NSFs CISE Directorate awarded the first two Distinguished Education Fellow grants today to Dr. Owen Astrachan and Dr. Peter Denning. The awards are part of the CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program that CISE began last year.
New CISE Assistant Director Jeannette Wing said that CISE supports the revitalization of undergraduate education in computer science because the community needs to show that computing is about more than programming or a machine in order to attract the best minds to the field.
Astrachan, of Duke University, received his grant to explore case-based approaches to teaching computer science. Denning, of the Naval Postgraduate School, received his grant to focus on defining the principles of computer science and to distill the principles into modules that can be used in teaching.
Both awards are $250,000 grants over 2 years.
CRA participated once again in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s annual Science Exposition on Capitol Hill last week and it was a great success. The event, a science fair for Congress and staff, had 35 booths manned by researchers representing universities and scientific societies featuring some of the important research funded by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Lydia Kavraki, a computer science professor from Rice University, whose research into using computational tools to solve problems in a range of areas such as biology was a hit with all those who stopped at the booth.
The exhibit drew a record crowd with 493 attendees, 11 of whom were members of Congress such as Rep. Dan Lipinski (IL) who stopped to talk to Dr. Kavraki about her work. There were also a number of NSF staff members and a large contingent of Congressional staff, particularly from the House Science and Technology Committee.
As weve stated before in this space, personal visits to members of Congress and their staff are vital to getting the message about the importance of computing research out. CRA holds or participates in Congressional visit days several times throughout the year and we are always looking for participants. If you are interested in coming to Washington to visit your Representative and Senators, please contact Melissa Norr at mnorr at cra.org.
The National Research Council of the National Academies of Science released a new report on cyber security and research called “Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace.” The report is available for free online at the National Academies Press.
The report lists three broad categories that lack of cyber security falls into:
First is the threat of catastrophe-a cyberattack, especially in conjunction with a physical attack, could result in thousands of deaths and many billions of dollars of damage in a very short time. Second is frictional drag on important economic and security-related processes. Today, insecurities in cyberspace systems and networks allow adversaries (in particular, criminals) to extract billions of dollars in fraud and extortion-and force businesses to expend additional resources to defend themselves against these threats. If cyberspace does not become more secure, the citizens, businesses, and governments of tomorrow will continue to face similar pressures, and most likely on a greater scale. Third, concerns about insecurity may inhibit the use of IT in the future and thus lead to a self-denial of the benefits that IT brings, benefits that will be needed for the national competitiveness of the United States as well as for national and homeland security.
It also lists a set of ten provisions that could form a Cyber Security Bill of Rights. The provisions are:
I. Availability of system and network resources to legitimate users. II. Easy and convenient recovery from successful attacks. III. Control over and knowledge of one’s own computing environment. IV. Confidentiality of stored information and information exchange. V. Authentication and provenance. VI. The technological capability to exercise fine-grained control over the flow of information in and through systems. VII. Security in using computing directly or indirectly in important applications, including financial, health care, and electoral transactions and real-time remote control of devices that interact with physical processes. VIII. The ability to access any source of information (e.g., e-mail, Web page, file) safely. IX. Awareness of what security is actually being delivered by a system or component. X. Justice for security problems caused by another party.
The Senate Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations subcommittee and the Senate Energy and Water Development appropriations subcommittee marked up their appropriations bills and, as with the House versions, it appears the science agencies did very well. We don’t yet have all the details, but here are the early numbers:
NSF received a total appropriation of $6.6 billion from the subcommittee — about $200 million more than the Presidents request, $100 million more than the House subcommittee allocation, and about $700 million more than the agency received in FY 07.
NIST received $712 million, $71 million more than the Presidents request and $33 million more than FY07 but $66 million less than the House subcommittee allocation. We don’t know how much of that increase goes to the NIST core research budget, however.
The Department of Energys Office of Science received $4.497 billion, almost $100 million above the Presidents request and $700 million over FY07 but $17 million less than the House allocation.
