Despite some early concerns in the science community over some dicey reported funding levels for some key science agencies, the President’s FY 2011 budget, released today, demonstrates a continued commitment to doubling the budgets of the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Here’s some relevant bits. We’ll have more as we plow through it and get briefed by the relevant agencies.
Investment in science and basic research is critical to long-term economic growth. That’s why the Budget invests $61.6 billion in civilian research and development, an increase of $3.7 billion, a 6.4 percent increase, and an amount that continues the commitment to double funding for three key basic research agencies—the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This funding includes $1.8 billion for research in basic energy sciences to discover novel ways to produce, store, and use energy to address energy independence and climate change and $300 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, to accelerate game-changing energy technologies in need of rapid and flexible experimentation or engineering. The Budget includes increased funding for research to help create the foundation for the industries and jobs of the future, such as nano-manufacturing, advanced robotics, and new tools for the design of biological systems.
Under the President’s plan, NSF would grow by 8 percent to $7.4 billion in FY 11. NSF’s research accounts would also grow by 8 percent, $455 million over FY 10.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science would see a 4.6 percent increase to $5.1 billion in FY 11. DOE’s new ARPA-E would see $300 million in funding.
The House and Senate Appropriators are in their end game on the FY 10 appropriations process and yesterday released the “conference agreement” for an omnibus appropriations bill they’ve created that bundles all the outstanding appropriations bills save one (Defense). Included in the conference bill are the agreed upon funding levels for several key science agencies. NSF and NIST seem to do well. NSF will receive $6.9 billion in FY 10, an increase of $436 million over FY 09 (about 6.7 percent — assuming the conference passes, and it’s safe to say that it will). NIST will receive an increase of $37.6 million, bringing their core research funding up to $662 million ($65 million more than FY 09).
Interestingly, the Defense appropriation, which includes research funding at DARPA and the other Defense labs, was held out of this omnibus — likely because the Democratic leadership wants to save it for the very end of the session as a last-ditch vehicle on which to attach other difficult-to-pass Democratic priorities. Congress faces a Dec 18th deadline for wrapping up appropriations, so we should have some idea of the final numbers in the Defense bill within the next week or so.
We’ll also have a full breakdown of all the science funding in the 1088 page bill, including budgets for NASA and NIH, very soon. Update (12/10): The Joint Explanatory Statement — the report of the conference committee accompanying the bill — takes the Administration to task following reports that the President’s budget request for NSF in FY 11 will be much less generous than the FY 10 budget:
The conference agreement includes $6,926,510,000 for the National Science Foundation (NSF), consistent with the on-going effort to double the agency’s budget over a ten-year period.
The conferees are concerned with continuity in the level of support for research and development at the National Science Foundation and reiterate concerns expressed by the House that the request for fiscal year 2011 should represent at least a seven percent increase for NSF over the conference agreement level for fiscal year 2010 in order to sustain the planned doubling of the Foundation’s budget.
That’s strong show of support for the agency and good indication of how the President’s rumored 2.9 percent proposed increase for NSF in FY 11 might be received by Congress.
DARPA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, with a network challenge this Saturday, December 5. The challenge seeks to test social networking with 10 weather balloons launched across the country. Teams will have to spot the balloons and collect the longitude and latitude of as many as possible. The first team to respond with all 10 wins the challenge and $40,000.
In the announcement of the challenge, DARPA Director Regina Dugan said, In the 40 years since this breakthrough, the Internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy. The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.
Peter Lee, director of the Transformational Convergence Technology Office at DARPA, said at MSNBC.com, “We’re learning more and more every day about social networks – how they form, how communities grow and how they change over time. It’s become a very interesting field of research … but when it’s a competition, the dynamic changes.”
With over 1000 registered teams competing in the challenge, the varying techniques on mobilization, dissemination, and collaboration are already informative though Lee told MSNBC.com that the most original ideas have probably not been revealed yet to maintain the competitive edge. Lee also expects subterfuge, deception, and information selling to show up in the competition. Registration is still open to participate in the challenge and you can sign up here. Itll be very interesting to see all the techniques used and to see how long it takes for a team to find all 10 balloons. Well link to the announcement of the winner when it is announced.
