**To**: **CISE Advisory Committee** October 6, 2004

**From**: **Peter Freeman, AD/CISE**

**Subject**: **Update for Fall 2004 Meeting**

As background for our meeting on Friday, October 22, 2004, let me update
you on some things that have happened since our last meeting. I look
forward to discussing these and other topics with you.

**PEOPLE**

Several transitions and events have taken place in recent months:

-   The entire community was shocked in July by the tragic death of
    Frank Anger, Deputy Division Director of the Computing and
    Communication Foundations (CCF) division, and the severe injuries
    sustained by his wife Rita Rodriguez, Program Director in the
    Computer and Network Systems (CNS) division; we are extremely
    pleased that Rita is continuing to recover and is anxious to begin
    working again;

-   Mike Foster has rejoined NSF and will become the Division Director
    of the CCF division, effective October 31, 2004. Mike is currently a
    Program Director in the Shared Cyberinfrastructure (SCI) division,
    and recently spent four years on detail as a Program Manager at
    DARPA;

-   Wei Zhao will join us as the Division Director of the CNS division,
    to be effective January 3, 2005. Wei comes to us from Texas A&M
    University, where he is Associate VP for Research and Professor of
    Computer Science;

-   Lee Harle joined CISE in September as an NSF/AAAS Policy Fellow for
    one year. Lee comes to us from the University of Michigan, where she
    was a Research Fellow in the Electrical Engineering and Computer
    Science Dept.;

-   Jan Cuny has joined the CNS division as a Program Director to help
    with the Broadening Participation effort within the Education and
    Workforce Cluster. Jan comes to us from the University of Oregon
    where she is a Professor of Computer and Information Science;

-   Bryant York worked over the summer with the CNS division as an
    Expert to help us define a FY 2005 emphasis area in Broadening
    Participation. Bryant is currently a Professor of Computer Science
    at Portland State University and a member of the CISE Advisory
    Committee;

-   Larry Rosenblum will shortly join the CCF division as Program
    Director for Graphics and Visualization in the Computing Processes
    and Artifacts cluster (CPA); Larry will be on detail from the Naval
    Research Laboratory;

-   Consistent with our increased investments in Cyberinfrastructure,
    there have been significant additions to the Shared
    Cyberinfrastructure division:

    -   Jose Munoz has joined CISE permanently as Deputy Division
        Director of SCI. In my previous report, Jose was introduced as a
        detailee from the Department of Energy;

    -   Guy Almes, an IPA from Internet2, has joined SCI as the Program
        Director responsible for managing the Extensible Terascale
        Facility;

    -   Vicki Booker, on detail from the Engineering Directorate, joined
        SCI earlier this summer to develop SCI's education and outreach
        efforts. She will also be responsible for linkages to
        computational science efforts across NSF;

    -   Miriam Heller joined SCI from the Social, Behavioral and
        Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate in October, to help launch
        new programmatic activity at the interface between
        Cyberinfrastructure and SBE.

-   Kamal Abdali will begin a 6-month assignment to UC-Berkeley
    beginning in November, 2004, where he will deepen his understanding
    of quantum computing;

-   Junku Yuh, Program Director in the Information and Intelligent
    Systems (IIS) division, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award in
    recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of intelligent
    automation and underwater robotics which was presented by the World
    Automation Congress in Seville, Spain;

-   Daphne Koller, a Stanford computer scientist who has developed new
    computational methods for representing knowledge and reasoning, and
    whose research has been supported by CISE, was awarded a grant from
    the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation;

-   We are presently searching for Program Directors for the Computing
    Research Infrastructure (CRI) cluster, and for SCI Program Directors
    with expertise in networking and computational science. The IIS
    division will be recruiting for Program Directors in Computer
    Vision, Databases, and Science and Engineering Informatics.
    []{.mark}

**ORGANIZATION**

**Reorganization**: The reorganization of CISE continues to take hold
and become more fully operational. . Program consolidations into
clusters and solicitation deadlines continue to be refined to better
serve the community while providing a more efficient distribution of our
workload. New space on the 11^th^ floor is now about 2/3 renovated and
occupied, providing space for the new Division staff to be co-located.
All renovation should be finished by December.

CISE continues to be understaffed, but we did receive approximately 12
new positions earlier this year. As described above, we are now working
to fill those positions.

