This article is published in the November 2009 issue.

CISE Bytes

In: /

By Jeannette M. Wing, Assistant Director of NSF for CISE

Personnel Updates

CISE welcomes the following new program directors who joined us since March 2009: Mohamed Gouda (CNS/CSR and Trustworthy Computing), from University of Texas at Austin; Le Gruenwald (IIS/III), returning from University of Oklahoma to serve a second tour of duty; Pamela Jennings (IIS/HCC), from Banff New Media Institute at the Banff Centre (Canada); Tracy Kimbrel (CCF/AF), from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center; Xiaoyang (Sean) Wang (IIS/III), from University of Vermont; and Sam Weber, (CNS/CRI and Trustworthy Computing), from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.

We thank these program directors who are returning to their home institutions: Amy Baylor (IIS/HCC), to Florida State University; Jim French (IIS/III), to University of Virginia—Charlottesville; Karl Levitt, to the University of California—Davis; and E.K. Park, to University of Missouri, Kansas City. We celebrated the retirement of IIS program director Larry Brandt, who served NSF for 33 years. We will miss him!

A special welcome to our AAAS Fellow, Erwin Gianchandani, who will be working on energy and health IT for CISE, and to our two Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows, Kera Johnson and Camsie Matis, both working on K-12 education with our EWF program.

I am delighted to announce the new CISE Advisory Committee members who joined us this fall: Bruce Hajek (UIUC), Charles Isbell (Georgia Tech), Susan Landau (Sun), Andrew Ng (Stanford), Keshav Pingali (UTexas/Austin), Jennifer Rexford (Princeton), Julian Goldman (Mass. General Hospital) and Bill Weihl (Google). Many thanks to the CISE AC members who rotated off this past summer, all of whom did double duty by serving two terms: Annie Anton (NCSU), Randy Bryant (CMU), Vint Cerf (Google), Dwight Gourneau (NAMTech), Marc Snir (UIUC), Margaret Wright (NYU), and Ellen Zegura (Georgia Tech).

We Spent It All!

Finally, a huge thanks to the administrative and scientific staff of CISE for their Herculean efforts in spending the CISE allotment of the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“stimulus”) money by the end of fiscal year 2009. To calibrate, NSF’s annual budget is $6B and ARRA gave NSF $3B, of which approximately $2.5B had to have been spent by September 30, 2009. It would be great if the community expressed its appreciation to the CISE staff for their hard work in getting ARRA funds out the door—dropping an email to your program director or a staff person who helped you would go a long way.

CISE Bytes