After graduation from Carnegie Mellon, Freeman was a researcher, professor, and administrator at the University of California, Irvine's Department of Information & Computer Science from 1971 to 1987, where he focused on artificial intelligence and software engineering research, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation [REF].
In 1987, Freeman became the director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Computer and Computation Research; in this post, he managed about $20 million in grants each year, and helped develop the High Performance Computing and Communications program [REF].