With Congress set to spend the month of August in recess, it’s a good time to take a moment to see where the appropriations process stands. Our readers will remember that when the Republicans took full control of Congress in January, they vowed to return the body to “regular order;” meaning passing the 12 appropriations bills before the end of fiscal year (October 1st). So how have they done?
Surprisingly, pretty well. For the first time in 6 years, both chamber’s Appropriations Committees passed all 12 of their bills through the full committees. The House was even able to pass half of their bills through the full chamber. Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends, as the Senate Democrats felt their priorities were not being considered and they began filibustering the budget process at the end of spring. The bills have not moved for the entire summer.
The House Republican leadership has been adamant for the summer that the process would still move forward. However, just before the House chamber went on recess last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) conceded that work on a continuing resolution, to fund federal agencies at Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) levels, would begin. Now the question is: will there be another government shutdown?
That’s an interesting question and the answer isn’t completely clear. While the shutdown in 2013 was embarrassing for all involved, no one really suffered from the bad press (“Exhibit A” being the Republicans making huge gains in the 2014 elections). As Congress will not have to go before voters for another year, the situation is similar to 2013. Throw in how many sitting members of Congress are running for their party’s presidential nomination, grandstanding on the federal budget now, and forcing a shutdown, is very possible. Also, there is a new threat of tying defunding Planned Parenthood to the budget, which Congressional Democrats have vowed to block, and President Obama has vowed to veto if passed. So there are plenty of reasons to see a shutdown as possible.
The flipside of this argument is that senior members of Congress, the members who were furious about the 2013 shutdown and who ultimately compromised to reopen the government, will not allow the budget to be hijacked again. Also, the Republicans are under a great deal of pressure to be seen as able to govern effectively; a shutdown can be used to show they can’t. As well, since both appropriations committees have done their work (i.e.: preparing their 12 bills), they will require much less time to get an omnibus bill together. Lastly, a presidential election is not a midterm election; the voters who come out are less partisan, and care more about the parties working together, and a memory of two shutdowns in four years may be too much for voters to forget.
The science policy community in Washington is divided between pessimists and optimists on the budget:
The pessimists see a shutdown as very likely, and a year long CR as the final outcome. This would not be good for anyone, as budget sequestration is still set to restart in October. Any across-the-board cuts would be worsened by the cuts due to inflation.
The optimists see a continuing resolution, or a series of CRs, until the end of the year, with no shutdown, and another grand budget deal (like the Ryan-Murray Budget Agreement happening then. This is more likely to be good, but there are no guarantees, especially for science accounts.
Of course, these outcomes aren’t the only possibility, just the likely outcomes. Both sides have their arguments, but it is still very much “reading tea leaves” at this point. We’ll have to get through the August Recess first, and see how much progress, or lack there-of, happens on CR negotiations. Keep checking back for more updates.
Yesterday, President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative. This new initiative is to ensure the United States’ continued leadership position in High-Performance Computing in the coming decades. As the announcement from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) says, “this coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy will draw on the strengths of departments and agencies to move the Federal government into a position that sharpens, develops, and streamlines a wide range of new 21st century applications.” The initiative is designed to, “advance core technologies to solve difficult computational problems and foster increase use of new capabilities in the public and private sectors.”
The announcement includes examples of the type of problems and potential research areas that this strategy can tackle. From the Precision Medicine Initiative to exascale computing at DOE, the potential for High-Performance Computing is almost limitless. Combined with the fact that advances in computing are helping to drive advancements in other scientific fields, this strategy could be similar to the Larry Smarr moment in the early 1980s, when NSFnet, one of the predecessors of the Internet, was established.
How is this likely to be received in Congress? It’s hard to tell, as Congress and the Administration have been at loggerheads over almost every political issue. That being the case, there is a good chance this Initiative will be received positively; long time readers will remember that the firsttwo hearings the House Science Committee had this session were on HPC. This was done deliberately to educate new members of the committee on the field’s importance to the Federal scientific ecosystem.
In closing out this article, I want to quote the last paragraph of OSTP’s announcement, as it is quite concise as to the importance of this strategy, and HPC as a whole, to the country:
By strategically investing now, we can prepare for increasing computing demands and emerging technological challenges, building the foundation for sustained U.S. leadership for decades to come, while also expanding the role of high-performance computing to address the pressing challenges faced across many sectors.
The Coalition for National Security Research (CNSR), a broad-based coalition of 74 members (of which CRA is a member) including industry, research universities and institutes, and scientific and professional associations committed to a strong Defense Science and Technology (S&T) Program, released a statement commending the Senate Appropriations Committee for their work on S. 1558, the Fiscal Year 2016 funding bill for the Department of Defense. CNSR was specifically applauding the committee for their support of Defense S&T at the 6.2 applied and 6.3 advanced technology development accounts, while also raising concerns about 6.1 basic research funding levels. The statement makes the case that Congress should adhere to the “20/20 Principle,” which calls for investment in basic research to comprise 20 percent of the Defense S&T overall budget and Defense S&T to comprise 20 percent of the RDT&E (or Research, Development, Test and Evaluation) budget. The statement points out that, “the 20/20 Principle is based on the recommendations from the National Academies reports Rising Above the Gathering Storm (2007) and the Assessment of Department of Defense Basic Research (2005).”
The Senate bill would provide the following funding for the different defense research accounts:
6.1 Basic Research – $2.31 billion for FY16, which is an increase of $40 million, or 1.7 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($2.28 billion) and $229 million more than what was in the President’s budget request.
6.2 Applied Research – $4.93 billion for FY16, which is an increase of $280 million, or 6.0 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($4.65 billion) and $214 million more than what was in the President’s budget request.
6.3 Advanced Technology Development – $5.58 billion for FY16, which is an increase of $252 million, or 4.7 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($5.33 billion) and $114 million more than what was in the President’s budget request.
DARPA – $2.87 billion for FY16, which is a decrease of $50 million, or -1.7 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($2.92 billion) and $107 million less than what was in the President’s budget request.
The proposed increases in the 6.2 and 6.3 accounts are quite good, as they will keep the budgets above an inflation increase. However, 6.1’s increase will be mitigated somewhat by inflation and DARPA’s decrease will be amplified.
