COMPUTER AND INFORMATION
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING $331,140,000
The FY 1999 Budget Request
for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Activity
is $331.14 million, an increase of $46.97 million, or 16.5 percent, over
the FY 1998 Current Plan of $284.17 million.
(Millions of Dollars)
Information technology plays
an increasingly important role in nearly every part of our lives, affecting
work, commerce, science and engineering research, and education. Over the
past decade, information technology has evolved explosively as computers
have become more powerful and cost-effective, as networks have become more
pervasive and higher performing, and as software has become easier to use
and more capable of serving many purposes. The federal investment in research
has played, and continues to play, a key role in developing early U.S.
leadership in underlying computing, communications and information technologies
and in applying these technologies to many areas of critical national importance.
Through its research, education, and infrastructure programs, the CISE
Activity has been a major contributor in the realization of this success.
CISE goals are to:
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Enable the U.S. to uphold a
position of world leadership in computing, communications, and information
science and engineering.
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Promote understanding of the
principles and uses of advanced computing, communications, and information
systems in service to science and engineering, education, and society.
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Contribute to universal, transparent,
and affordable participation in an information-based society.
This Activity supports investigator-initiated
research in all areas of computer and information science and engineering,
helps develop and maintain a cutting-edge national computing and information
infrastructure for research and education generally, and contributes to
the education and training of the next generation of computer scientists
and engineers. CISE provides over 50 percent of the total federal support
for fundamental research in computer science at colleges and universities.
CISE participates in the
three NSF-wide efforts of Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence, Life
and Earth’s Environment, and Educating for the Future.
Knowledge and Distributed
Intelligence (KDI)
In FY 1999, CISE will include
an increase of $14.12 million for KDI. Plans include:
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Knowledge Networking
- An increase of $5.0 million will support:
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Advancing the next generation
of interconnected communication networks (the Next Generation Internet
- NGI), information, associated databases, and collaborative technologies
to enable new ways of creating, sharing, finding and using knowledge ($2.0
million); and
-
Digital Libraries Phase 2, a
joint NSF, DARPA, NASA, National Library of Medicine, and Library of Congress
collaboration, which will expand into new types of content and collections,
applications of digital libraries, and their societal and economic contexts
($3.0 million).
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Learning and Intelligent
Systems - An increase of $3.12 million will support research on developing
theories and models related to learning and learning-based intelligent
systems, and the use of technology in education.
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New Challenges in Computation
- An increase of $6.0 million will focus on support for advanced networking
(NGI) applications including:
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Control of networked resources
in real-time, including "on-the-fly" data analysis to guide experiments
that require both high speed computation and immediate response;
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Development of metacomputing
applications utilizing unique distributed computing resources requiring
high performance network access for data movement; and
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Data intensive computing for
multi-scale, time-limited applications such as modeling membrane channels.
Life and Earth’s Environment
(LEE)
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In FY 1999, CISE will include
an increase of $2.50 million for LEE. Plans include support for fundamental
work to enable both integrated research challenges and future
environmental observatories. Research emphases include:
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Data analysis, manipulation,
transmission, and creation during simulations; and tools for remote observation
and experimentation in extreme environments; and
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Data storage and retrieval management
in massive databases, data-mining and query optimization, and scientific
databases of data types not currently available.
Educating for the Future
(EFF)
EFF includes a range of
programs supporting innovative approaches to meeting the challenge of educating
students for the 21st Century. In FY 1999, CISE will include
an increase of $2.50 million for EFF. Major emphases include:
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Integration of Research and
Education:
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Research Experiences for Undergraduates
(REU): An increase of $150,000 will enhance support for REU. This program
provides opportunities for undergraduate students to experience hands-on
participation in NSF research projects.
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Integrative Graduate Education
and Research Training (IGERT): CISE will continue to support this program
(+$250,000), which provides support for training graduate students in a
multidisciplinary research setting.
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Faculty Early Career Development
Program (CAREER): An increase of $1.0 million will allow CISE to support
additional awards for young investigators through the CAREER program within
the context of their overall career development and combining the integrated
support of research and education.
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Learning Technologies:
-
In FY 1999, CISE will participate
in a Foundation-wide initiative on Research on Education and Training Technologies
(+$1.0 million). This initiative, a partnership with the Department of
Education, will include support for efforts such as basic research on educationally
relevant technologies; research aimed at developing educational software
and technology-enabled pedagogy; and studies to determine the most effective
educational approaches and practices.
