Update: (3/12/07, 1:17 pm) — Fixed!
Original Post: Though the blog continues to work, a database issue has rendered the CRA Government Affairs website temporarily unavailable. Apologies to those trying to access the resources we’ve got on those pages, but we hope to have the site restored soon….
The High Performance Computing R&D Act, which we’ve reported on previously, was approved by the House today on a voice vote. The bill would amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 (HPCC) to attempt to provide sustained, transparent access for the research community to federal HPC assets, assure a balanced research portfolio and beef up interagency planning. We like the bill and have endorsed it. (Here’s what it does (pdf) to current law.)
The bill now heads to the Senate. Previous versions of the bill in prior sessions of Congress have not fared well in the Senate, usually for reasons unrelated to the actual bill (Senate traffic jams and disputes between the House Science and Senate Commerce committees over other legislation are the most-often cited difficulties). But, talking with Senate staff, it appears the path to enactment this session is a bit smoother and freer of obstructions than in previous years. We understand that a bill very similar to the HPC R&D Act will be introduced soon in the Senate with a bipartisan set of co-sponsors — and we’ll have more detail soon.
For now, here’s a link to the House Science and Technology Committee’spress release marking the passage of the bill, and a snippet:
Research and Science Education Subcommittee Chairman Brian Baird (D-WA) sponsored the bill along with co-sponsor, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) who proposed similar legislation in both the 108th and 109th Congress.
“Information technology is an engine that drives economic growth in this country,” said Chairman Baird. “It creates high-wage jobs, provides for rapid communication throughout the world, and provides tools for closing the knowledge gap. This bill will help develop and deploy the fastest, most up-to-date, and technologically advanced super-computing systems that are essential for U.S. scientific, industrial, and military competitiveness.”
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), in consultation with the National Science Foundation, has selected the initial membership of the Science Council for the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). This GENI Science Council (GSC) will represent the computing research community in guiding the Science Plan for GENI — an experimental facility planned by NSF in collaboration with the research community, “to enable the research community to invent and demonstrate a global communications network and related services that will be qualitatively better than today’s Internet.”
The initial members are:
Tom Anderson, University of Washington (distributed systems and networking);++
Hari Balakrishnan, MIT (wireless networking);
Joe Berthold, CIENA (optical networking);
Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Laboratory (grid computing)+;
Mike Dahlin, University of Texas (distributed systems);
Stephanie Forrest, University of New Mexico (biological system modeling, security);
Roscoe Giles, Boston University (educational technology);
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington (systems);*+
Peter Lee, Carnegie Mellon University (software);+
Helen Nissenbaum, NYU (social, ethical and political dimensions of IT);
Ellen Zegura, vice chair, Georgia Tech (networking, including wireless)*, +
* member of Interim CCC Council + member of CRA GENI Advisory Board ++ member of GENI Planning Group
The members of the GSC were selected from a pool of more than 100 specific individuals nominated by the computing community representing roughly 20 research areas.
In selecting the GSC, CCC and NSF considered a number of criteria, including trying to insure that most GENI-relevant research communities were represented on the GSC, that the members should have strong individual reputations in the GENI-relevant research communities and recognized as “deep thinkers,” and that the selection process seek diversity of all sorts: geographical, institution type, gender, ethnic, etc. In addition, the CCC intends to add representation from the networking industry that builds components and provides network engineering expertise for the alternative technologies, but will wait to add those individuals until the results of the GENI Project Office (GPO) solicitation are known. (It was felt that individuals who are likely to have key roles in the GPO shouldn’t serve on the GSC, so that the GSC can offer independent advice if requested.)
Scott Shenker will serve as Chair of the GSC, and Ellen Zegura will serve as Vice Chair. A few details remain, including establishing the terms of service (and determining the staggering of the terms of the initial appointees) — but those are expected to be worked out shortly. Additional detail (pdf) on the selection of the GENI Science Council. More on GENI. And a helpful FAQ. More on CCC.
The American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) introduced by the President during the 2006 State of the Union is a commitment to the doubling of the research budgets for NSF, NIST, and the Department of Energy Office of Science. Much of that commitment was met by congressional appropriators in FY 07, as they increased the budgets for the three agencies in the year end “continuing resolution.” The President remained committed to ACI in his FY 08 budget request, asking for 7 to 14 percent increases for the three agencies.