By way of comparison, the House Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 2685), which was passed by the full chamber in May, has the following numbers for the research accounts:
6.1 Basic Research – $2.10 billion for FY16, which is a decrease of $177 million, or -7.8 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($2.28 billion) and $11.5 thousand more than what was in the President’s budget request.
6.2 Applied Research – $4.84 billion for FY16, which is an increase of $190 million, or 4.1 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($4.65 billion) and $124 million more than what was in the President’s budget request.
6.3 Advanced Technology Development – $5.73 billion for FY16, which is an increase of $409 million, or 7.7 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($5.33 billion) and $271 million more than what was in the President’s budget request.
DARPA – $2.97 billion for FY16, which is an increase of $56 million, or 1.9 percent, over what was appropriated for FY15 ($2.92 billion) and is exactly what the President’s budget request is.
As our readers can tell, the House numbers are better for 6.3, only slightly less good for 6.2, better than the Senate for DARPA (though it will just keep ahead of inflation), but is absolutely horrible for 6.1.
The next step in the process for S. 1588 will be to go before the full Senate for consideration. It’s likely to hit a brick wall there, as Senate Democrats have vowed to filibuster all spending bills unless their priorities are considered in the budget and the ongoing spending debates. The expectation within the science advocacy community is that this will stall the budget process for the rest of the year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to return the Federal budget to regular order (meaning to pass the budget on time), but he has an uphill battle if Democrats stay united on their filibuster. We will continue to monitor the situation and will report any new developments that arise.
The National Science Foundation has released a new public access plan for scientific journal articles that arise from research wholly or partly funded by the agency. This plan, called “Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries,” is an outgrowth of an Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, released in February of 2013, which directed, “each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government.” Let’s look at the details.
The NSF plan is very much in line with the requirements set out in OSTP’s memo. It sets a January 2016 effective date; all grant proposals submitted on or after this date will be subject to the plan. As well, NSF has identified the Department of Energy’s (DOE) PAGES (or Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science) system as the agency’s, “designated repository.” (Note: Most probably the use of DOE’s PAGES is in order to control cost, rather than create a wholly new system just for NSF; part of the instructions in the OSTP memo was that any new system must be implemented and operated within existing budgets). The plan requires that, “either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions,” must be submitted to the PAGES system within 12 months of publication. All of this is in line with OSTP’s requirements.
There is a section on data management as well, which seems to be the first indications of an Open Data plan. The agency’s plan defines research data as, “the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings.” However, NSF writes in their plan that, “in the future, NSF will explore whether all data underlying published findings can be made available at the time of publication.” Anything further is still in the early stages of conception and not covered in this specific plan.
How does NSF’s plan fit into the larger Open Access debate? Seeing as it’s in line with OSTP’s memo, and by extension Administration policy priorities, and Congress has given OSTP room, at least temporarily, to direct science agencies in this matter, it seems the likelihood of push back is minimal. However, that could change with a new bill in Congress, as the legislature does have final oversight. For example, the original draft of the 2014 COMPETES Act in the House Science Committee tried to speed up the adoption of Open Access provisions at the science agencies; that could easily be repeated, as there are still many Open Access supporters in Congress. On the flipside, it is possible that the publisher community could get a repeal bill introduced by a sympathetic member of Congress, removing any such provisions from the agencies. This issue will have to play out more before any final outcome is assured.
IEEE Computer Society, “the world’s leading membership organization dedicated to computer science and technology,” and a member of CRA, is looking for nominations for three prestigious annual awards. The deadline to submit nominations is next Wednesday, July 1st. The details on each award are below. If you would like to nominate someone, please go to the award nominating page on the IEEE-CS’s webpage.
Established in late 1997 in memory of Seymour Cray, the Seymour Cray Award is awarded to recognize innovative contributions to high performance computing systems best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray. The award consists of a crystal memento and honorarium of $10,000. This award requires 3 endorsements.
Established in 1992 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society. It honors the memory of the late Dr. Sidney Fernbach, one of the pioneers on the development and application of high performance computers for the solution of large computational problems. The award, which consists of a certificate and a $2,000 honorarium, is presented annually to an individual for “an outstanding contribution in the application of high performance computers using innovative approaches.” This award requires 3 endorsements.
Established in memory of Ken Kennedy, the founder of Rice University’s nationally ranked computer science program and one of the world’s foremost experts on high-performance computing. A certificate and $5,000 honorarium are awarded jointly by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding contributions to programmability or productivity in high-performance computing together with significant community service or mentoring contributions. This award requires 2 endorsements.
On June 10th, the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee approved their Fiscal Year 2016 funding bill, which funds, among other things, the budget for the National Science Foundation. The bill was passed on a bipartisan basis in the subcommittee, with only three votes (out of 30 total) against it. Unlike the House CJS version, this bill doesn’t include burdensome language restricting how NSF can spend their allocated funds. However, the bill does flat fund the agency for FY16. That will translate into a cut, once inflation is taken into account, but given the budget environment in Congress, this outcome is middle of the road.
The bill provides for $7.34 billion for the National Science Foundation for Fiscal Year 2016. That is $430 thousand (yes, thousand) less than what was enacted in FY15, and $380 million less than what the President requested in his February budget request. For the Research and Related Activities (RRA) account, where most of the research funding is located at the Foundation, the committee provides $5.93 billion for FY16, which is the same as it was funded in FY15 and $253 million below the President’s request. For the most part, the budgets are flat funded in real dollars, but these translate into a cut once inflation is factored in. These numbers aren’t terribly surprising; however, they are disappointing since the CJS subcommittee has so many science champions, on both sides of the aisle, as members. Of course, another way of looking at this is that the numbers could be much lower.
However, the bill is not without its good news, and this time it concerns what isn’t in it. None of the burdensome bureaucratic language on accountability, which is in the House CJS bill, is present in its Senate counterpart. As well, there are no stipulations on NSF directorate level funding, thus sparing Geophysical Sciences and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorates cuts to their budgets. Whether the burdensome language gets included in the final bill is something that will have to get worked out in conference between the House and Senate after each passes their bill.
