Title  : NSF 95-58  CISE NEWSLETTER
Type   : Letter
NSF Org: CISE
Date   : April 7, 1995
File   : nsf9558



CISE NEWSLETTER       NSF 95-58 (Replaces NSF 94-7)
April 1995
Dr. Paul R. Young
Assistant Director of NSF for
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)

CONTENTS
    INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS R&D STRATEGIC PLAN
    NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL REPORT ON THE FEDERAL HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
        AND COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE
    TASK FORCE TO EXPLORE FUTURE OF NSF SUPERCOMPUTER CENTERS
    NII 2000 PROJECT CALL FOR WHITE PAPERS:  PRIVATE INVESTMENT AND FEDERAL
        NII POLICY
    METACENTER REGIONAL ALLIANCES - 1995
    NSF THEORY OF COMPUTING PROGRAM SEEKS COMMENTS ON FUTURE DIRECTIONS
    RICHARD KIEBURTZ APPOINTED CCR DIVISION DIRECTOR
    CISE CURRENT STAFF LIST

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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS R&D STRATEGIC PLAN

At the request of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the NSTC
Committee on Information and Communications R&D has developed a strategic
implementation plan which lays out an agenda for information and
communications R&D which has six strategic focus areas: global-scale
information infrastructure technologies, high performance/scalable systems,
high confidence systems, virtual environments, user-centered interfaces and
tools, and human resources and education. The plan builds on the successses
of the interagency HPCC program and sets forth a high level strategy for the
federal government's research and development in information and
communications into the 21st century. It is expected that a workshop with
academic and industrial participants will be held in June, 1995 to refine
and help further develop the plan. The report was released by the White
House on March 21, 1995.  Copies of the report can be obtained by contacting
the National Coordination Office for HPCC: nco@hpcc.gov.

Paul Young of NSF and John Toole, then of ARPA, co-chaired the interagency
group which developed the plan.  Effective March 1, John Toole became head
of the National Coordination Office for HPCC and chair of the Interagency
Committee on High Performance Computing, Communications and Information
Technology which coordinates the federal HPCC program and is actively
involved in working with the NSTC Committee on Informations and
Communications in developing future plans.

The NSTC Committee on Infromations and Communications is co-chaired by
Anita Jones of DOD and Skip Johns of OSTP with Paul Young, NSF CISE
Assistant Director, serving as vice-chair.

------

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL REPORT ON THE FEDERAL HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
AND COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE

In early 1994, Congress asked the National Research Council (NRC) to
examine the status of the high performance computing and communications
initiative.  For this study the NRC's Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board convened a committee of 12 members co-chaired by
Fred Brooks of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Ivan
Sutherland of SUN Microsystems Laboratories.  The committee conducted a
comprehensive review of the HPCC program and produced a report titled
"Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to
Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure."  This report which was
released by the NRC, February 2, 1995 contains important recommendations of
which the CISE community should be aware.  One of its important
recommendations was that the federal government "continue to support
research in information technology.  Ensure that the major funding
agencies, especially the NSF and ARPA, have strong programs for computing
research that are independent of any special initiatives."  Copies of the
report can be obtained from: National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution
Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20148.

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TASK FORCE TO EXPLORE FUTURE OF NSF SUPERCOMPUTER CENTERS

At its October 1994 meeting, the National Science Board (NSB) approved a
two year extension of the cooperative agreements with the four NSF
Supercomputer Centers with the understanding that a plan for the future of
the Centers program would be presented to the NSB in late 1995. To aid in
the task of planning the future, Neal Lane, Director of NSF, and Paul
Young, Assistant Director of NSF for CISE, have appointed a task force to
explore alternative futures for the Centers program and make
recommendations about them.  The task force is chaired by Ed Hayes, former
NSF comptroller and now Vice President for research at Ohio State
University.   Its membership consists of computational and computer
scientists from industry, national labs and universities.  The first
meeting was held in February and the task force expects to complete its
work in the summer of 1995.  The task force is committed to gather inputs
from as broad a segment of the scientific and engineering communtiy as
possible.  If readers have comments or questions, they can contact the
committee staff at <rkaplan@nsf.gov>.
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NII 2000 PROJECT CALL FOR WHITE PAPERS:  PRIVATE INVESTMENT AND FEDERAL NII
POLICY

The NII 2000 Steering Committee -- a group of executives and distinguished
academicians -- seeks white papers from academia, businesses, foundations,
industry, interest groups, trade associations and other interested parties
on topics relevant to NII technology deployment.  The Committee is charged
by the Technology Policy Working Group (TPWG) of the federal Information
Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) with a year-long course of activities to
develop a baseline understanding regarding what technologies are to be
deployed, when, where, and by whom.  The project is being coordinated by the
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National
Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  NSF, NIST
and ARPA are jointly sponsoring the project for the TPWG via a grant through
the Division of Information, Robotics and Intelligent System (IRIS) of NSF's
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).
The project is drawing upon inputs from multiple industries, sectors,
organizations and individual experts.  It is anticipated that the white
papers received may fall into three broad categories: sector-specific (e.g.,
 industry by industry projections over the next 5-7 years), domain-specific
(e.g., those aimed at enabling major NII Application domains) and specific
topics.