All the usual caveats about appropriations bills apply here — we don’t have the details, no funding is certain until the bill becomes law with the President’s signature, these numbers can change dramatically if the process melts down over an earmark dispute or a veto threat, etc — but it’s again a very positive sign that both the House and the Senate appear committed to the increases called for in both the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda. We’ll keep you posted as the bills move forward.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. reqd.) has a great article on the future of the Internet and the Global Environment for Network Innovations or GENI. It contains quotes from many participants of the new Computing Community Consortium (CCC) that CRA helped launch.
The article talks about the problems with the current state of the Internet:
Identity theft, viruses, and attacks on Web sites are on the rise a few weeks ago the country of Estonia was practically shut down, digitally, by deliberate attempts to jam government computers. Spam, which was less than 50 percent of e-mail traffic back in 2002, is now close to 90 percent, according to Commtouch Software Ltd., an Internet-security company.
Moreover, the Internet has great difficulty coping with the sharp increase in mobile devices like cellphones and laptops, and handling bandwidth-hungry traffic such as video, now demanded by an increasing number of users.
GENI and its possibilities are discussed in great detail:
The people pushing for change are the very people at universities and colleges who built the Internet in the first place. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California, among others, have joined Mr. Peterson in the GENI planning process. Industry players such as chip-maker Intel are also on board.
In late May of this year, the science foundation awarded Cambridge-based BBN Technologies the job of planning GENI, giving them $10-million to spend over the next four years. The company has deep roots in the old Internet: It built the first network segment connecting four universities back in 1969.
Chip Elliott, the BBN engineer who will be running the GENI project office, thinks the project calls for two approaches. “First, if you don’t like conventional Internet protocols, try something completely different. Second, do it on a large enough scale, with enough users, so that your results actually mean something.” People associated with GENI say that “large enough” means access for experimenters at several hundred universities and, eventually, a user community in the tens of thousands.
Thousands of users will provide a crucial dose of reality, say planners. Over the years, there have been many papers published on new Internet design, and simulations run on networks such as PlanetLab. “But you don’t know how an Internet design will behave until a large group of people actually use it,” says Ms. Zegura, who will co-chair a GENI science council charged with rounding up ideas from the research community. “They will do things that you don’t expect, just like in the real Internet, and then you’ll see how robust your idea is. That’s where the rubber meets the road.”
CRA NAMES 16 TO FIRST COMPUTING COMMUNITY CONSORTIUM COUNCIL
WASHINGTON, DC – The Computing Research Association, in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), today announced the membership of the first permanent Council for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). The council will direct and oversee the operations of the CCC as it provides scientific leadership and vision to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects.
CRA created the CCC under a $6 million, three-year agreement with NSF to identify major research opportunities and establish grand challenges for the computing field. The CCC will create venues for community participation in developing a vision for computing research and in launching new research activities.
Today’s announcement names 16 leaders of the computing research community from industry, government and academia to terms on the permanent CCC Council ranging from 1 to 3 years. Those named to the council are listed below.
Edward Lazowska, University of Washington, Chair
Three-year terms
Bill Feiereisen, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Susan Graham, University of California at Berkeley
David Kaeli, Northeastern University
John King, University of Michigan
Peter Lee, Carnegie Mellon University
Two-year terms
Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts
Beth Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology
Fred Schneider, Cornell University
David Tennenhouse, New Venture Partners
Dave Waltz, Columbia University
One-year terms
Greg Andrews, University of Arizona
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Dick Karp, University of California at Berkeley
Bob Sproull, Sun Microsystems
Karen Sutherland, Augsburg College
We’re pleased to have assembled such a strong council with a broad range of interests and backgrounds, said Daniel Reed, chair of the Computing Research Association and director of the Renaissance Computing Institute. Having representatives from such a wide array of sub disciplines, from schools both large and small, and from industry and government research labs should provide the diversity of thought necessary to enhance our community’s ability to envision and pursue long-term, audacious computing research goals.
Reed said key tasks for the council will be to help the CCC catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, build consensus around research visions, and develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives.