The FY08 requests of $6.43 billion for NSF and $4.4 billion for the Office of Science would keep both agencies on the doubling path, which has received much bipartisan support in the past.
Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Christopher Bond (R-MO) are circulating a letter to colleagues asking for their support of the $6.43 billion request for the National Science Foundation in FY 2008. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) are circulating a similar letter to colleagues asking for their support for the Administration’s $4.4 billion request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in FY08. The letters will be sent to the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee and the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, respectively.
So far the NSF support letter has been signed by Christopher Bond (R-MO), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Carl Levin (D-MI), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barack Obama (D-IL), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).
The Office of Science letter has been signed by Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Kerry (D-MA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Barack Obama (D-IL), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), George Voinovich (R-OH), John Warner (R-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
During the FY 07 appropriations process, these “ask” letters were remarkably influential on congressional appropriators, helping position science funding as a “national priority” and carving out increases for three key science agencies even as many other agencies were held flat or cut. We’re asking for your help in making this similar effort by Lieberman, Bond, Bingaman and Alexander equally effective. Please fax your state Senators (especially if they’re not on the list above – but even if they are) and ask them to sign on to the Lieberman/Bond and Bingaman/Alexander “Dear Colleague” letters.
A sample letter you can use can be found at CRA’s Advocacy web page — please FAX it to your Senators offices as soon as possible. The deadline for signers is Monday, March 12. Please also fax a copy of your letter to Melissa Norr at 202.667.1066.
Find out who your Senators are at Senators of the 110th Congress.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Edward Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, as the inaugural Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council. This appointment was made after extensive consultations with computing research leaders, the Interim CCC Council and the National Science Foundation.
“CRA is delighted that our colleague, Ed Lazowska, has accepted this important role” said Daniel A. Reed, Chair of the CRA Board and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Lazowska has a distinguished career in computing research, public service, and service to the computing research community, including time spent as co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and the Defense Advanced Projects Agency Information Science and Technology study group. Dr. Lazowska is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In his new role, Dr. Lazowska will lead the CCC — a consortium of experts drawn from and chosen by the computing research community — as it seeks to stimulate scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. The CCC, established by CRA in partnership with NSF, will catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives. The next step in its implementation is populating the CCC Council, which will facilitate the processes by which the consortium will do its work.
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.
For more on the CCC: http://www.cra.org/ccc Previous posts on the CCC.
Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on competitiveness issues this morning. A web cast of the hearing is available here. He emphasized three areas: educating students and workers, immigration, and federal funding of basic research and R&D tax credit. His extensive written testimony (where he cites CRAs own Jay Vegso!) goes into great detail on each of these three issues.
Gates hit the competitiveness high notes that are found in the Rising Above the Gathering Storm and Tapping Americas Potential reports including recruiting more high school science and math teachers, doubling the number of math, science, and engineering graduates, increasing basic science R&D at the major research agencies by 10% over the next 7 years, and increasing visas for high skilled workers. He used computing as an example in both his oral and written testimony. His written testimony states:
We cannot possibly sustain an economy founded on technology pre-eminence without a citizenry educated in core technology disciplines such as mathematics, computer science, engineering, and the physical sciences. The economys need for workers trained in these fields is massive and growing. The U.S. Department of Labor has projected that, in the decade ending in 2014, there will be over two million job openings in the United States in these fields. Yet in 2004, just 11 percent of all higher education degrees awarded in the U.S. were in engineering, mathematics, and the physical sciences a decline of about a third since 1960.
Recent declines are particularly pronounced in computer science. The percentage of college freshmen planning to major in computer science dropped by 70 percent between 2000 and 2005.3 In an economy in which computing has become central to innovation in nearly every sector, this decline poses a serious threat to American competitiveness. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that every significant technological innovation of the 21st century will require new software to make it happen.
To combat this decline, Gates takes a recommendation straight from the Gathering Storm report and calls for 25,000 4-year undergraduate scholarships in the STEM fields. He also said that the opportunities for innovation in computing are greater than most people, especially students, realize.