The bill now goes to the full committee for consideration. It is likely to pass, sometime in late June or July, and then move to the Senate floor for consideration. The bill’s future after that is in question, since Senate Democrats have threatened to filibuster all appropriations bills moving forward unless their priorities on federal spending are considered. Congressional Republicans, and Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY), have vowed to move the legislature to “regular order” (i.e. passing the Federal budget bills on time) but, short of removing the filibuster rule in the Senate, there will be little-to-nothing the Republicans can do if the Democrats make good on their threat. Events will have to play out more in order to have a better idea of what the final outcome will be. Continue to follow us at the Policy Blog for future developments.
[With this post, CRA welcomes Kayla Holston, our new Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellow, who will be working with CRA policy staff this summer. Kayla is a rising second-year Rodman Scholar at the University of Virginia, pursuing majors in biomedical engineering and cognitive science. She’s particularly interested in computing as it relates to neuroscience research, and plans of a future practicing neurosurgery. We’re thrilled to have her on staff this summer and expect to see much more from her on the blog in the weeks to come! – Peter Harsha]
The Senate is considering S. 1398, or the “Energy Title of America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015,” a bill aimed at “extending, improving, and consolidating energy research and development programs” at the Department of Energy, specifically at the Office of Science (SC) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). In simple terms, it sets funding policy for these two science agencies for the next three years. This bill was introduced by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in mid-May and is currently awaiting consideration by the Senate Energy Committee. The bill calls for an increase in funding for the DOE SC and ARPA-E and the funding numbers are aligned with the 2007 and 2010 COMPETES Acts. In addition, it proposes the elimination of a number of duplicative programs at the Department, a number of which are research fellowships. Let’s look at some of the details.
The funding numbers for both the DOE SC and ARPA-E are quite good and are true successors to early versions of COMPETES. As our readers will recall, the DOE SC is home to the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, a program that encompasses much of the Department’s computing research. S.1398 calls for the DOE SC to be authorized at $5.271 billion for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, a 2.7 percent increase over the pervious Fiscal Year budget ($5.131 billion for FY15)—it’s also worth noting that this is almost identical to the $5.247 billion authorized (but never appropriated) for FY11 in the 2010 COMPETES Act. After FY16, the proposed funding for the SC continues to exhibit an upward trend, with about a 4 percent increase each year:
It is important to note that, while the proposed FY16 funding is greater than what was appropriated in FY15, it is still below President Obama’s requested budget for FY16 ($5.34 billion).
S. 1398 proposes a similar funding pattern for ARPA-E. The Agency was authorized for $300 million in the original 2007 version of COMPETES, but has been mostly flat funded since its establishment. In S. 1398, Senator Alexander proposes a yearly ~4 percent increase in funding, aligning the numbers with what was originally proposed in the COMPETES Acts:
FY16: $291.2 million
FY17: $303.3 million
FY18: $314.7 million
FY19: $327.3 million
FY20: $340.6 million
It’s worth pointing out that S. 1398 only authorizes funds—it does not appropriate funding for the agencies. In other words, this bill would set policy for these parts of the DOE and state how much they should be funded. It is the job of the Appropriations Committees and separate bills to determine how much money DOE SC and ARPA-E actually get to work with.
Alexander also proposes the consolidation of a few programs. Namely, S. 1398 would combine funding for the DOE Early Career Awards for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Researchers and the Distinguished Scientist Program. The bill also calls for elimination of the Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE) Graduate Fellowship Program, with the idea that those grants will instead fall under the Science Education Program.
So what are the bill’s prospects? That’s unclear at this point. It’s not exactly clear whether the bill will move in the Senate as a free-standing bill, or get folded into a broader DOE authorization, or a Senate version of the COMPETES Reauthorization. What we do know is that it represents a marked change of approach from the DOE provisions in the House version of the America COMPETES Act Reauthorization, which we’ve previously discussed here. At some point in the legislative process, whether its with a COMPETES Reauthorization or an Energy Bill, the House and Senate will have to resolve their differences and find something they can both pass. What that final bill will look like is anyone’s guess, but from the community’s perspective, we hope it embodies more of the Senate’s approach than what we find in the House COMPETES Reauthorization.
We will continue to monitor S. 1398 for additional developments; be sure to check back for updates!
On May 20th the full House Appropriations Committee passed the Commerce, Justice, Science funding bill; this is important to our community because it is the bill that contains the funding for the National Science Foundation, which funds 89 percent of all university-led fundamental computer science research in the U.S. First, the not-so-bad news: NSF doesn’t exactly get a budget cut in actual dollars; it in fact gets a small bump (though when inflation is considered, that bump may go away completely). The worse news: NSF gets some onerous language on how to spend the tax-dollars it’s allocated. Let’s get into the details.
NSF received $7.34 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the present budget we are working under. For FY16, the President requested $7.72 billion, or an increase of $379.3 million (or 5.2 percent) over FY15 levels. In the House Appropriations bill, the agency would receive $7.39 billion in FY16, an increase of $50 million (or 0.7 percent). Again, it’s an increase in actual dollars – so things could have been worse. But the bill contains some disheartening language restricting the agency’s activities.
The most significant section concerns restricting how money in NSF’s Research and Related Activities account, where most of the money for research resides, can be spent. The relevant section reads:
The Committee directs NSF to ensure that Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; Engineering; and Biological Sciences comprise no less than 70 percent of the funding within Research and Related Activities. Further, the Committee directs that NSF allocate no less than the fiscal year 2015 levels for the Office of International Science and Engineering; Integrative Activities; and the U.S. Arctic Commission.
This language would force Geosciences (funded at $1.3 billion in FY15) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (funded at $272 million in FY15) to share roughly $1.32 billion in funding. The combined budget of the two directorates in FY15 was $1.58 billion, so this language translates into a cut of about $257 million to the two directorates, or 16.3 percent. This is in line with the authorization levels passed by the House Science Committee in their bill H.R. 1806 the America COMPETES Act of 2015, which CRA has stated it opposes.