 All white papers will be made available to federal NII decision makers and
will be considered for discussion at a Spring Forum in Washington, D.C.,
May 23-24, 1995.  White paper authors will have the opportunity to revise
their papers after the Spring Forum.  All papers -- regardless of whether
they are selected for discussion at the Spring Forum -- will be presented
to the government and will contribute to the Steering Committee's final NII
2000 report to the TPWG and the public.

 Directions for responding to the Call for White Papers, including
guidelines for content, outline of format and style, are available to the
public on-line on the World Wide Web at:
"http://ntiaunix1.utia.doc.dov:70/0/iitf/appstech/techpolwg/tpwgcall.html".
It may also be reached by browsing through "http://iitf.doc.gov"
heirarchy under: "IITF Committees and Working Groups: Committee on
Applications and Technology: The Technology Policy Working Group: Private
Investment and NII Policy Call for Papers."  Abstracts were due March 27.
Forum version papers are due April 27.  Edited (final) version papers are
due June 30.  For more information, contact John Godfrey, CSTB,
(202)334-2605 or e-mail to jgodfrey@nas.edu.

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METACENTER REGIONAL ALLIANCES - 1995

Introduction

The term Metacenter refers to the joint cooperative activities of the four
NSF Supercomputer Centers and others in naturally overlapping research and
technology areas.  The Metacenter facilitates effective collaboration,
communication, technical progress, and interoperability among participating
institutions. To encourage further extension and collaborative integration
of Metacenter activities with those of other providers of high performance
computing, communications and information infrastructure, in FY1994 the
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate
initiated a program of Metacenter Regional Alliances (MRAs). In addition to
augmenting national support activities, MRAs are intended to complement,
expand and strengthen existing Metacenter activities at the regional, state
or local level. Participants in MRAs are expected to prototype new local
and regional activities having the potential for being broadly replicated.

Metacenter Regional Alliances enhance the computing, communications, and
information technology expertise of a wide variety of organizations and
individuals in the university, education, public and private sectors. The
purpose is to facilitate broad involvement in the emerging National
Information Infrastructure (NII), and contribute to the nation's ability to
address Grand and National Challenge application problems, i.e., those
problems which are either computation or information intensive, in the High
Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program.

Six awards were made in FY1994, and four to six additional MRA awards are
anticipated in FY 1995.

A Program Guideline "Metacenter Regional Alliances -1995" (NSF 95-38) is
available on STIS.  For more information, contact Dr. Richard Hirsh, (703)
306-1970, rhirsh@nsf.gov.
-----

NSF THEORY OF COMPUTING PROGRAM SEEKS COMMENTS ON FUTURE DIRECTIONS

There are several new research areas being contemplated for the future in
the Theory of Computing Program, including:
  * Machine learning and human learning interactions;
  * Approximate solutions for NP hard problems;
  * Computational molecular biology utilizing traditional algorithms; and
  * Foundations of complexity theory.

To explore these and other new areas, the NSF Theory of Computing Program
is holding a session at ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing, '95
(STOC'95) on Thursday , June 1, 1995 (5:30pm - 6:30pm).  This session will
provide input for an invitational workshop on new directions for research
in theoretical computer science, chaired by Richard Karp.

Interested parties are invited to submit their thoughts by May 22, 1995 so
that copies of material received can be made available to attendees. Input
is limited to one page and should be sent in writing, or by email to:

       Dana May Latch
       Program Director
       Theoretical Computer Science
       dlatch@nsf.gov
-------

RICHARD KIEBURTZ APPOINTED CCR DIVISION DIRECTOR

Dr. Richard B. Kieburtz has been appointed Division Director for the
Division of Computer and Computation Research (CCR) effective July 1, 1995
and is expected to assume full duties as Division Director by August 1,
1995.  Dr. Kieburtz comes to NSF from the Oregon Graduate Institute of
Science and Technology where he is a Professor in the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering.  His research interests are in functional
programming languages, software generators, and formal methods in software
engineering.
--------

CISE CURRENT STAFF LIST

                National Science Foundation
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
               4201 Wilson Blvd. Suite 1105
                  Arlington, VA 22230

POSITION                       NAME                EXT  NETNAME

DIRECTORATE FOR COMPUTER & INFORMATION SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
     (Suite 1105)              FAX Extension       0577

Assistant Director             Paul Young          1900 pryoung
Deputy Assistant Director      Melvyn Ciment       1900 mciment
Acting Executive Officer       Merrell Patrick     1900 mpatrick
Sr.Advisor for Planning Analysis & Policy
                               Jerome S. Daen      1900 jdaen
Acting HPCC Coordinator        Robert G. Voigt     1900 rvoigt
Policy Analyst                 Roger Shull         1900 rshull
Executive Director, Federal Networking Council
                               Walter Wiebe        1900 wwiebe