The America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act will be introduced in the US Senate on Monday. The bill is a compilation of provisions and language from past innovation legislation like the National Competitiveness Investment Act, American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2006, and Protecting Americas Competitive Edge Through Energy Act of 2006. We don’t yet have a draft of the actual bill language, but a summary of the bill states: the America COMPETES Act focuses on three primary areas of importance to maintaining and improving United States innovation in the 21st Century: (1) increasing research investment, (2) strengthening educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school, and (3) developing an innovation infrastructure.
Provisions in the bill include:
Double funding for NSF and Department of Energy Office of Science by FY2011
Direct federal agencies that fund S&T research to set a goal of 8% of their R&D budgets to fund high-risk frontier research
Authorize NIST at $937 million by FY2011 and requiring NIST to use a minimum of 8% of its funding for high-risk, high-reward research
Authorize competitive grants to States for elementary and secondary education alignment with the requirements of post-secondary education, the 21st century workforce, and the Armed Services
Establish training and education programs at summer institutes hosted at the National Laboratories and increase support for the Teacher Institutes for the 21st Century program at NSF
Expand the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program at NSF
Assist States in establishing or expanding statewide specialty schools in math and science that students from across the state would be eligible to attend and providing expert assistance in teaching from National Laboratories staff at those schools
Increase the number of teachers prepared to teach AP/IB and pre-AP/IB math, science, and foreign language courses
Develop and implement programs for bachelors degrees in math, science, engineering, and critical foreign languages with concurrent teaching credentials and part-time masters in education programs for math, science, and critical foreign language teachers to enhance both content knowledge and teaching skills
Create partnerships between National Laboratories and local high-need high schools to establish centers of excellence in math and science education
Expand NSF graduate research fellowship and traineeship programs, require NSF to work with institutions of higher education to facilitate the development of professional science masters degree programs, and expand NSFs science, mathematics, engineering and technology talent program
Once the bill is introduced and the actual language is available, we will be back with more details. Update: We’ve been told that the bill will not go through a committee and will instead be placed directly on the Senate calendar so that the Leadership can act on it at any time.
Also, the Senators who are sponsoring the bill and putting it forward are: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), John Ensign (R-NV), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bill Nelson (R-FL), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).
The House Science and Technology Committee plans to meet tomorrow to mark up 4 bills, including the High Performance Computing R&D Act (H.R. 1068). The HPC R&D Act is very similar to previous efforts to amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, the act that established what has become the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program.
This version differs from the most recent attempt (H.R. 28, introduced in the 109th Congress) in that it doesn’t attempt to authorize specific agency activities. But otherwise, it contains the two provisions we particularly liked about the previous version. First, it directs the Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of federal high-performance computing systems. Second, there’s an explicit requirement that the President’s advisory committee for IT (now a responsibility of the PCAST) review not only the goals of the NITRD program but the funding levels as well and report the results of that review to Congress every two years.
In previous Congresses, the various HPC acts have failed to become law for a variety of reasons. It seems the situation this year is slightly more hopeful — but we should have some better sense in a week or so, so stay tuned.
The markup will be webcast here beginning at 10 am ET. Should get quick approval by the committee.
If you’re interested in seeing what the bill would actually do to the HPCC, here’s an “as amended by” document. Red text is what’s added. Strikethrough is what’s taken away… Update: (March 12, 2007) — The House passed the measure by voice vote. Details here.
Frances E. Allen, a former CRA Board member, has received the 2006 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the first time a woman has been given this honor. Allen, an IBM Fellow at the TJ Watson Research Center, was chosen for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen was also the first woman to be named an IBM Fellow in 1989. The Turing Award was first presented in 1966 and was named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation.
From the ACM press release:
Allen made fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of program optimization, which translates the users’ problem-solving language statements into more efficient sequences of computer instructions. Her contributions also greatly extended earlier work in automatic program parallelization, which enables programs to use multiple processors simultaneously in order to obtain faster results. These techniques have made it possible to achieve high performance from computers while programming them in languages suitable to applications. They have contributed to advances in the use of high performance computers for solving problems such as weather forecasting, DNA matching, and national security functions.