Of almost equal concern, the Appropriations Committee included the following section concerning, “Transparency and accountability:”
The Committee supports section 106 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015, H.R. 1806, as reported, that enhances transparency and accountability of NSF grants by requiring that public award abstracts articulate how the projects serve the national interest. The Committee understands that NSF has already taken steps to implement these transparency processes. NSF is directed to comply with section 106 and provide periodic updates to the Committee on its transparency activities.
As our readers will recall from last year, a similar section to Section 106 is one of the areas that CRA has had significant concerns over, as it puts unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on the agency and is already covered in legislation which founded NSF. While the original language in the section was much worse than what the committee ended up with in COMPETES, we believe it still creates an unnecessary level of bureaucracy and provides a “fix” to a process that isn’t truly broken.
The only other issue of note to our community is a short section on high-performance computing. The committee’s language urges NSF to continue its commitment to the field by modernizing its facilities. Here is the relevant text:
The Committee urges NSF to continue its commitment to modernizing its world-class big data and high-performance computing, which support all areas of scientific research and education, including the most demanding scientific challenges.
So, where do things go from here? The bill now moves to the House floor for consideration; it is likely to pass along a party-line vote, just as it did in committee. It is expected on the House floor as early as today but probably take a day or two to get to a final vote. On the other side of Congress, the Senate Appropriations Committee still needs to complete its own CJS bill. When that will happen also isn’t yet known; the Senate has been the bottleneck in the Appropriations process for the last number of years. But with a new Republican majority, there is a chance that the chamber will move more quickly. Even if that happens, we would not expect a Senate CJS bill until the end of June, at the earliest. We can hope for a better outcome there, but that is not guaranteed. Assuming the Senate gets their bill together, the two chambers will then have to come up with an agreed upon bill in conference, which would then have to be passed by both chambers, before being sent to the President’s desk. That’s still a long way away, so we will have to wait to see how events unfold over the coming summer.
Be sure to check back for more updates on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
The House of Representatives today will consider the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), a bill designed to set policy at three key science agencies and authorize funding for the next two fiscal years. The bill is being brought to the floor by House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who secured passage of the bill through his committee on a strict party-line vote. CRA raised concerns about the bill at the committee level citing issues with the funding levels authorized and a disagreement over significant cuts the bill would make to authorizations for the Social, Behavioral and Economic sciences as well as the Geosciences — concerns that remain as the bill moves to the House floor.
The bill is a reauthorization of the America COMPETES Acts of 2007 and 2010, bills which sought to authorize robust and sustainable investments in fundamental research at three key Federal science agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST), and Department of Energy’s Office of Science. They were inspired by a conclusion reached by the National Academies that the U.S. was woefully underinvesting in the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, is anything that’s not life science) and that underinvestment was constraining U.S. innovation and competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world. They set the three agencies on a funding trajectory that would authorize a doubling of their research budgets over seven years. They were both strong, bipartisan statements about the importance of investments of fundamental research and the priority the Federal government ought to place on them. Unfortunately, the current bill does not share that priority and does not set these agencies on a path to robust, sustainable investments in research.
We’ve written about the concerns we raised with the committee. Though the bill provides a healthy increase to the NSF Computing and Information Science and Engineering directorate in the first year of the authorization (FY 2016), it does so at the expense of the geosciences, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences. We believe that these cuts are detrimental to not just the research portfolios in those disciplines, but detrimental to computer science as well. Work in computer science — in cyber security, in human-computer interaction — is informed by work that comes from the social, behavioral and economic sciences. Understanding human interactions and motivations is crucial in understanding how to build hardware and software that is more secure and easy to use.
CRA is not alone among scientific societies in opposing H.R. 1806. Forty-three other societies, universities, coalitions and task forces joined in writing letters of concern about the measure. Despite that, it’s likely that the bill will pass, on a largely party-line vote, in the House today. This would be a disappointing result, not just because of the content of this particular bill, but because it signals a particularly partisan approach to setting science policy that Congress has largely avoided in past years. Federal science policy is too important to pass on a party-line vote.
On April 29th, the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), an alliance of over 140 professional organizations, universities, and businesses, held their 21st Annual Capitol Hill Exhibition. CNSF supports the goal of increasing the federal investment in the National Science Foundation’s research and education programs, and the exhibition itself is a great way to show members of Congress and their staff what research the American people have funded.
Greg Hager, of Johns Hopkins University & the Computing Community Consortium, explains aspects of his students’ research to NSF Director France Cordova.
This year the Computing Research Association, a member of CNSF, sponsored three students, two PhD candidates and a defended PhD candidate, from Johns Hopkins University to come to Washington to demonstrate their work. Kelleher Guerin (the defended PhD candidate) and Amanda Edwards demonstrated their collaborative robot for manufacturing, called CoSTAR; while Colin Lea demonstrated a virtual reality interface that can be used to more easily program robots by novice, non-technical users. All three young researchers are advised by Greg Hager, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Chair of the Computing Community Consortium; Dr. Hager was also in attendance at the event and fielded questions.
Amanda Edwards demonstrates the CoSTAR system to Deborah Lockhart of NSF.
CoSTAR, a system for human instruction and collaboration with robotic systems, has been developed to enable experts skilled at a task, but not skilled with programming, to instruct the robot as an apprentice. In apprenticeship, a teacher understands the capabilities of the apprentice, and builds on those capabilities until the apprentice can perform the desired tasks. Their system allows for a similar instruction of robots by representing the capabilities of a robot as a set of easy to understand building blocks. A novice end-user can then use these building blocks to create a plan, which the robot follows to accomplish a task. This also allows for the robot to reuse information it is taught across many different tasks. Their system also allows for the robot to collaborate with humans, and respond to dynamic events just as a human would. In addition, they showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching.
Kelleher Guerin explains his work on the CoSTAR system to exhibition attendees.
With regard to the virtual reality interface, it was noted that most robots used in factories are old and not intended to be used directly with humans. Users must stand behind shielding where they spend a substantial amount of time programming the robot. The researchers’ work showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching. Using a virtual reality headset, and a pair of 3D joysticks, a user can virtually move the robot around as if they were performing the task themselves.