ScienceWorksForUS, a joint effort by the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and The Science Coalition (TSC), launched today on Capitol Hill with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in attendance. The interesting and much needed initiative is designed to illustrate how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funding is supporting research across the country and how that research impacts the nation economically, both in the short and long term. The website of the initiative gives researchers a chance to tell their stories and to share their research with a wider public audience.
As we’ve mentioned here before, the ARRA included over $21 billion in science funding, including money to build research facilities, buy equipment, and conduct research. The immediate impact is to continue or increase employment of researchers, equipment manufacturers, and facility construction workers. However, the long-term impact will be more, higher paying jobs in industries that are created from the research or that help solve challenges in energy, healthcare, and other high priority challenges that the US faces in the coming decades.
We’re in the end game for the FY 2010 appropriations, but no one is really sure exactly how this will end (though there are some good theories). While a number of bills have actually passed through regular order — including, most relevantly for the computing research community, the Energy and Water appropriations bill, which contains funding for the DOE’s Office of Science — an equal number of key bills remain unsettled. Still unresolved are the Commerce, Justice, Science bill, which includes funding for NSF, NOAA, NIST, and NASA; the Defense bill, which includes funding for DARPA and the Defense labs; and Labor-HHS, which includes funding for NIH. Because we’ve passed the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30th), the government is operating under a “Continuing Resolution” that will keep agencies funded at the FY 09 rate through Dec 18th. So, conventional wisdom suggests that these remaining appropriations bills will get taken care of by then (and probably at the last minute). Until then, Congress — the Senate, in particular — is more than occupied by the raging debate on reforming health care and will fit in appropriations discussions between now and then only as little blocks of free time appear.
It appears at this point that the remaining bills will end up in an omnibus measure — that is, they’ll be bundled into one bill for passage. (Because it’s only seven appropriations bills that would be bundled, rather than the usual twelve, many have taken to referring to the bill as a “minibus” — though I suppose everything is relative in DC). It also appears that the Defense bill will be the anchor for the minibus, because it’s considered the highest priority (a “must pass” bill), and thus many controversial provisions unrelated to defense that don’t have homes elsewhere may find their way into the bill (there’s been talk of adding a DC voting rights measure to it, though that’s now looking unlikely, or some health care-related language). But aside from that, we assume that sometime that week of Dec 14-18, we’ll start to see the final agreed-upon numbers for all of the as-yet-unappropriated science programs we care about. Until then, here’s what we know:
Department of Energy Office of Science (status: final): The Energy and Water Appropriations was passed and signed by the President on October 28th (P.L. 111-85). In it, DOE’s Office of Science received just over $4.8 billion (plus about $77 million in earmarks), a compromise between levels the House and Senate had passed separately, but an increase of 3 percent compared with FY 2009. The appropriation includes funding for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program (ASCR), which will receive $394 million in FY 10, slightly less than both the Senate original appropriations of $399 million and the House original number of $409 million, but a healthy 6.8 percent increase over FY2009.
National Science Foundation (status: unfinished): Funding for NSF is contained in the FY 10 Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. The House version of this bill would fund NSF at $6.93 billion in FY 10, an increase of 6.9 percent over FY09 but $108 million lower than the President’s request for the agency. The Senate version would fund the agency at $6.9 billion, a 6.6 percent increase. Both the Senate and House bills include healthy increases for NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate. The Senate version would provide $620 million in FY 10, 8.1 percent more than FY 09, and the House would provide $623 million, or an 8.6 percent increase. Both levels are less than the $633 million the President requested in his budget.
NSF’s Office of CyberInfrastructure (OCI) also fares well in both versions of the bill. The House would provide $216 million for OCI in FY 10, an increase of 8.1 percent, and the Senate $215 million, a 7.7 percent increase. Both are below the President’s requested increase of 10.0 percent in FY 10.