The council members’ terms begin July 1, 2007.
About CRA: The CRA was established 30 years ago and has members at more than 250 research entities in academia, industry and government. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.
CRA: https://cra.org
CCC: https://cra.org/ccc
Update: Some of the term limits in the original press release were wrong. Edward Lazowska, Chair, currently does not have a fixed term limit. Fred Schneider, Cornell University, has a two year term. These have been corrected in the list above.
The Senate Appropriations committee released their “302(b) allocations” and it looks like science does very well. We previously discussed the House 302(b)’s here and the Senate’s numbers look as good, or better, than the House numbers.
The Senate Commerce, Justice, Science subcommittee received $54.4 billion, $1 billion more than the House allocation and more than $4 billion more than FY07. The Energy and Water subcommittee received an increase of $1.9 billion over FY07, a $600 million more than the House allocated for this year.
The Labor/HHS/Education subcommittee received a $4.7 billion increase, the only subcommittee allocation to be lower than the House allocation but still an increase of almost $9 billion more than the President’s request.
As we’ve stated here before, these allocations don’t guarantee that the funding will keep Congress on the path to doubling the budgets of NSF, NIST, and DOE Office of Science over the next 10 years, as planned. But if the House’s appropriations committee bills are any indication, that is where we are heading. Of course, given the disparity between some of the allocations, there will probably be some compromises worked out in conference but even if we get the lower numbers allocated for each subcommittee, we’ll still be in a good position with increased funding in all our areas.
A bigger concern at the moment is whether the appropriations process is going to continue to move or if it’s headed for meltdown over the disposition of earmarks in some upcoming bills. At the moment, House Republicans and Democrats have reached a tentative truce that will keep the bills moving, but it wouldn’t take much for the process to break down again. At issue is a Democratic plan to bring appropriations bills to the House floor without earmarks included, then add them in conference with the Senate. House leaders argue that appropriations staff haven’t yet had time to review the 32,000 requests for earmarks (keep in mind, there are only 435 members of Congress…that’s an average of 74 requests per member), so rather than delay the bills, they want them to move and they’ll add the earmarks later. House Republicans argue that the plan hardly promotes transparency in the earmarking process and were using procedural motions to tie up the bills until the Dems agreed to allow the House to vote on the bills with earmarks present — though not in all of the bills. The House this week should finish work on the Homeland Security and Military Construction appropriations bills, and those will not see their earmarks added until the conference. The Energy and Water appropriation also will not have earmarks in it when it reaches the floor, but will get a pack of earmarks added to it before it heads over to the Senate. If the deal holds, the remainder of the appropriations bills will have earmarks included when the bills hit the House floor (and therefore, subject to amendment). We’ll have all the details as the bills begin to move.
Just a quick placeholder here…. The House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing today on “Globalization of R&D and Innovation.” Here’s the hearing website. CRA has provided written testimony for the hearing record, which you can read here (pdf).
We’ll have more when we’re back from the hearing.
The Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations subcommittee marked up their portion of the appropriations bills yesterday evening. The full Appropriations Committee will mark up the bill on Monday, June 18. NSF did very well with a total appropriation of $6.509 billion, an increase of 10 percent over FY07 and $80 million more than the President requested.
Research and Related Activities got $5.14 billion in the subcommittee markup7.9 percent over FY07 and $8 million more than the Presidents request (but that $8 million is apparently going to the EPSCoR program, which the committee has apparently moved into R&RA from Education and Human Resources). Education and Human Resources received $822.6 million or 17.9 percent over FY07 and $72 million over the request for FY08. Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction received $244.7 million, the level that the President requested and 28.2 percent more than FY07.
No details were provided for the various programs within each account but well know more as the process moves forward through the House and when the Senate takes it up and well keep you updated here.
DARPA once liked to boast that it took on impossible problems and wasn’t interested in the merely difficult. But in recent years, the scientists argued, DARPA has become nearly as cautious and prone to micromanagement as the government’s science behemoth, the National Institutes of Health. Before making most of its grants, the NIH demands such detailed evidence of success that it is “funding the past, not the future,” one scientist complained.