Colin Lea explains the virtual reality interface to Anita Benjamin of the American Mathematical Society.
All of this work is supported from the CISE directorate at NSF. Both projects were well received by the attendees of the exhibition; in fact, the students fielded questions from members of Congress, Congressional staffers, NSF Program Officers, and even the NSF Director, France Córdova.
A number of other organizations had displays and were demonstrating NSF funded research at the event. From the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications “NSF Blue Water” supercomputer, to the American Political Science Association’s “American National Election Studies: Understanding the Changing American Electorate,” to the American Astronomical Society’s “Disruptive Technology & Cosmology at 17,000 Feet,” the exhibition was a great display of the different types of research being supported by NSF. Look here to see a list of some of the participating organizations and what a few of the exhibitors were presenting.
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Appropriations Update: Shutdown Watch Begins
/In: FY16 Appropriations /by Brian MosleyWith Congress set to spend the month of August in recess, it’s a good time to take a moment to see where the appropriations process stands. Our readers will remember that when the Republicans took full control of Congress in January, they vowed to return the body to “regular order;” meaning passing the 12 appropriations bills before the end of fiscal year (October 1st). So how have they done?
Surprisingly, pretty well. For the first time in 6 years, both chamber’s Appropriations Committees passed all 12 of their bills through the full committees. The House was even able to pass half of their bills through the full chamber. Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends, as the Senate Democrats felt their priorities were not being considered and they began filibustering the budget process at the end of spring. The bills have not moved for the entire summer.
The House Republican leadership has been adamant for the summer that the process would still move forward. However, just before the House chamber went on recess last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) conceded that work on a continuing resolution, to fund federal agencies at Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) levels, would begin. Now the question is: will there be another government shutdown?
That’s an interesting question and the answer isn’t completely clear. While the shutdown in 2013 was embarrassing for all involved, no one really suffered from the bad press (“Exhibit A” being the Republicans making huge gains in the 2014 elections). As Congress will not have to go before voters for another year, the situation is similar to 2013. Throw in how many sitting members of Congress are running for their party’s presidential nomination, grandstanding on the federal budget now, and forcing a shutdown, is very possible. Also, there is a new threat of tying defunding Planned Parenthood to the budget, which Congressional Democrats have vowed to block, and President Obama has vowed to veto if passed. So there are plenty of reasons to see a shutdown as possible.
The flipside of this argument is that senior members of Congress, the members who were furious about the 2013 shutdown and who ultimately compromised to reopen the government, will not allow the budget to be hijacked again. Also, the Republicans are under a great deal of pressure to be seen as able to govern effectively; a shutdown can be used to show they can’t. As well, since both appropriations committees have done their work (i.e.: preparing their 12 bills), they will require much less time to get an omnibus bill together. Lastly, a presidential election is not a midterm election; the voters who come out are less partisan, and care more about the parties working together, and a memory of two shutdowns in four years may be too much for voters to forget.
The science policy community in Washington is divided between pessimists and optimists on the budget:
Of course, these outcomes aren’t the only possibility, just the likely outcomes. Both sides have their arguments, but it is still very much “reading tea leaves” at this point. We’ll have to get through the August Recess first, and see how much progress, or lack there-of, happens on CR negotiations. Keep checking back for more updates.
Obama Administration Announces Ambitious New High Performance Computing Strategy
/In: Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyYesterday, President Obama issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative. This new initiative is to ensure the United States’ continued leadership position in High-Performance Computing in the coming decades. As the announcement from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) says, “this coordinated research, development, and deployment strategy will draw on the strengths of departments and agencies to move the Federal government into a position that sharpens, develops, and streamlines a wide range of new 21st century applications.” The initiative is designed to, “advance core technologies to solve difficult computational problems and foster increase use of new capabilities in the public and private sectors.”
The announcement includes examples of the type of problems and potential research areas that this strategy can tackle. From the Precision Medicine Initiative to exascale computing at DOE, the potential for High-Performance Computing is almost limitless. Combined with the fact that advances in computing are helping to drive advancements in other scientific fields, this strategy could be similar to the Larry Smarr moment in the early 1980s, when NSFnet, one of the predecessors of the Internet, was established.
How is this likely to be received in Congress? It’s hard to tell, as Congress and the Administration have been at loggerheads over almost every political issue. That being the case, there is a good chance this Initiative will be received positively; long time readers will remember that the first two hearings the House Science Committee had this session were on HPC. This was done deliberately to educate new members of the committee on the field’s importance to the Federal scientific ecosystem.
In closing out this article, I want to quote the last paragraph of OSTP’s announcement, as it is quite concise as to the importance of this strategy, and HPC as a whole, to the country:
Coalition for National Security Research Releases Statement on Senate Defense Appropriations Bill
/In: FY16 Appropriations, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyThe Coalition for National Security Research (CNSR), a broad-based coalition of 74 members (of which CRA is a member) including industry, research universities and institutes, and scientific and professional associations committed to a strong Defense Science and Technology (S&T) Program, released a statement commending the Senate Appropriations Committee for their work on S. 1558, the Fiscal Year 2016 funding bill for the Department of Defense. CNSR was specifically applauding the committee for their support of Defense S&T at the 6.2 applied and 6.3 advanced technology development accounts, while also raising concerns about 6.1 basic research funding levels. The statement makes the case that Congress should adhere to the “20/20 Principle,” which calls for investment in basic research to comprise 20 percent of the Defense S&T overall budget and Defense S&T to comprise 20 percent of the RDT&E (or Research, Development, Test and Evaluation) budget. The statement points out that, “the 20/20 Principle is based on the recommendations from the National Academies reports Rising Above the Gathering Storm (2007) and the Assessment of Department of Defense Basic Research (2005).”
The proposed increases in the 6.2 and 6.3 accounts are quite good, as they will keep the budgets above an inflation increase. However, 6.1’s increase will be mitigated somewhat by inflation and DARPA’s decrease will be amplified.
As our readers can tell, the House numbers are better for 6.3, only slightly less good for 6.2, better than the Senate for DARPA (though it will just keep ahead of inflation), but is absolutely horrible for 6.1.