NSF’s Education and Human Resources directorate would receive a $17.6 million increase over FY 09 in the House, a $12.5 million increase over the Administration request. The Senate passed the President’s EHR request of $857.76 million.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (status: unfinished): NIST is also a part of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill. The House passed version includes $587 million for NIST’s research efforts, a 1.6 percent decrease from FY 09. The Senate would fund the agency at $684 million (less $47 million in earmarks), a 14.5 percent increase. However, if you remove the earmarked spending, the real increase to NIST in the Senate bill would be 6.1 percent. The Administration requested $652 million for the agency, a 9.2 percent increase over FY 09.
Department of Defense (status: unfinished): The Defense Appropriations bill includes funding for all DOD research, including DARPA and the Defense research labs. There’s some concern about the levels included for DARPA in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, but especially for the Senate levels. Both the House and Senate included significant cuts to the President’s request for DARPA — the House trimmed about $200 million from the request, the Senate about $500 million. In the Senate’s case, appropriations staffers apparently didn’t feel that the agency, given its recent history of under-spending its appropriation — a behavior linked to policies of the agency’s previous leadership — warranted an increase in FY 10 and instead used that money to fund increases elsewhere in the bill. Many of us in the science advocacy community reacted strongly to this reduction. Under new leadership, the agency appears to be making a serious effort to reverse many of the policies that the university community and Congress shared, and has proposed a number of new efforts designed to reengage DARPA with university researchers. We do not want to see that new approach derailed or hamstrung by this proposed reduction. CRA, along with many partners in the academic and industrial communities have weighed in with Congress in an attempt to mitigate these reductions. We’ll know in December how successful those efforts were. (We’ll also have much more on the “new” DARPA in future posts…)
There are also significant differences in opinion between the Senate and the House in the overall level of defense basic research (or 6.1 research, in DOD parlance). The House approved bill would fund Defense 6.1 research at $1.798 billion in FY 10, an increase of 10.1 percent over FY 09. The Senate, while still approving an increase, would only include $1.713 billion in FY 10, a 4.9 percent increase. Like the DARPA issue, this disparity will need to get worked out in conference between the chambers.
As we learn more, we’ll post it here. But it’s unlikely much will happen until mid-December….
Last night, Congress passed a resolution stating that the week of December 7 is National Computer Science Education Week by a vote of 405 to 0. The resolution language includes reasons that computing is so important to our culture and economy and the need to increase the diversity of people in computing as important factors that a National Computer Science Education Week could help promote. The week of December 7 was chosen to honor Grace Murray Hopper, one of the earliest female pioneers in computing, as her birthday was December 9. The full text of the resolution is available. ACM has more information and community reaction here.
Ran Libeskind-Hadas, a member of the Computing Community Consortium’s Council and a professor at Harvey Mudd College, has an interesting post today on the CCC blog asking, in light of the recent Netflix Prize announcement, whether prizes are a viable mechanism for encouraging research in the computing fields.
From Netflixs perspective, the answer is almost certainly yes. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is quoted telling the New York Times (probably tongue-in-cheek) “Youre getting Ph.D.s for a dollar an hour.”
He notes several other examples of prizes that have led to new results and asks:
Are there some major problems in computer science that could be incentivized by prizes financial or otherwise? What are the potential benefits and risks of this approach? Were eager to hear your thoughts.
Add your two cents (or more) in the comments section. (No prize for doing it, though.)
Requires the development of a cybersecurity R&D strategic plan throughout the federal government
Requires the inclusion of social and behavioral research at NSF as part of the cybersecurity research portfolio
Specifically includes identity management as an area of research that should be supported in a cybersecurity research portfolio
Requires NSF to create a postdoctoral fellowship program in cybersecurity
Authorizes a cybersecurity scholarship for service program at NSF
Requires OSTP to assess the current and future cybersecurity workforce needs of the federal government, including comparison of the skills needed by each fed agency, the supply of talent, and any barriers to recruitment
Establishes an academic-industry task force to explore public-private research partnerships in cybersecurity
Only two amendments to the original bill language were proposed and both were adopted. The first was the managers amendment which made technical changes to the bill and clarifies the service requirements for those students participating in the Scholarship for Service program authorized in the bill. The second amendment was introduced by Congresswoman Johnson (D-TX) and seeks to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in the scholarship program and include minority institutions as stakeholders in the strategic plan. We don’t yet have copies of either the Manager’s amendment or Rep. Johnson’s, but when we do, we’ll post them here.