“DARPA seems to be shifting to the NIH model — more near-term, more risk-averse,” said Don Ingber, a professor of pathology at Harvard.
For more background, in addition to all the links above, be sure to check out CRA’s Information Technology R&D page which has tons of links to previous press reports on the issue….
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CISE Awards Distinguished Education Fellow Grants
/In: Funding, People, Research /by MelissaNorrNSFs CISE Directorate awarded the first two Distinguished Education Fellow grants today to Dr. Owen Astrachan and Dr. Peter Denning. The awards are part of the CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program that CISE began last year.
New CISE Assistant Director Jeannette Wing said that CISE supports the revitalization of undergraduate education in computer science because the community needs to show that computing is about more than programming or a machine in order to attract the best minds to the field.
Astrachan, of Duke University, received his grant to explore case-based approaches to teaching computer science. Denning, of the Naval Postgraduate School, received his grant to focus on defining the principles of computer science and to distill the principles into modules that can be used in teaching.
Both awards are $250,000 grants over 2 years.
CRA at CNSF Exhibit on Hill
/In: CRA, Events, Funding, People, Research /by MelissaNorrCRA participated once again in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s annual Science Exposition on Capitol Hill last week and it was a great success. The event, a science fair for Congress and staff, had 35 booths manned by researchers representing universities and scientific societies featuring some of the important research funded by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Lydia Kavraki, a computer science professor from Rice University, whose research into using computational tools to solve problems in a range of areas such as biology was a hit with all those who stopped at the booth.
As weve stated before in this space, personal visits to members of Congress and their staff are vital to getting the message about the importance of computing research out. CRA holds or participates in Congressional visit days several times throughout the year and we are always looking for participants. If you are interested in coming to Washington to visit your Representative and Senators, please contact Melissa Norr at mnorr at cra.org.
Cyber Security Report Released
/In: Events, People, Policy, Research, Security /by MelissaNorrThe National Research Council of the National Academies of Science released a new report on cyber security and research called “Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace.” The report is available for free online at the National Academies Press.
The report lists three broad categories that lack of cyber security falls into:
It also lists a set of ten provisions that could form a Cyber Security Bill of Rights. The provisions are:
First Senate Appropriations Numbers
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe Senate Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations subcommittee and the Senate Energy and Water Development appropriations subcommittee marked up their appropriations bills and, as with the House versions, it appears the science agencies did very well. We don’t yet have all the details, but here are the early numbers:
NSF received a total appropriation of $6.6 billion from the subcommittee — about $200 million more than the Presidents request, $100 million more than the House subcommittee allocation, and about $700 million more than the agency received in FY 07.
NIST received $712 million, $71 million more than the Presidents request and $33 million more than FY07 but $66 million less than the House subcommittee allocation. We don’t know how much of that increase goes to the NIST core research budget, however.
The Department of Energys Office of Science received $4.497 billion, almost $100 million above the Presidents request and $700 million over FY07 but $17 million less than the House allocation.
All the usual caveats about appropriations bills apply here — we don’t have the details, no funding is certain until the bill becomes law with the President’s signature, these numbers can change dramatically if the process melts down over an earmark dispute or a veto threat, etc — but it’s again a very positive sign that both the House and the Senate appear committed to the increases called for in both the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda. We’ll keep you posted as the bills move forward.
GENI Gets Some Press
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), R&D in the Press, Research, Security /by MelissaNorrThe Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. reqd.) has a great article on the future of the Internet and the Global Environment for Network Innovations or GENI. It contains quotes from many participants of the new Computing Community Consortium (CCC) that CRA helped launch.
The article talks about the problems with the current state of the Internet:
GENI and its possibilities are discussed in great detail:
CRA NAMES 16 TO FIRST COMPUTING COMMUNITY CONSORTIUM COUNCIL
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC) /by Peter HarshaAn announcement from CRA:
Update: Some of the term limits in the original press release were wrong. Edward Lazowska, Chair, currently does not have a fixed term limit. Fred Schneider, Cornell University, has a two year term. These have been corrected in the list above.