Key Program Functions
CISE pursues the Foundation’s
goals through the following key program functions:
(Millions of Dollars)
1 Includes only
costs charged to the R&RA Appropriation.
In FY 1999, CISE will increase
research project support to $199.29 million from $167.81 million in FY
1998, with emphasis placed on activities such as networking, communications,
universal access, human centered systems, security and reliability, and
on integrating research and education. In facilities support, two complementary
changes will strengthen infrastructure resources for sustaining U.S. world
leadership in science and engineering. First, the Partnerships for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure (PACI) will focus on rapidly implementing
planned partner activities. Second, a total of $25 million will be directed
into the coordinated federal interagency effort to accelerate the Next
Generation Internet (NGI), including: development of the advanced networking
interconnectivity ($11.0 million), fundamental research on advanced networking
($6.0 million), research applications of advanced networking to cutting-edge
science and engineering challenges ($6.0 million), and knowledge networking
($2.0 million). Education and Training increases to a total of $6.27 million,
with an emphasis on efforts to increase the integration of research and
education.
In FY 1999, CISE will implement
efforts to address Foundation-wide concerns about grant sizes by increasing
the average size and duration of the awards and providing more support
for researchers, with particular attention to new investigators. These
efforts will also contribute to increasing the efficiency of the Foundation's
merit review process and achieve greater cost-effectiveness for both NSF
and the university community.
Research Project Support
(Millions of Dollars)
More than half of CISE funding
is directed toward investigator-initiated, fundamental research projects
in computer and information science and engineering. Carried out primarily
at colleges and universities, this encompasses disciplinary and interdisciplinary
collaborative projects and frequently contributes to advancing research
in other science and engineering areas. Examples include approaches to
large scale fundamental scientific and engineering problems that are computationally-
and information-intensive, Digital Libraries, and Advanced Networking Challenges.
CISE makes more than 1,500 awards a year with an average duration of 2.6
years and an average annualized funding level of about $96,000. Projects
involve senior scientists, graduate students, postdoctoral investigators
and undergraduates. To ensure maximal productivity, FY 1999 plans include
increasing the average annualized award size for research projects where
appropriate.
In FY 1999, research funded
through CISE will focus on several broad thematic areas that are planned
to increase $16.32 million:
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Human-centered systems research
to improve interactions among people, computing systems, and information
resources. Research issues are data capture and storage; information management
and access; knowledge representation; and intelligent human and computer
interaction. This fundamental research draws on the cognitive sciences,
biological and behavioral sciences, mathematics and engineering, and advances
universal access, digital libraries, and knowledge networking and its role
in NGI.
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Computing systems research
encompassing core fundamental research such as theory, hardware, software,
algorithms, and systems and component architectures. This explores and
contributes to new possibilities for highly distributed and collaborative
computation and communication environments. Research attention will be
paid to reliability, security, network quality of service; fundamental
problems in networking and communications; and radically new paradigms
for computing.
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Convergence of computing
and communications. The rapid advances in digital networking technology
have created opportunities for all disciplines to explore new ways of conducting
research and education, and studying otherwise intractable problems. To
better define the possibilities as they relate to the NGI, support will
be provided, for example, for applications research requiring high performance
networking to support geographically distributed heterogeneous computing,
real-time remote control of experiments, generation of and access to local
and remote distributed data, computations involving access to massive amounts
of data, and novel educational applications.
Support will continue for the
Major Research Instrumentation program in FY 1999.
In FY 1999, CISE will participate
in a Foundation-wide initiative on Research on K-12 Education and Training
Technologies. This initiative, a partnership with the Department of Education,
will include support for efforts such as basic research on educationally
relevant technologies; research aimed at developing educational software
and technology-enabled pedagogy; and studies to determine the most effective
educational approaches and practices.
Within Research Project
Support, CISE also provides funds for four Science and Technology Centers
that work on broad, interdisciplinary research problems requiring extensive
coordinated efforts.