Both the chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) and the ranking member, Congressman Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) emphasized the need for cybersecurity research to keep pace with the changing cyber threats and to ensure a sufficient workforce in cybersecurity. Ehlers mentioned that the workforce problem had been personally brought to his attention last year by a computer science professor who visited his office and discussed the drop in computing related undergraduates after the boom, a situation that we have discussed in great detail here in the past, but one that, based on the most recent Taulbee data, we believe is turning around.
Delivering remarks at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY, today, President Obama noted the importance of the U.S. remaining an innovation leaders and how his Administration hopes to continue fostering that. Here’s a snippet with some remarks relevant to the computing community:
One key to strengthening education, entrepreneurship, and innovation in communities like Troy is to harness the full power of the internet. That means faster and more widely available broadband as well as rules to ensure that we preserve the fairness and openness that led to the flourishing of the internet in the first place. Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is announcing a set of principles to preserve an open internet in which all Americans can participate and benefit. I am pleased that he is taking this step. It is an important reminder that the role of government is to provide investment that spurs innovation and common-sense ground rules to ensure that there is a level playing field for all comers who seek to contribute their innovations.
And we have to think about the networks we need today, but also the networks well want tomorrow. Thats why Ive proposed grants through the National Science Foundation and through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency which helped develop the internet to explore the next communications breakthroughs, whatever they may be. And thats why Ive appointed the first-ever Chief Technology Officer, charged with looking at ways technology can spur innovations that help government do a better and more efficient job.
We must also strengthen our commitment to research, including basic research, which has been badly neglected for decades. The fact is, basic research may not pay off immediately. It may not pay off for years. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not. Thats why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in its stead. While the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society. It was basic research in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of todays GPS satellites are based on the equations Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.
When we fail to invest in research, we fail to invest in the future. Yet, since the peak of the Space Race in the 1960s, our national commitment to research and development has steadily fallen as a share of our national income. That is why I have set a goal of putting a full three percent of our Gross Domestic Product our national income into research and development, surpassing the commitment we made when President Kennedy challenged this nation to send a man to the moon. Toward this goal, the Recovery Act has helped achieve the largest increase in basic research in history. And this month the National Institutes of Health will award more than a billion dollars in research grants through the Recovery Act focused on what we can learn from the mapping of the human genome in order to treat diseases that affect millions of Americans, from cancer to heart disease. I also want to urge Congress to fully fund the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, which has since its creation been a source of cutting-edge breakthroughs from that early internet to stealth technology.
As we invest in the building blocks of innovation, from the classroom to the laboratory, it is also essential that we have competitive and vibrant markets that promote innovation as well. Education and research help foster new ideas, but it takes fair and free markets to turn those ideas into industries.
We’ve posted his full remarks in the extended entry. As you’ll see in the coming days as we begin to post more on the appropriations process, there’s still positive sentiment in the Administration and the Congress for the federal government’s role in supporting basic research and its payoff in the economy. But translating that positive sentiment into robust funding for basic research is tricky and there are a number of hurdles along the way. So it helps that the President continues to shine a light on the issue and that articles like this great piece in today’s <a href=http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik21-2009sep21,0,5599248.columnLos Angeles Times continue to highlight the importance of federal support for basic research. Here’s a bit from that LA Times article, written by columnist Michael Hiltzik:
[Bob Taylor’s] experience underscores the importance of a government role in fields like basic research, which profit-seeking enterprises tend to shun.