Senate Budget Numbers
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe Senate Appropriations committee released their “302(b) allocations” and it looks like science does very well. We previously discussed the House 302(b)’s here and the Senate’s numbers look as good, or better, than the House numbers.
The Senate Commerce, Justice, Science subcommittee received $54.4 billion, $1 billion more than the House allocation and more than $4 billion more than FY07. The Energy and Water subcommittee received an increase of $1.9 billion over FY07, a $600 million more than the House allocated for this year.
The Labor/HHS/Education subcommittee received a $4.7 billion increase, the only subcommittee allocation to be lower than the House allocation but still an increase of almost $9 billion more than the President’s request.
As we’ve stated here before, these allocations don’t guarantee that the funding will keep Congress on the path to doubling the budgets of NSF, NIST, and DOE Office of Science over the next 10 years, as planned. But if the House’s appropriations committee bills are any indication, that is where we are heading. Of course, given the disparity between some of the allocations, there will probably be some compromises worked out in conference but even if we get the lower numbers allocated for each subcommittee, we’ll still be in a good position with increased funding in all our areas.
A bigger concern at the moment is whether the appropriations process is going to continue to move or if it’s headed for meltdown over the disposition of earmarks in some upcoming bills. At the moment, House Republicans and Democrats have reached a tentative truce that will keep the bills moving, but it wouldn’t take much for the process to break down again. At issue is a Democratic plan to bring appropriations bills to the House floor without earmarks included, then add them in conference with the Senate. House leaders argue that appropriations staff haven’t yet had time to review the 32,000 requests for earmarks (keep in mind, there are only 435 members of Congress…that’s an average of 74 requests per member), so rather than delay the bills, they want them to move and they’ll add the earmarks later. House Republicans argue that the plan hardly promotes transparency in the earmarking process and were using procedural motions to tie up the bills until the Dems agreed to allow the House to vote on the bills with earmarks present — though not in all of the bills. The House this week should finish work on the Homeland Security and Military Construction appropriations bills, and those will not see their earmarks added until the conference. The Energy and Water appropriation also will not have earmarks in it when it reaches the floor, but will get a pack of earmarks added to it before it heads over to the Senate. If the deal holds, the remainder of the appropriations bills will have earmarks included when the bills hit the House floor (and therefore, subject to amendment). We’ll have all the details as the bills begin to move.
House Science Committee on Globalization of R&D
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaJust a quick placeholder here…. The House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing today on “Globalization of R&D and Innovation.” Here’s the hearing website. CRA has provided written testimony for the hearing record, which you can read here (pdf).
We’ll have more when we’re back from the hearing.
Initial NSF Approps Numbers
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations subcommittee marked up their portion of the appropriations bills yesterday evening. The full Appropriations Committee will mark up the bill on Monday, June 18. NSF did very well with a total appropriation of $6.509 billion, an increase of 10 percent over FY07 and $80 million more than the President requested.
Research and Related Activities got $5.14 billion in the subcommittee markup7.9 percent over FY07 and $8 million more than the Presidents request (but that $8 million is apparently going to the EPSCoR program, which the committee has apparently moved into R&RA from Education and Human Resources). Education and Human Resources received $822.6 million or 17.9 percent over FY07 and $72 million over the request for FY08. Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction received $244.7 million, the level that the President requested and 28.2 percent more than FY07.
No details were provided for the various programs within each account but well know more as the process moves forward through the House and when the Senate takes it up and well keep you updated here.
Washington Post Op-Ed on DARPA Short-term Thinking
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaThe computing community has had these concerns for quite a while, so it’s not surprising to see other disciplines noting similar issues with DARPA in this OpEd written by David Ignatius in Friday’s Washington Post:
For more background, in addition to all the links above, be sure to check out CRA’s Information Technology R&D page which has tons of links to previous press reports on the issue….