The next step in the process for S. 1588 will be to go before the full Senate for consideration. It’s likely to hit a brick wall there, as Senate Democrats have vowed to filibuster all spending bills unless their priorities are considered in the budget and the ongoing spending debates. The expectation within the science advocacy community is that this will stall the budget process for the rest of the year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to return the Federal budget to regular order (meaning to pass the budget on time), but he has an uphill battle if Democrats stay united on their filibuster. We will continue to monitor the situation and will report any new developments that arise.
NSF Unveils New Public Access Plan
/In: Policy /by Brian MosleyThe National Science Foundation has released a new public access plan for scientific journal articles that arise from research wholly or partly funded by the agency. This plan, called “Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries,” is an outgrowth of an Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, released in February of 2013, which directed, “each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government.” Let’s look at the details.
The NSF plan is very much in line with the requirements set out in OSTP’s memo. It sets a January 2016 effective date; all grant proposals submitted on or after this date will be subject to the plan. As well, NSF has identified the Department of Energy’s (DOE) PAGES (or Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science) system as the agency’s, “designated repository.” (Note: Most probably the use of DOE’s PAGES is in order to control cost, rather than create a wholly new system just for NSF; part of the instructions in the OSTP memo was that any new system must be implemented and operated within existing budgets). The plan requires that, “either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions,” must be submitted to the PAGES system within 12 months of publication. All of this is in line with OSTP’s requirements.
There is a section on data management as well, which seems to be the first indications of an Open Data plan. The agency’s plan defines research data as, “the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings.” However, NSF writes in their plan that, “in the future, NSF will explore whether all data underlying published findings can be made available at the time of publication.” Anything further is still in the early stages of conception and not covered in this specific plan.
How does NSF’s plan fit into the larger Open Access debate? Seeing as it’s in line with OSTP’s memo, and by extension Administration policy priorities, and Congress has given OSTP room, at least temporarily, to direct science agencies in this matter, it seems the likelihood of push back is minimal. However, that could change with a new bill in Congress, as the legislature does have final oversight. For example, the original draft of the 2014 COMPETES Act in the House Science Committee tried to speed up the adoption of Open Access provisions at the science agencies; that could easily be repeated, as there are still many Open Access supporters in Congress. On the flipside, it is possible that the publisher community could get a repeal bill introduced by a sympathetic member of Congress, removing any such provisions from the agencies. This issue will have to play out more before any final outcome is assured.
Deadline is Next Week for IEEE-CS Award Nominations
/In: Misc., People /by Brian MosleyIEEE Computer Society, “the world’s leading membership organization dedicated to computer science and technology,” and a member of CRA, is looking for nominations for three prestigious annual awards. The deadline to submit nominations is next Wednesday, July 1st. The details on each award are below. If you would like to nominate someone, please go to the award nominating page on the IEEE-CS’s webpage.
Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award
Established in late 1997 in memory of Seymour Cray, the Seymour Cray Award is awarded to recognize innovative contributions to high performance computing systems best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray. The award consists of a crystal memento and honorarium of $10,000. This award requires 3 endorsements.
Sidney Fernach Memorial Award
Established in 1992 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society. It honors the memory of the late Dr. Sidney Fernbach, one of the pioneers on the development and application of high performance computers for the solution of large computational problems. The award, which consists of a certificate and a $2,000 honorarium, is presented annually to an individual for “an outstanding contribution in the application of high performance computers using innovative approaches.” This award requires 3 endorsements.
ACM/IEEE‐CS Ken Kennedy Award
Established in memory of Ken Kennedy, the founder of Rice University’s nationally ranked computer science program and one of the world’s foremost experts on high-performance computing. A certificate and $5,000 honorarium are awarded jointly by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding contributions to programmability or productivity in high-performance computing together with significant community service or mentoring contributions. This award requires 2 endorsements.
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Approves NSF Funding; it’s definitely not great, but it could be worse
/In: Funding, FY16 Appropriations, Research /by Brian MosleyOn June 10th, the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee approved their Fiscal Year 2016 funding bill, which funds, among other things, the budget for the National Science Foundation. The bill was passed on a bipartisan basis in the subcommittee, with only three votes (out of 30 total) against it. Unlike the House CJS version, this bill doesn’t include burdensome language restricting how NSF can spend their allocated funds. However, the bill does flat fund the agency for FY16. That will translate into a cut, once inflation is taken into account, but given the budget environment in Congress, this outcome is middle of the road.
The bill provides for $7.34 billion for the National Science Foundation for Fiscal Year 2016. That is $430 thousand (yes, thousand) less than what was enacted in FY15, and $380 million less than what the President requested in his February budget request. For the Research and Related Activities (RRA) account, where most of the research funding is located at the Foundation, the committee provides $5.93 billion for FY16, which is the same as it was funded in FY15 and $253 million below the President’s request. For the most part, the budgets are flat funded in real dollars, but these translate into a cut once inflation is factored in. These numbers aren’t terribly surprising; however, they are disappointing since the CJS subcommittee has so many science champions, on both sides of the aisle, as members. Of course, another way of looking at this is that the numbers could be much lower.
However, the bill is not without its good news, and this time it concerns what isn’t in it. None of the burdensome bureaucratic language on accountability, which is in the House CJS bill, is present in its Senate counterpart. As well, there are no stipulations on NSF directorate level funding, thus sparing Geophysical Sciences and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorates cuts to their budgets. Whether the burdensome language gets included in the final bill is something that will have to get worked out in conference between the House and Senate after each passes their bill.
The bill now goes to the full committee for consideration. It is likely to pass, sometime in late June or July, and then move to the Senate floor for consideration. The bill’s future after that is in question, since Senate Democrats have threatened to filibuster all appropriations bills moving forward unless their priorities on federal spending are considered. Congressional Republicans, and Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY), have vowed to move the legislature to “regular order” (i.e. passing the Federal budget bills on time) but, short of removing the filibuster rule in the Senate, there will be little-to-nothing the Republicans can do if the Democrats make good on their threat. Events will have to play out more in order to have a better idea of what the final outcome will be. Continue to follow us at the Policy Blog for future developments.