“Industry generally avoids long-term research because it entails risk,” the veteran computer scientist Ed Lazowska told Congress a few years ago. Why? Because it’s hard to predict the results of such research, and since it has to be published and publicly validated, corporations can’t capitalize on their investments in isolation.
Yet once the research reaches a certain point, private industry piles in — Lazowska cited a National Research Council list of 19 multibillion-dollar industries that had been incubated with federal funding, generally via university grants — including the Internet, Web browsers and cellphones — before becoming commercially viable. Taylor’s ARPAnet was eventually turned over to the National Science Foundation, which in 1991 opened what was then known as NSFnet to commercial exploitation. Four years later, the dot-com boom was underway.
CRA frequently talks about the need for more basic scientific research but we focus almost exclusively on governmental research investment. We talk about the fall of DARPA and the need for NSF to increase to compensate. We don’t spend quite as much time talking about industry investment in basic research. An article in Business Week points out the necessity of industry participation in the research ecosystem and the rich history of corporate laboratories’ basic research contributions. It’s a very interesting article that weaves together the past and present research ecosystems, today’s economic concerns, and suggestions for tackling the problems we see today.
The article discusses the two times in US history when the government spurred scientific innovation in a short period of time – the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space mission – and the reasons they were so successful. It states, “Their success can be mapped to five crucial success factors: 1) full and sustained Presidential support; 2) effective leadership with a clearly defined mandate; 3) access to resources; 4) parallel paths/processing to save time; and 5) private sector outsourcing.”
It also discusses the best basic research model which it says combines universities’ research efforts and “a dynamic public-private network of labs and a venture capital industry waiting downstream to commercialize ideas and turn them into large public companies that create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Here’s what’s needed to get that model back on track:
Clear national goals in two or three key areas, such as carbon-free energy and preventive medicine.
Government commitment of $10 billion a year above and beyond spending for national agencies to jump-start new industrial research labs.
Government tax credits for corporations that commit to spending 5% to 10% (or more) of R&D on basic research.”
The article is a good read with good historical background and ideas for the present.
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FY 11 Budget: First Look Looks Good!
/In: FY11 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaDespite some early concerns in the science community over some dicey reported funding levels for some key science agencies, the President’s FY 2011 budget, released today, demonstrates a continued commitment to doubling the budgets of the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Here’s some relevant bits. We’ll have more as we plow through it and get briefed by the relevant agencies.
Under the President’s plan, NSF would grow by 8 percent to $7.4 billion in FY 11. NSF’s research accounts would also grow by 8 percent, $455 million over FY 10.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science would see a 4.6 percent increase to $5.1 billion in FY 11. DOE’s new ARPA-E would see $300 million in funding.
Watch this space (and our Twitter) for more info!
Quick Update: NSF and NIST Fare Well in FY 10 Final Approps Bill
/In: FY10 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaThe House and Senate Appropriators are in their end game on the FY 10 appropriations process and yesterday released the “conference agreement” for an omnibus appropriations bill they’ve created that bundles all the outstanding appropriations bills save one (Defense). Included in the conference bill are the agreed upon funding levels for several key science agencies. NSF and NIST seem to do well. NSF will receive $6.9 billion in FY 10, an increase of $436 million over FY 09 (about 6.7 percent — assuming the conference passes, and it’s safe to say that it will). NIST will receive an increase of $37.6 million, bringing their core research funding up to $662 million ($65 million more than FY 09).
Interestingly, the Defense appropriation, which includes research funding at DARPA and the other Defense labs, was held out of this omnibus — likely because the Democratic leadership wants to save it for the very end of the session as a last-ditch vehicle on which to attach other difficult-to-pass Democratic priorities. Congress faces a Dec 18th deadline for wrapping up appropriations, so we should have some idea of the final numbers in the Defense bill within the next week or so.
We’ll also have a full breakdown of all the science funding in the 1088 page bill, including budgets for NASA and NIH, very soon.
Update (12/10): The Joint Explanatory Statement — the report of the conference committee accompanying the bill — takes the Administration to task following reports that the President’s budget request for NSF in FY 11 will be much less generous than the FY 10 budget:
That’s strong show of support for the agency and good indication of how the President’s rumored 2.9 percent proposed increase for NSF in FY 11 might be received by Congress.