(Millions of Dollars)
The CISE Science and Technology
Centers are:
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The Center for Research in Parallel
Computation (CRPC) (Rice University, California Institute of Technology,
Syracuse University, University of Tennessee, Argonne National Laboratory,
and Los Alamos National Laboratory);
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The Center for Discrete Mathematics
and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) (Rutgers University, Princeton
University, Bellcore, Bell Laboratories, and ATT Research);
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The Center for Computer Graphics
and Scientific Visualization (CGSV) (University of Utah, Cornell University,
Brown University, California Institute of Technology, and University of
North Carolina); and
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The Center for Cognitive Science
(University of Pennsylvania), which is jointly supported with the Social,
Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Activity.
These centers share several
important characteristics: a unifying cross-disciplinary intellectual focus;
important education and outreach activities; an emphasis on knowledge-transfer,
including linkages with private sector organizations; and partnerships
involving extensive research coordination. Two of these centers, CRPC and
CGSV, are making important contributions to the development and use of
collaboration technologies which permit geographically distributed researchers
to interact in a "virtual" center. The Cognitive Science Center conducts
studies fundamental to understanding learning and intelligent systems.
Funding for CRPC and DIMACS will be reduced as part of the planned phase-down
of their activities.
Research Facilities
(Millions of Dollars)
Two facilities programs,
Advanced Computational Infrastructure (ACI) and Advanced Networking Infrastructure
(ANI), provide state-of-the-art computing and communications essential
for advanced work in all fields of science and engineering. The former
develops and provides the most advanced, leading-edge computing capabilities;
the latter, the major high-performance network and information-communications
infrastructure for the U.S. scientific and engineering community. These
facilities complement each other in enabling and developing experimentation
with high performance computational and communications tools, providing
training and education in the use of cutting-edge scientific computing
and information technologies, and facilitating geographically-separated
and cross-sector collaboration in research and education.
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Support for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure will total $73.96 million in FY 1999, an increase from $69.96
million in FY 1998. With the completion of the phase-down of the NSF Supercomputer
Centers program, the new Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(PACI) program is in operation. Continuity in ongoing efforts has been
achieved, with PACI focusing in FY 1999 on taking advantage of newly emerging
opportunities in high performance computing and communications, as well
as involvement in information intensive activities. As planned, funding
for partner sites will increase in FY 1999 for enabling technologies, application
technologies, and education, outreach and training to broaden and accelerate
the capability of the research community to utilize the advanced computational
capabilities provided by PACI.
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Support for ANI, which includes
the facilities portion of funding for the interagency Next Generation Internet
($11.0 million), will total $48.74 million in FY 1999, an increase from
$37.74 million in FY 1998. NSF’s networking infrastructure activities in
FY 1999 will focus on advanced, high performance network connectivity between
research institutions, and will continue to create the environment essential
for next generation high-performance networking applications, technologies,
and services. The ANI program’s largest single activity is the very
high performance Backbone Network System (vBNS), which is essential to
the success of PACI, and is the core network providing interconnectivity
for Internet 2 and for backbone interconnectivity for NGI. In FY 1999,
the vBNS will selectively upgrade connections from OC-12 (622 megabits
per second) to OC-48 (2.4 gigabits per second), upgrade interconnections
to support Quality of Service (QoS) and integrated service, and continue
support for EPSCoR connections.
This program participates
in the interagency Next Generation Internet activity to complement the
university-led Internet 2 effort supported through the private sector and
participating universities. Within the Next Generation Internet initiative,
ANI focuses on advanced, high performance network connectivity between
research institutions and contributes to basic infrastructure for high-end
research applications.
Education and Training
(Millions of Dollars)
CISE incorporates programs
for education and training to ensure the supply of scientists and engineers
in all computer- and information-related research activities, to increase
the participation of underrepresented groups, to experiment with innovative
applications of computer, communications and information technology, and
to provide training in state-of-the-art computing and communications.
Responding to the need for
more people with advanced skills in all areas of computer and information
science and engineering, CISE will continue to promote incorporating up-to-date
research findings into the undergraduate curriculum. The goals are two-fold:
to improve undergraduate education in technical areas to better prepare
students for careers in industry, research, or teaching; and to improve
educational processes and tools for all students so they are prepared to
participate effectively in the affairs of a technology-intensive society.
In FY 1999, CISE continues to participate in the Integrative Graduate Education
and Research Training (IGERT) program, an NSF-wide program for graduate
traineeships emphasizing multidisciplinary training.
Administration and Management
The administration and management
key program function includes the cost of Intergovernmental Personnel Act
appointments and contractors performing administrative functions.