“Fran Allen’s work has led to remarkable advances in compiler design and machine architecture that are at the foundation of modern high-performance computing,” said Ruzena Bajcsy, Chair of ACM’s Turing Award Committee, and professor of Electrical and Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. “Her contributions have spanned most of the history of computer science, and have made possible computing techniques that we rely on today in business and technology. It is interesting to note Allen’s role in highly secret intelligence work on security codes for the organization now known as the National Security Agency, since it was Alan Turing, the namesake of this prestigious award, who devised techniques to help break the German codes during World War II,” said Bajcsy, who is Emeritus Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at Berkeley.
The House Committee on Science and Technology held its first budget hearing of the year today with testimony from Dr. John Marburger, director of the Presidents Office of Science and Technology Policy. The focus of the chairman and several of the committee members, including perennial science champion Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), was on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and the decreases to NSFs Education and Human Resources Directorate in recent years, along with some concern regarding NASAs space exploration and aeronautics funding. The openingstatements as well as a web cast of the hearing are available online.
The Committee and Dr. Marburger for the Administration seemed to be in agreement that the increased funding for NSF, NIST, and DoE Office of Science were important and that the American Competitiveness Initiative is important for Americas future innovation and competitiveness. However, the Administration and the Chairman seemed to diverge when it comes to priorities. The Administration priority is research funding and Chairman Gordon said that the education recommendations of the Gathering Storm report should be an equal priority. The Chairman repeatedly came back to the fact that, while the FY08 budget request increases funding to NSFs EHR Directorate, that same Directorates funding has decreased by 50 percent in the last four years. He was also unimpressed with the Department of Education FY08 budget request in that he felt the STEM education funding should be at NSF.
You can see the entire hearing on the Committees web site.
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CRA Gov Affairs Site Down…
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaUpdate: (3/12/07, 1:17 pm) — Fixed!
Original Post:
Though the blog continues to work, a database issue has rendered the CRA Government Affairs website temporarily unavailable. Apologies to those trying to access the resources we’ve got on those pages, but we hope to have the site restored soon….HPC R&D Act Passes House
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe High Performance Computing R&D Act, which we’ve reported on previously, was approved by the House today on a voice vote. The bill would amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 (HPCC) to attempt to provide sustained, transparent access for the research community to federal HPC assets, assure a balanced research portfolio and beef up interagency planning. We like the bill and have endorsed it. (Here’s what it does (pdf) to current law.)
The bill now heads to the Senate. Previous versions of the bill in prior sessions of Congress have not fared well in the Senate, usually for reasons unrelated to the actual bill (Senate traffic jams and disputes between the House Science and Senate Commerce committees over other legislation are the most-often cited difficulties). But, talking with Senate staff, it appears the path to enactment this session is a bit smoother and freer of obstructions than in previous years. We understand that a bill very similar to the HPC R&D Act will be introduced soon in the Senate with a bipartisan set of co-sponsors — and we’ll have more detail soon.
For now, here’s a link to the House Science and Technology Committee’s press release marking the passage of the bill, and a snippet:
Previous coverage.
GENI Science Council Named
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), Research /by Peter HarshaThe Computing Community Consortium (CCC), in consultation with the National Science Foundation, has selected the initial membership of the Science Council for the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). This GENI Science Council (GSC) will represent the computing research community in guiding the Science Plan for GENI — an experimental facility planned by NSF in collaboration with the research community, “to enable the research community to invent and demonstrate a global communications network and related services that will be qualitatively better than today’s Internet.”
The initial members are:
* member of Interim CCC Council
+ member of CRA GENI Advisory Board
++ member of GENI Planning Group
The members of the GSC were selected from a pool of more than 100 specific individuals nominated by the computing community representing roughly 20 research areas.
In selecting the GSC, CCC and NSF considered a number of criteria, including trying to insure that most GENI-relevant research communities were represented on the GSC, that the members should have strong individual reputations in the GENI-relevant research communities and recognized as “deep thinkers,” and that the selection process seek diversity of all sorts: geographical, institution type, gender, ethnic, etc. In addition, the CCC intends to add representation from the networking industry that builds components and provides network engineering expertise for the alternative technologies, but will wait to add those individuals until the results of the GENI Project Office (GPO) solicitation are known. (It was felt that individuals who are likely to have key roles in the GPO shouldn’t serve on the GSC, so that the GSC can offer independent advice if requested.)