DARPA Challenge
/In: Events /by MelissaNorrDARPA will celebrate the 40th anniversary of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, with a network challenge this Saturday, December 5. The challenge seeks to test social networking with 10 weather balloons launched across the country. Teams will have to spot the balloons and collect the longitude and latitude of as many as possible. The first team to respond with all 10 wins the challenge and $40,000.
In the announcement of the challenge, DARPA Director Regina Dugan said, In the 40 years since this breakthrough, the Internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy. The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.
Peter Lee, director of the Transformational Convergence Technology Office at DARPA, said at MSNBC.com, “We’re learning more and more every day about social networks – how they form, how communities grow and how they change over time. It’s become a very interesting field of research … but when it’s a competition, the dynamic changes.”
With over 1000 registered teams competing in the challenge, the varying techniques on mobilization, dissemination, and collaboration are already informative though Lee told MSNBC.com that the most original ideas have probably not been revealed yet to maintain the competitive edge. Lee also expects subterfuge, deception, and information selling to show up in the competition.
Registration is still open to participate in the challenge and you can sign up here. Itll be very interesting to see all the techniques used and to see how long it takes for a team to find all 10 balloons. Well link to the announcement of the winner when it is announced.
SCIENCEWORKSFORUS LAUNCH
/In: Economic Stimulus and Recovery, Events, Funding /by MelissaNorrScienceWorksForUS, a joint effort by the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and The Science Coalition (TSC), launched today on Capitol Hill with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in attendance. The interesting and much needed initiative is designed to illustrate how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funding is supporting research across the country and how that research impacts the nation economically, both in the short and long term. The website of the initiative gives researchers a chance to tell their stories and to share their research with a wider public audience.
As we’ve mentioned here before, the ARRA included over $21 billion in science funding, including money to build research facilities, buy equipment, and conduct research. The immediate impact is to continue or increase employment of researchers, equipment manufacturers, and facility construction workers. However, the long-term impact will be more, higher paying jobs in industries that are created from the research or that help solve challenges in energy, healthcare, and other high priority challenges that the US faces in the coming decades.
FY 10 Appropriations Update: Energy, NSF, NIST, Defense
/In: FY10 Appropriations /by Peter HarshaWe’re in the end game for the FY 2010 appropriations, but no one is really sure exactly how this will end (though there are some good theories). While a number of bills have actually passed through regular order — including, most relevantly for the computing research community, the Energy and Water appropriations bill, which contains funding for the DOE’s Office of Science — an equal number of key bills remain unsettled. Still unresolved are the Commerce, Justice, Science bill, which includes funding for NSF, NOAA, NIST, and NASA; the Defense bill, which includes funding for DARPA and the Defense labs; and Labor-HHS, which includes funding for NIH. Because we’ve passed the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30th), the government is operating under a “Continuing Resolution” that will keep agencies funded at the FY 09 rate through Dec 18th. So, conventional wisdom suggests that these remaining appropriations bills will get taken care of by then (and probably at the last minute). Until then, Congress — the Senate, in particular — is more than occupied by the raging debate on reforming health care and will fit in appropriations discussions between now and then only as little blocks of free time appear.
It appears at this point that the remaining bills will end up in an omnibus measure — that is, they’ll be bundled into one bill for passage. (Because it’s only seven appropriations bills that would be bundled, rather than the usual twelve, many have taken to referring to the bill as a “minibus” — though I suppose everything is relative in DC). It also appears that the Defense bill will be the anchor for the minibus, because it’s considered the highest priority (a “must pass” bill), and thus many controversial provisions unrelated to defense that don’t have homes elsewhere may find their way into the bill (there’s been talk of adding a DC voting rights measure to it, though that’s now looking unlikely, or some health care-related language). But aside from that, we assume that sometime that week of Dec 14-18, we’ll start to see the final agreed-upon numbers for all of the as-yet-unappropriated science programs we care about. Until then, here’s what we know:
Department of Energy Office of Science (status: final): The Energy and Water Appropriations was passed and signed by the President on October 28th (P.L. 111-85). In it, DOE’s Office of Science received just over $4.8 billion (plus about $77 million in earmarks), a compromise between levels the House and Senate had passed separately, but an increase of 3 percent compared with FY 2009. The appropriation includes funding for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program (ASCR), which will receive $394 million in FY 10, slightly less than both the Senate original appropriations of $399 million and the House original number of $409 million, but a healthy 6.8 percent increase over FY2009.