**Committees of Visitors (COVs):** There are two COVs planned for March
2005. The Information Technology Research (ITR) COV will be held March
8-10. Janie Irwin has agreed to serve as the chair. The COV will examine
the ITR Program for Fiscal Years 2001 - 2003. The SCI COV is planned for
March 14-15. The review and acceptance of these COV reports will be on
the agenda for our Spring AC meeting.

**BUDGET**

**Overall:** In spite of bi-cameral and bi-partisan support for NSF in
the Congress and the Administration, NSF's budget situation continues to
worsen. Both the House and Senate have acted on the FY05 budget request,
but a conference agreement has not yet been reached. We are now
operating under a continuing resolution that runs until November 20,
2004. Markups indicate a flat (compared to FY04 appropriations) budget
for FY05 at best:

-   The House did not specify funding levels by directorate, but overall
    NSF was cut by 2% and the Research and Related Activities Account,
    where CISE funding resides, was cut by 2.3%.

-   The agency fared a bit better in the Senate mark-up, remaining level
    with our FY05 Request. CISE received an increase of almost \$12
    million over our FY05 Request of \$618M, all of which is dedicated
    to the ITR account.

-   The FY06 budget request was submitted to the Office of Management
    and Budget in mid-September. We're discussing our priorities with
    OMB and expect to receive our final FY06 Request Level at the end of
    November. CISE is in a strong position relative to other areas.

**CISE Funding Trends:** The current budget situation coupled with the
rapid growth in the number of proposals submitted to CISE have led to
seriously declining success rates. Our proposal success rate for FY04 is
16%, the lowest in NSF. The attached articles, which will appear next
month in CRN (*Computing Research News* of the Computing Research
Association), discuss our initial analysis of the situation and our
response. In light of this, we are now examining budget distribution
across divisions and clusters. The long-term implications of the success
rate/funding situation are very serious and we will be exploring that
with you and other stakeholders in coming months.

An interesting statistic that has come to light during preparation of
the FY06 budget is that CISE is supporting approximately 85% of all
fundamental academic computer science research. We had been using a
figure slightly in excess of 50% for several years, but the office in
NSF that provides this statistic discovered an error in their
calculations this year, and they assure us that the new number is now
correct. Definitions, of course, make a precise accounting very
difficult and potentially variable, but however one defines it, it seems
clear that NSF is now supporting the vast majority of basic CS research
in this country.

**PROGRAMATIC FOCUS**

We remain focused on a number of scientific priorities. A quick update
on our four budget emphasis areas follows:

**Science of Design**: The Science of Design (SoD) solicitation drew
just under 200 proposals in May 2004. The review process, which was
conducted by a team of program officers cutting across CISE, will be
completed in October, and awards will be made in November 2004.
Proposals covered a ranged of topics, including software and system
design languages, design processes, formal theories, system complexity,
human-computer interfaces, visualization, and design automation.

**Information Integration**: The Information Integration emphasis area
was combined with another new IIS activity in Science and Engineering
Informatics. The Science and Engineering Information Integration and
Informatics solicitation generated 238 proposals and we were able to
fund 33 awards. In addition to CISE, the GEO directorate provided \$1.3M
of funds for proposals in this area.

**Cybersecurity**: In response to the Cyber Trust solicitation, 363
proposals for individual investigator or small-group projects and 26
center-scale projects were submitted. We were able to fund 33 projects,
including two centers, with \$30M from NSF and \$8M in co-funding from
DARPA and DHS. We also funded about \$2M in cybersecurity CAREER awards
last January, and another \$1M in supplements, SGERs, etc. Cybersecurity
will continue to be an area of high importance and activity for the next
several years, as it appears that we are carrying the bulk of the
long-range research activity for the Federal government.

**Broadening participation:** Planning is underway for new activities as
we make this a CISE emphasis area. A workshop of key stakeholders will
be held just before the AC meeting.

**Cyberinfrastructure** **(CI)**: We have announced a significant
upgrade to the high-end computing (HEC) capabilities at the Pittsburgh
Supercomputer Center (PSC), in the form of a 10 teraflops computing
system based on the Cray Red Storm architecture. This upgrade also
introduces new grid-enabled paradigms for access to HEC resources since
PSC plays a major role in the Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF).

This very brief overview has undoubtedly missed many items of interest
to you, so feel free to ask questions before or at our meeting.