First look at Senate COMPETES bill; S.1398 is good for research but will it move?
/In: Funding, Policy /by kayla[With this post, CRA welcomes Kayla Holston, our new Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellow, who will be working with CRA policy staff this summer. Kayla is a rising second-year Rodman Scholar at the University of Virginia, pursuing majors in biomedical engineering and cognitive science. She’s particularly interested in computing as it relates to neuroscience research, and plans of a future practicing neurosurgery. We’re thrilled to have her on staff this summer and expect to see much more from her on the blog in the weeks to come! – Peter Harsha]
The Senate is considering S. 1398, or the “Energy Title of America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015,” a bill aimed at “extending, improving, and consolidating energy research and development programs” at the Department of Energy, specifically at the Office of Science (SC) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). In simple terms, it sets funding policy for these two science agencies for the next three years. This bill was introduced by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in mid-May and is currently awaiting consideration by the Senate Energy Committee. The bill calls for an increase in funding for the DOE SC and ARPA-E and the funding numbers are aligned with the 2007 and 2010 COMPETES Acts. In addition, it proposes the elimination of a number of duplicative programs at the Department, a number of which are research fellowships. Let’s look at some of the details.
The funding numbers for both the DOE SC and ARPA-E are quite good and are true successors to early versions of COMPETES. As our readers will recall, the DOE SC is home to the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, a program that encompasses much of the Department’s computing research. S.1398 calls for the DOE SC to be authorized at $5.271 billion for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, a 2.7 percent increase over the pervious Fiscal Year budget ($5.131 billion for FY15)—it’s also worth noting that this is almost identical to the $5.247 billion authorized (but never appropriated) for FY11 in the 2010 COMPETES Act. After FY16, the proposed funding for the SC continues to exhibit an upward trend, with about a 4 percent increase each year:
FY17: $5.485 billion
FY18: $5.704 billion
FY19: $5.932 billion
FY20: $6.178 billion
It is important to note that, while the proposed FY16 funding is greater than what was appropriated in FY15, it is still below President Obama’s requested budget for FY16 ($5.34 billion).
S. 1398 proposes a similar funding pattern for ARPA-E. The Agency was authorized for $300 million in the original 2007 version of COMPETES, but has been mostly flat funded since its establishment. In S. 1398, Senator Alexander proposes a yearly ~4 percent increase in funding, aligning the numbers with what was originally proposed in the COMPETES Acts:
FY16: $291.2 million
FY17: $303.3 million
FY18: $314.7 million
FY19: $327.3 million
FY20: $340.6 million
It’s worth pointing out that S. 1398 only authorizes funds—it does not appropriate funding for the agencies. In other words, this bill would set policy for these parts of the DOE and state how much they should be funded. It is the job of the Appropriations Committees and separate bills to determine how much money DOE SC and ARPA-E actually get to work with.
Alexander also proposes the consolidation of a few programs. Namely, S. 1398 would combine funding for the DOE Early Career Awards for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Researchers and the Distinguished Scientist Program. The bill also calls for elimination of the Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE) Graduate Fellowship Program, with the idea that those grants will instead fall under the Science Education Program.
So what are the bill’s prospects? That’s unclear at this point. It’s not exactly clear whether the bill will move in the Senate as a free-standing bill, or get folded into a broader DOE authorization, or a Senate version of the COMPETES Reauthorization. What we do know is that it represents a marked change of approach from the DOE provisions in the House version of the America COMPETES Act Reauthorization, which we’ve previously discussed here. At some point in the legislative process, whether its with a COMPETES Reauthorization or an Energy Bill, the House and Senate will have to resolve their differences and find something they can both pass. What that final bill will look like is anyone’s guess, but from the community’s perspective, we hope it embodies more of the Senate’s approach than what we find in the House COMPETES Reauthorization.
We will continue to monitor S. 1398 for additional developments; be sure to check back for updates!
House Appropriations Committee Passes CJS Funding; Mixed News for NSF
/In: FY16 Appropriations, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyOn May 20th the full House Appropriations Committee passed the Commerce, Justice, Science funding bill; this is important to our community because it is the bill that contains the funding for the National Science Foundation, which funds 89 percent of all university-led fundamental computer science research in the U.S. First, the not-so-bad news: NSF doesn’t exactly get a budget cut in actual dollars; it in fact gets a small bump (though when inflation is considered, that bump may go away completely). The worse news: NSF gets some onerous language on how to spend the tax-dollars it’s allocated. Let’s get into the details.
NSF received $7.34 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the present budget we are working under. For FY16, the President requested $7.72 billion, or an increase of $379.3 million (or 5.2 percent) over FY15 levels. In the House Appropriations bill, the agency would receive $7.39 billion in FY16, an increase of $50 million (or 0.7 percent). Again, it’s an increase in actual dollars – so things could have been worse. But the bill contains some disheartening language restricting the agency’s activities.
The most significant section concerns restricting how money in NSF’s Research and Related Activities account, where most of the money for research resides, can be spent. The relevant section reads:
This language would force Geosciences (funded at $1.3 billion in FY15) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (funded at $272 million in FY15) to share roughly $1.32 billion in funding. The combined budget of the two directorates in FY15 was $1.58 billion, so this language translates into a cut of about $257 million to the two directorates, or 16.3 percent. This is in line with the authorization levels passed by the House Science Committee in their bill H.R. 1806 the America COMPETES Act of 2015, which CRA has stated it opposes.
Of almost equal concern, the Appropriations Committee included the following section concerning, “Transparency and accountability:”
As our readers will recall from last year, a similar section to Section 106 is one of the areas that CRA has had significant concerns over, as it puts unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on the agency and is already covered in legislation which founded NSF. While the original language in the section was much worse than what the committee ended up with in COMPETES, we believe it still creates an unnecessary level of bureaucracy and provides a “fix” to a process that isn’t truly broken.