National Science Foundation (status: unfinished): Funding for NSF is contained in the FY 10 Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. The House version of this bill would fund NSF at $6.93 billion in FY 10, an increase of 6.9 percent over FY09 but $108 million lower than the President’s request for the agency. The Senate version would fund the agency at $6.9 billion, a 6.6 percent increase. Both the Senate and House bills include healthy increases for NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate. The Senate version would provide $620 million in FY 10, 8.1 percent more than FY 09, and the House would provide $623 million, or an 8.6 percent increase. Both levels are less than the $633 million the President requested in his budget.
NSF’s Office of CyberInfrastructure (OCI) also fares well in both versions of the bill. The House would provide $216 million for OCI in FY 10, an increase of 8.1 percent, and the Senate $215 million, a 7.7 percent increase. Both are below the President’s requested increase of 10.0 percent in FY 10.
NSF’s Education and Human Resources directorate would receive a $17.6 million increase over FY 09 in the House, a $12.5 million increase over the Administration request. The Senate passed the President’s EHR request of $857.76 million.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (status: unfinished): NIST is also a part of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill. The House passed version includes $587 million for NIST’s research efforts, a 1.6 percent decrease from FY 09. The Senate would fund the agency at $684 million (less $47 million in earmarks), a 14.5 percent increase. However, if you remove the earmarked spending, the real increase to NIST in the Senate bill would be 6.1 percent. The Administration requested $652 million for the agency, a 9.2 percent increase over FY 09.
Department of Defense (status: unfinished): The Defense Appropriations bill includes funding for all DOD research, including DARPA and the Defense research labs. There’s some concern about the levels included for DARPA in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, but especially for the Senate levels. Both the House and Senate included significant cuts to the President’s request for DARPA — the House trimmed about $200 million from the request, the Senate about $500 million. In the Senate’s case, appropriations staffers apparently didn’t feel that the agency, given its recent history of under-spending its appropriation — a behavior linked to policies of the agency’s previous leadership — warranted an increase in FY 10 and instead used that money to fund increases elsewhere in the bill. Many of us in the science advocacy community reacted strongly to this reduction. Under new leadership, the agency appears to be making a serious effort to reverse many of the policies that the university community and Congress shared, and has proposed a number of new efforts designed to reengage DARPA with university researchers. We do not want to see that new approach derailed or hamstrung by this proposed reduction. CRA, along with many partners in the academic and industrial communities have weighed in with Congress in an attempt to mitigate these reductions. We’ll know in December how successful those efforts were. (We’ll also have much more on the “new” DARPA in future posts…)
There are also significant differences in opinion between the Senate and the House in the overall level of defense basic research (or 6.1 research, in DOD parlance). The House approved bill would fund Defense 6.1 research at $1.798 billion in FY 10, an increase of 10.1 percent over FY 09. The Senate, while still approving an increase, would only include $1.713 billion in FY 10, a 4.9 percent increase. Like the DARPA issue, this disparity will need to get worked out in conference between the chambers.
As we learn more, we’ll post it here. But it’s unlikely much will happen until mid-December….
National CS Education Week
/In: Events /by MelissaNorrLast night, Congress passed a resolution stating that the week of December 7 is National Computer Science Education Week by a vote of 405 to 0. The resolution language includes reasons that computing is so important to our culture and economy and the need to increase the diversity of people in computing as important factors that a National Computer Science Education Week could help promote. The week of December 7 was chosen to honor Grace Murray Hopper, one of the earliest female pioneers in computing, as her birthday was December 9. The full text of the resolution is available.
