DEA (data envelopment analysis), decision making units (DMUs), performance analysis