NSF Taps CRA to Form Computing Community Consortium

On September 18, 2006, In Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, By Peter Harsha

Update: (9/29/06) — The CCC Planning Group has released a white paper with much more detail on the structure and purpose of the CCC. They’ve also released a timeline of future activities.
The first step in “Bootstrapping Phase 1″ has been completed with the naming of an interim CRA GENI Community Advisory Board. Its members are:

Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Lab
Vint Cerf, Google
Susan Graham, University of California, Berkeley
Ron Johnson, University of Washington
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington (Chair)
Peter Lee, Carnegie Mellon University
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech

Finally, we’ve set up a page for all CCC related information: http://cra.org/ccc.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Peter Harsha, CRA
202-234-2111 x 106
NSF TAPS CRA TO CREATE COMPUTING COMMUNITY CONSORTIUM
WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2006 – The National Science Foundation today announced an agreement with the Computing Research Association (CRA) to establish a consortium of computing experts that will provide scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects.
Under the three-year, $6 million agreement, CRA will create the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) to identify major research opportunities and establish “grand challenges” for the field. The CCC will create venues for community participation for developing visions and creating new research activities.
One of the first tasks of the CCC will be to assume the role of community proxy organization for the NSF’s Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) Project, providing broad scientific oversight to its potential construction and operation. In addition, the CCC will provide scientific oversight for future NSF large-scale computing research initiatives.
A council of 9 to 15 members and a council chair will lead the CCC. All council members will be leaders of the computing research community and will represent the diversity of that community.
“We’re pleased that NSF has charged our organization with establishing the CCC,” said Dan Reed, chair of the Computing Research Association and director of the Renaissance Computing Institute in North Carolina. “Computing research continues to fuel the innovations that drive economic productivity. We see the CCC as a mechanism that will enable continued innovation by enhancing our community’s ability to envision and pursue long-term, audacious computing research goals.”
Reed said the main challenges for the CCC will be to catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives.
About CRA. The CRA was established 30 years ago and has members at more than 250 research entities in academia, industry and government. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.

We’ll have more on this announcement shortly, including a white paper that will help provide a little more detail. But in the interim, you can get some additional context by looking at NSF’s original solicitation for the CCC, “Defining the Large-Scale Infrastructure Needs of the Computing Research Community.”

 
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CRA Members Visit Capitol Hill

On September 15, 2006, In CRA, Funding, FY07 Appropriations, People, Policy, Research, By MelissaNorr

As part of the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), CRA brought participants to the 2nd annual CNSF Fall Hill Visits Day this week. The overall visits brought over 80 people from many scientific disciplines to Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers and staff regarding NSF funding. Robert Constable from Cornell University, Mary Jane Irwin from Penn State University, Joe Kearney from the University of Iowa, Charles Nicholas from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Michael Oudshoorn from Montana State University, below with Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), ably represented CRA and met with 30 Congressional offices to emphasize the importance of NSF funding to computer research and innovation. The participants shared their personal research and funding stories and many others from their universities. The message was well received on the Hill with many offices encouraging participants to follow up in the future with stories or problems involving research and funding.
Baucus and Oudshoorn1.jpg As we’ve noted before, meetings between scientists and members of Congress and their staff are an incredibly effective tool in keeping Congress interested and engaged in the needs of scientists. The examples of research done in a particular district are invaluable to a member of Congress and can be a real boon for science when it comes time for appropriations votes. It’s also important to point out that Congressional offices will not turn away constituents who ask for a meeting although it often means you will meet with a staff member instead of your Senator or Representative. Don’t discount those meetings—Congressional staffers are the eyes and ears of their bosses!
We highly encourage all members of the CRA community to get in touch with their Congressional delegation, either by visiting Washington, DC or going to their local offices. If you have any questions or concerns about setting up appointments or meeting with Congressional staff, please let us know. We’re happy to help any way that we can.

 
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DoE Announces New Funding for Computational Science Projects

On September 8, 2006, In Funding, Research, By MelissaNorr

The Department of Energy announced new funding for computational science projects over the next three to five years. The press release describes the projects as “aimed at accelerating research in designing new materials, developing future energy sources, studying global climate change, improving environmental cleanup methods and understanding physics from the tiniest particles to the massive explosions of supernovae.” The new projects will be sponsored by the DoE’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program and will be called SciDAC-2. These projects will rely heavily on high performance computing.
The announcement states:

In support of these scientific applications, approximately $24.3 million in annual awards will allow SciDAC-2 to establish nine Centers for Enabling Technologies. Multidisciplinary teams will be led by national laboratories and universities and will focus on meeting the specific needs of SciDAC science applications researchers as they move toward petascale computing. The centers will specialize in applied mathematics, computer science, distributed computing or visualization and will be closely tied to specific science applications.
SciDAC-2 will also increase the presence of the program in the academic community by creating four university-led SciDAC institutes with thirteen participating universities. The institutes will receive approximately $8.2 million in awards annually. Through hands-on workshops and tutorials, the SciDAC institutes will help a broad range of researchers prepare their applications to take advantage of the increasing capabilities of supercomputing centers around the country as well as help foster the next generation of computational scientists.

Information on all of the programs and Centers can be found at SciDAC.

 
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