ACM has more information and community reaction here.
Prizes and Computing Research
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) /by Peter HarshaRan Libeskind-Hadas, a member of the Computing Community Consortium’s Council and a professor at Harvey Mudd College, has an interesting post today on the CCC blog asking, in light of the recent Netflix Prize announcement, whether prizes are a viable mechanism for encouraging research in the computing fields.
He notes several other examples of prizes that have led to new results and asks:
Add your two cents (or more) in the comments section. (No prize for doing it, though.)
House S&T Committee Considers Cyber Security R&D
/In: Diversity in Computing, Policy, Research, Security /by MelissaNorrThe House Committee on Science and Technologys Research and Science Education Subcommittee marked up a bill designed to amend portions of Cyber Security R&D Act of 2005 today. The aptly named Cybersecurity Research and Development Amendments Act of 2009 (PDF) touches on several things that CRA supports including:
Only two amendments to the original bill language were proposed and both were adopted. The first was the managers amendment which made technical changes to the bill and clarifies the service requirements for those students participating in the Scholarship for Service program authorized in the bill. The second amendment was introduced by Congresswoman Johnson (D-TX) and seeks to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in the scholarship program and include minority institutions as stakeholders in the strategic plan. We don’t yet have copies of either the Manager’s amendment or Rep. Johnson’s, but when we do, we’ll post them here.
Both the chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) and the ranking member, Congressman Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) emphasized the need for cybersecurity research to keep pace with the changing cyber threats and to ensure a sufficient workforce in cybersecurity. Ehlers mentioned that the workforce problem had been personally brought to his attention last year by a computer science professor who visited his office and discussed the drop in computing related undergraduates after the boom, a situation that we have discussed in great detail here in the past, but one that, based on the most recent Taulbee data, we believe is turning around.
President Obama Touts Role of Basic Research in Innovation
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaDelivering remarks at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY, today, President Obama noted the importance of the U.S. remaining an innovation leaders and how his Administration hopes to continue fostering that. Here’s a snippet with some remarks relevant to the computing community:
We’ve posted his full remarks in the extended entry. As you’ll see in the coming days as we begin to post more on the appropriations process, there’s still positive sentiment in the Administration and the Congress for the federal government’s role in supporting basic research and its payoff in the economy. But translating that positive sentiment into robust funding for basic research is tricky and there are a number of hurdles along the way. So it helps that the President continues to shine a light on the issue and that articles like this great piece in today’s <a href=http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik21-2009sep21,0,5599248.columnLos Angeles Times continue to highlight the importance of federal support for basic research. Here’s a bit from that LA Times article, written by columnist Michael Hiltzik:
Read more →
Business Week on Research in Industry
/In: Economic Stimulus and Recovery, Funding, Policy, R&D in the Press /by MelissaNorrCRA frequently talks about the need for more basic scientific research but we focus almost exclusively on governmental research investment. We talk about the fall of DARPA and the need for NSF to increase to compensate. We don’t spend quite as much time talking about industry investment in basic research. An article in Business Week points out the necessity of industry participation in the research ecosystem and the rich history of corporate laboratories’ basic research contributions. It’s a very interesting article that weaves together the past and present research ecosystems, today’s economic concerns, and suggestions for tackling the problems we see today.
The article discusses the two times in US history when the government spurred scientific innovation in a short period of time – the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space mission – and the reasons they were so successful. It states, “Their success can be mapped to five crucial success factors: 1) full and sustained Presidential support; 2) effective leadership with a clearly defined mandate; 3) access to resources; 4) parallel paths/processing to save time; and 5) private sector outsourcing.”
It also discusses the best basic research model which it says combines universities’ research efforts and “a dynamic public-private network of labs and a venture capital industry waiting downstream to commercialize ideas and turn them into large public companies that create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Here’s what’s needed to get that model back on track:
The article is a good read with good historical background and ideas for the present.