       DIVISION OF COMPUTER & COMPUTATION RESEARCH
     (Suite 1145)              FAX Extension       1947

Division Director (Acting)     Bruce H. Barnes     1910 bbarnes
Deputy Division Director       Bruce H. Barnes     1910 barnes
Theory of Computing            Dana Latch          1911 dlatch
Computer Systems               Yechezkel Zalcstein 1914 zzalcste
Numeric Symbolic & Geometric Comp.
                               S. Kamal Abdali     1912 kabdali
Programming Languages & Compilers (Acting)
                               Krishna Kavi        1910 kkavi
                               Helen Gill          1912 hgill
Operating Systems  & Software Systems
                               Krishna Kavi        1912 kkavi
Software Engineering           Helen Gill          1912 hgill
Special Projects               Gerald Engel        1910 gengel


   DIVISION OF INFORMATION, ROBOTICS & INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
     (Suite 1115)              FAX Extension       0599

Division Director              Yi-Tzuu (YT) Chien  1930 ytchien
Deputy Division Director (Acting) Howard Moraff    1928 hmoraff
Special  Projects              Stephen M. Griffin  1930 sgriffin
Special Projects               John  Hestenes      1930 jhestene
Database and Expert Systems    Maria Zemankova     1926 mzemanko
Info.Tech. & Organizations     Su-Shing Chen       1927 schen
Interactive Systems            Gary W. Strong      1928 gstrong
Knowledge Models & Cog. Syst.  Larry Reeker        1926 lreeker
Robotics and Machine Intelligence
                               Howard Moraff       1928 hmoraff
                               Ron Ashany          1928 rashany


  DIVISION OF MICROELECTRONIC INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEMS
     (Suite 1155)              FAX Extension       0610

Division Director              Bernard Chern       1940 bchern
Deputy Division Director       John R. Lehmann     1940 jlehmann
Design, Tools, and Test        Robert B. Grafton   1936 rgrafton
Microelectronic Systems Architecture
                               J. Robert Jump      1936 jjump
Circuits & Signal Processing   John  H. Cozzens    1936 jcozzens
Experimental Systems           Michael  J. Foster  1936 mfoster
Systems Prototype & Fabrication
                               John Staudhammer    1936 jstaudha


        DIVISION OF ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING
     (Suite 1122)              FAX Extension       0632

Division Director              Robert  R. Borchers 1970 rborcher
Deputy Division Director       Richard  Hirsh      1970 rhirsh
Supercomputer Centers          Richard E. Kaplan   1963 rkaplan
Assoc. Prog. Dir.              Lawrence E. Brandt  1963 lbrandt
Staff Associate                Irene Lombardo      1963 ilombard
New Technologies  (Acting)     Richard Hirsh       1962 rhirsh


DIVISION OF NETWORKING & COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH & INFRASTRUCTURE
     (Suite 1175)              FAX Extension       0621

Division Director              Jane S. Caviness    1950 jcavines
Deputy Division Director(Acting) Aubrey Bush       1950 abush
Staff Associate                Donald R. Mitchell  1950 dmitchel
Staff Associate                Roger Taylor        1950 rotaylor
NSFNET                         Priscilla Huston    1949 phuston
International Coordinator      Steven Goldstein    1949 sgoldste
Associate Program Officer      David A. Staudt     1949 dstaudt
Associate Program Officer      Douglas Gatchel     1949
Networking & Comm. Res. Prog. Dir.
                               Aubrey Bush         1949 abush
Program Manager                Darleen L. Fisher   1949 dlfisher


           OFFICE OF CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ACTIVITIES
     (Suite 1160)              FAX Extension       0589

Head                           John Cherniavsky    1980 jchernia
CISE Special Projects - other  Tse-Yun Feng        1981 tfeng
CISE Educational Infrastructure Tse-Yun Feng       1981 tfeng
CISE Research  Infrastructure  Caroline Wardle     1981 cwardle
CISE Minority, Disabled Special Projects
                               Harry Hedges        1981 hhedges
CISE  Education, Women Special Projects
                               Caroline Wardle     1981 cwardle
CISE Minority  Infrastructure  Harry Hedges        1981 hhedges
CISE Instrumentation           Tse-Yun Feng        1981 tfeng


NETADDRESSES ARE: netaddress@nsf.gov (INTERNET) OR
                  netaddress@nsf (BITNET).

TELEPHONE NUMBERS ARE 703-306-EXT
NSF'S TDD NUMBER IS (703) 306-0090
------

CISE Newsletter Editor

Dr. John R. Lehmann
Deputy Division Director
MIPS Division
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22230
703-306-1940
FAX: 703-306-0610
jlehmann@nsf.gov