Scott Shenker will serve as Chair of the GSC, and Ellen Zegura will serve as Vice Chair. A few details remain, including establishing the terms of service (and determining the staggering of the terms of the initial appointees) — but those are expected to be worked out shortly.
Additional detail (pdf) on the selection of the GENI Science Council.
More on GENI. And a helpful FAQ.
More on CCC.
Support ACI FY08 Funding
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) introduced by the President during the 2006 State of the Union is a commitment to the doubling of the research budgets for NSF, NIST, and the Department of Energy Office of Science. Much of that commitment was met by congressional appropriators in FY 07, as they increased the budgets for the three agencies in the year end “continuing resolution.” The President remained committed to ACI in his FY 08 budget request, asking for 7 to 14 percent increases for the three agencies.
The FY08 requests of $6.43 billion for NSF and $4.4 billion for the Office of Science would keep both agencies on the doubling path, which has received much bipartisan support in the past.
Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Christopher Bond (R-MO) are circulating a letter to colleagues asking for their support of the $6.43 billion request for the National Science Foundation in FY 2008. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) are circulating a similar letter to colleagues asking for their support for the Administration’s $4.4 billion request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in FY08. The letters will be sent to the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee and the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, respectively.
So far the NSF support letter has been signed by Christopher Bond (R-MO), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Carl Levin (D-MI), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barack Obama (D-IL), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).
The Office of Science letter has been signed by Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Kerry (D-MA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Barack Obama (D-IL), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), George Voinovich (R-OH), John Warner (R-VA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
During the FY 07 appropriations process, these “ask” letters were remarkably influential on congressional appropriators, helping position science funding as a “national priority” and carving out increases for three key science agencies even as many other agencies were held flat or cut. We’re asking for your help in making this similar effort by Lieberman, Bond, Bingaman and Alexander equally effective. Please fax your state Senators (especially if they’re not on the list above – but even if they are) and ask them to sign on to the Lieberman/Bond and Bingaman/Alexander “Dear Colleague” letters.
A sample letter you can use can be found at CRA’s Advocacy web page — please FAX it to your Senators offices as soon as possible. The deadline for signers is Monday, March 12. Please also fax a copy of your letter to Melissa Norr at 202.667.1066.
Find out who your Senators are at Senators of the 110th Congress.
Lazowska Named Chair of Computing Community Consortium
/In: Computing Community Consortium (CCC), CRA, People /by Peter HarshaThe Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Edward Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, as the inaugural Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council. This appointment was made after extensive consultations with computing research leaders, the Interim CCC Council and the National Science Foundation.
“CRA is delighted that our colleague, Ed Lazowska, has accepted this important role” said Daniel A. Reed, Chair of the CRA Board and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Lazowska has a distinguished career in computing research, public service, and service to the computing research community, including time spent as co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and the Defense Advanced Projects Agency Information Science and Technology study group. Dr. Lazowska is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In his new role, Dr. Lazowska will lead the CCC — a consortium of experts drawn from and chosen by the computing research community — as it seeks to stimulate scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. The CCC, established by CRA in partnership with NSF, will catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives. The next step in its implementation is populating the CCC Council, which will facilitate the processes by which the consortium will do its work.
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.
For more on the CCC: http://www.cra.org/ccc
Previous posts on the CCC.
Bill Gates Testifies on Competitiveness Issues
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, Policy, Research /by MelissaNorrBill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on competitiveness issues this morning. A web cast of the hearing is available here. He emphasized three areas: educating students and workers, immigration, and federal funding of basic research and R&D tax credit. His extensive written testimony (where he cites CRAs own Jay Vegso!) goes into great detail on each of these three issues.