The only other issue of note to our community is a short section on high-performance computing. The committee’s language urges NSF to continue its commitment to the field by modernizing its facilities. Here is the relevant text:
So, where do things go from here? The bill now moves to the House floor for consideration; it is likely to pass along a party-line vote, just as it did in committee. It is expected on the House floor as early as today but probably take a day or two to get to a final vote. On the other side of Congress, the Senate Appropriations Committee still needs to complete its own CJS bill. When that will happen also isn’t yet known; the Senate has been the bottleneck in the Appropriations process for the last number of years. But with a new Republican majority, there is a chance that the chamber will move more quickly. Even if that happens, we would not expect a Senate CJS bill until the end of June, at the earliest. We can hope for a better outcome there, but that is not guaranteed. Assuming the Senate gets their bill together, the two chambers will then have to come up with an agreed upon bill in conference, which would then have to be passed by both chambers, before being sent to the President’s desk. That’s still a long way away, so we will have to wait to see how events unfold over the coming summer.
Be sure to check back for more updates on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
America COMPETES Reauthorization on Floor Today
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY16 Appropriations, Policy /by Peter HarshaThe House of Representatives today will consider the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), a bill designed to set policy at three key science agencies and authorize funding for the next two fiscal years. The bill is being brought to the floor by House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who secured passage of the bill through his committee on a strict party-line vote. CRA raised concerns about the bill at the committee level citing issues with the funding levels authorized and a disagreement over significant cuts the bill would make to authorizations for the Social, Behavioral and Economic sciences as well as the Geosciences — concerns that remain as the bill moves to the House floor.
The bill is a reauthorization of the America COMPETES Acts of 2007 and 2010, bills which sought to authorize robust and sustainable investments in fundamental research at three key Federal science agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST), and Department of Energy’s Office of Science. They were inspired by a conclusion reached by the National Academies that the U.S. was woefully underinvesting in the physical sciences (which, in DC parlance, is anything that’s not life science) and that underinvestment was constraining U.S. innovation and competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world. They set the three agencies on a funding trajectory that would authorize a doubling of their research budgets over seven years. They were both strong, bipartisan statements about the importance of investments of fundamental research and the priority the Federal government ought to place on them. Unfortunately, the current bill does not share that priority and does not set these agencies on a path to robust, sustainable investments in research.
We’ve written about the concerns we raised with the committee. Though the bill provides a healthy increase to the NSF Computing and Information Science and Engineering directorate in the first year of the authorization (FY 2016), it does so at the expense of the geosciences, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences. We believe that these cuts are detrimental to not just the research portfolios in those disciplines, but detrimental to computer science as well. Work in computer science — in cyber security, in human-computer interaction — is informed by work that comes from the social, behavioral and economic sciences. Understanding human interactions and motivations is crucial in understanding how to build hardware and software that is more secure and easy to use.
CRA is not alone among scientific societies in opposing H.R. 1806. Forty-three other societies, universities, coalitions and task forces joined in writing letters of concern about the measure. Despite that, it’s likely that the bill will pass, on a largely party-line vote, in the House today. This would be a disappointing result, not just because of the content of this particular bill, but because it signals a particularly partisan approach to setting science policy that Congress has largely avoided in past years. Federal science policy is too important to pass on a party-line vote.
NSF Funded Robotic System Excites Attendees at the 2015 CNSF Exhibition
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, Events /by Brian MosleyOn April 29th, the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF), an alliance of over 140 professional organizations, universities, and businesses, held their 21st Annual Capitol Hill Exhibition. CNSF supports the goal of increasing the federal investment in the National Science Foundation’s research and education programs, and the exhibition itself is a great way to show members of Congress and their staff what research the American people have funded.
Greg Hager, of Johns Hopkins University & the Computing Community Consortium, explains aspects of his students’ research to NSF Director France Cordova.
This year the Computing Research Association, a member of CNSF, sponsored three students, two PhD candidates and a defended PhD candidate, from Johns Hopkins University to come to Washington to demonstrate their work. Kelleher Guerin (the defended PhD candidate) and Amanda Edwards demonstrated their collaborative robot for manufacturing, called CoSTAR; while Colin Lea demonstrated a virtual reality interface that can be used to more easily program robots by novice, non-technical users. All three young researchers are advised by Greg Hager, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Chair of the Computing Community Consortium; Dr. Hager was also in attendance at the event and fielded questions.
Amanda Edwards demonstrates the CoSTAR system to Deborah Lockhart of NSF.
CoSTAR, a system for human instruction and collaboration with robotic systems, has been developed to enable experts skilled at a task, but not skilled with programming, to instruct the robot as an apprentice. In apprenticeship, a teacher understands the capabilities of the apprentice, and builds on those capabilities until the apprentice can perform the desired tasks. Their system allows for a similar instruction of robots by representing the capabilities of a robot as a set of easy to understand building blocks. A novice end-user can then use these building blocks to create a plan, which the robot follows to accomplish a task. This also allows for the robot to reuse information it is taught across many different tasks. Their system also allows for the robot to collaborate with humans, and respond to dynamic events just as a human would. In addition, they showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching.
Kelleher Guerin explains his work on the CoSTAR system to exhibition attendees.
With regard to the virtual reality interface, it was noted that most robots used in factories are old and not intended to be used directly with humans. Users must stand behind shielding where they spend a substantial amount of time programming the robot. The researchers’ work showed how advances in virtual reality could provide an environment for intuitive robot interaction and teaching. Using a virtual reality headset, and a pair of 3D joysticks, a user can virtually move the robot around as if they were performing the task themselves.
Colin Lea explains the virtual reality interface to Anita Benjamin of the American Mathematical Society.
All of this work is supported from the CISE directorate at NSF. Both projects were well received by the attendees of the exhibition; in fact, the students fielded questions from members of Congress, Congressional staffers, NSF Program Officers, and even the NSF Director, France Córdova.
A number of other organizations had displays and were demonstrating NSF funded research at the event. From the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications “NSF Blue Water” supercomputer, to the American Political Science Association’s “American National Election Studies: Understanding the Changing American Electorate,” to the American Astronomical Society’s “Disruptive Technology & Cosmology at 17,000 Feet,” the exhibition was a great display of the different types of research being supported by NSF. Look here to see a list of some of the participating organizations and what a few of the exhibitors were presenting.