Gates hit the competitiveness high notes that are found in the Rising Above the Gathering Storm and Tapping Americas Potential reports including recruiting more high school science and math teachers, doubling the number of math, science, and engineering graduates, increasing basic science R&D at the major research agencies by 10% over the next 7 years, and increasing visas for high skilled workers. He used computing as an example in both his oral and written testimony. His written testimony states:
To combat this decline, Gates takes a recommendation straight from the Gathering Storm report and calls for 25,000 4-year undergraduate scholarships in the STEM fields. He also said that the opportunities for innovation in computing are greater than most people, especially students, realize.
New Competitiveness Legislation
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Policy /by MelissaNorrThe America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act will be introduced in the US Senate on Monday. The bill is a compilation of provisions and language from past innovation legislation like the National Competitiveness Investment Act, American Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2006, and Protecting Americas Competitive Edge Through Energy Act of 2006. We don’t yet have a draft of the actual bill language, but a summary of the bill states: the America COMPETES Act focuses on three primary areas of importance to maintaining and improving United States innovation in the 21st Century: (1) increasing research investment, (2) strengthening educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from elementary through graduate school, and (3) developing an innovation infrastructure.
Provisions in the bill include:
Once the bill is introduced and the actual language is available, we will be back with more details.
Update: We’ve been told that the bill will not go through a committee and will instead be placed directly on the Senate calendar so that the Leadership can act on it at any time.
Also, the Senators who are sponsoring the bill and putting it forward are: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), John Ensign (R-NV), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bill Nelson (R-FL), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).
House Science to Mark Up HPC R&D Legislation
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe House Science and Technology Committee plans to meet tomorrow to mark up 4 bills, including the High Performance Computing R&D Act (H.R. 1068). The HPC R&D Act is very similar to previous efforts to amend the original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, the act that established what has become the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program.
This version differs from the most recent attempt (H.R. 28, introduced in the 109th Congress) in that it doesn’t attempt to authorize specific agency activities. But otherwise, it contains the two provisions we particularly liked about the previous version. First, it directs the Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop and maintain a research, development, and deployment roadmap for the provision of federal high-performance computing systems. Second, there’s an explicit requirement that the President’s advisory committee for IT (now a responsibility of the PCAST) review not only the goals of the NITRD program but the funding levels as well and report the results of that review to Congress every two years.
In previous Congresses, the various HPC acts have failed to become law for a variety of reasons. It seems the situation this year is slightly more hopeful — but we should have some better sense in a week or so, so stay tuned.
The markup will be webcast here beginning at 10 am ET. Should get quick approval by the committee.
If you’re interested in seeing what the bill would actually do to the HPCC, here’s an “as amended by” document. Red text is what’s added. Strikethrough is what’s taken away…
Update: (March 12, 2007) — The House passed the measure by voice vote. Details here.
Frances Allen Receives Turing Award
/In: People /by MelissaNorrFrances E. Allen, a former CRA Board member, has received the 2006 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the first time a woman has been given this honor. Allen, an IBM Fellow at the TJ Watson Research Center, was chosen for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen was also the first woman to be named an IBM Fellow in 1989. The Turing Award was first presented in 1966 and was named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation.
From the ACM press release:
House Science Committee Budget Hearing
/In: American Competitiveness Initiative, Funding, FY08 Appropriations /by MelissaNorrThe House Committee on Science and Technology held its first budget hearing of the year today with testimony from Dr. John Marburger, director of the Presidents Office of Science and Technology Policy. The focus of the chairman and several of the committee members, including perennial science champion Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), was on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and the decreases to NSFs Education and Human Resources Directorate in recent years, along with some concern regarding NASAs space exploration and aeronautics funding. The opening statements as well as a web cast of the hearing are available online.
The Committee and Dr. Marburger for the Administration seemed to be in agreement that the increased funding for NSF, NIST, and DoE Office of Science were important and that the American Competitiveness Initiative is important for Americas future innovation and competitiveness. However, the Administration and the Chairman seemed to diverge when it comes to priorities. The Administration priority is research funding and Chairman Gordon said that the education recommendations of the Gathering Storm report should be an equal priority. The Chairman repeatedly came back to the fact that, while the FY08 budget request increases funding to NSFs EHR Directorate, that same Directorates funding has decreased by 50 percent in the last four years. He was also unimpressed with the Department of Education FY08 budget request in that he felt the STEM education funding should be at NSF.
You can see the entire hearing on the Committees web site.