#### CISE FY 2001 GPRA Report

###### October 2001

## CISE Directorate Overview

# A.1. Role of CISE in Supporting Research and Education 

The CISE Directorate supports basic research in computing,
communications, and information, including principles and techniques for
creating, representing, storing, transmitting, transforming, and
applying information. Specific CISE activities include:

-   theoretical and experimental investigator-initiated research in all
    areas of computer and information science and engineering;

-   developing and maintaining a cutting-edge national computing and
    information infrastructure for research and general education; and

-   programs that contribute to educating and training the next
    generation of computer scientists and engineers.

Information technology has become increasingly important in every aspect
of our lives, affecting science and engineering research and education
as well as work, commerce, health care, and national security. Bold
Federal investments in research and development (R&D) have been and
continue to be the key element in developing early U.S. leadership in
underlying computing, communications, and information technologies and
in applying these technologies to areas of critical national importance.
CISE\--which provides more than 50 percent of the total Federal funding
for fundamental research in computer science at U.S. colleges and
universities\--has become a driving force supporting leading-edge R&D in
the scientific community.

Comprised of five Divisions---each of which is aligned with different
disciplinary specialties\--CISE now has an additional budget line for
Information Technology Research (ITR). ITR is an NSF-wide program that
is an integral part of the White House's multi-agency Information
Technology for the Twenty First Century initiative.

# Division of Advanced Computing and Infrastructure and Research (ACIR)

ACIR provides access to and support for high-end computing
infrastructure and research for the national scientific community
through the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(PACI) program and the Advanced Computational Research (ACR) program.

The PACI program provides the foundation for meeting the ever-expanding
need for high-end computation and information technologies required by
the U.S. academic research community. PACI consists of two national
partnerships: the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance),
led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in
Champaign, Illinois; and the National Partnership for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) under the leadership of the San
Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) in Dan Diego, California. PACI
partners contribute to our nation's evolving information infrastructure
by developing, applying, and testing the necessary software, tools, and
algorithms that underpin the growth of the national grid of
interconnected high-performance computing systems. More than 60
geographically-distributed partner institutions from 27 states and the
District of Columbia are associated with either the Alliance or NPACI or
both. PACI's two leading edge sites\--which maintain a variety of
high-end computer systems\--together with the partners who support
smaller versions of these computers and provide access to experimental
systems, constitute a distributed, metacomputing environment connected
via high-speed networks. The PACI centers actively support education
outreach and training (EOT) to build awareness and understanding of how
to use high performance computing and communications resources, and
broaden participation to help ensure the nation\'s continued world
leadership in computational science and engineering.

The ACI Program is also responsible for handling the Terascale
Initiative provided through the Major Research Equipment account. The
award made to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, ACI - 0085206,
Terascale Computing System (TCS), placed an initial small system in
place in late CY2000, and will have the full system installed and ready
for early testing by October 2001. Despite its \"small\" this system
placed 91st in the latest Top500 computer list, and 6th among university
computing systems in the US. When fully configured it will probably rank
2nd on the Top500 list, and certainly 1st among universities. This year,
ACI broke new ground when it issued NSF 01-51, Distributed Terascale
Facility, the second Terascale solicitation. This called for a new
approach to cyberinfrastructure in order to meet the ever-growing needs
for more computation and data faced by research scientists and engineers
across the country.

The ACR program aggressively supports computational science by focusing
on enabling technologies for high performance computing, and by taking
the lead within CISE in funding interdisciplinary research with other
branches of science, often with co-funding from other directorates,
demonstrating the program's involvement in ITR. The program supports
technologies needed to advance the state of the art in high performance
computing and directs advanced computing and simulation capabilities
toward solving fundamental problems in science and engineering. ACR
focuses on three technical areas:

-   Data Handling and Visualization,

-   Software Tools, and

-   Parallel Algorithms.

# Division of Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research (ANIR)

ANIR research and development involves two primary areas: Advanced
Networking Research (ANR) and Advanced Networking Infrastructure (ANI).
Networking research is a key area in the Foundation-wide ITR program.

-   ANR programs support R&D on the fundamental science and technology
    needed to facilitate efficient, high-speed information transmission
    through networks and distributed systems. Projects span the entire
    spectrum from network design and performance evaluation to
    middleware and software frameworks in support of applications
    running on top of networks and distributed systems. Focus areas are:

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-   networked architectures that can support very large increases in the
    number of people and the number and variety of devices connected to
    them;

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-   security and privacy tools and services to enable high performance
    networked applications;

-   network tools to enable remote collaboration;

-   tetherfree networking to reach unwired locations and moving users;
    and

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-   social and economic issues in networking.

-   ANI programs address timely issues in the national infrastructure by
    researching, developing, implementing, and testing advanced,
    high-performance network technologies to support the distributed
    information technology goals of the U.S. research and education
    community. ANI R&D will help:

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-   improve end to end performance in networks

-   enable high performance applications through middleware and network
    services

-   extend networking to new participants

-   promote high performance networking internationally.

# Division of Computer-Communications Research (C-CR)

C-CR supports research in areas including design automation; computer
systems architecture; software engineering and languages, operating
systems and compilers; theory of computing; numeric, symbolic, and
geometric computation; communications; and signal processing systems.
The Division supports interdisciplinary research in computer science and
engineering, including research on challenge problems, biocomputing, and
computational biology. C-CR R&D also focuses on parallel and distributed
systems, high confidence systems, security, reliability, applied
algorithms and problem solving environments.

Research disciplines supported by the Division include:

-   Theory of Computing,

-   Numeric, Symbolic, and Geometric Computation,

-   Computer Systems Architecture ,

-   Operating Systems and Compilers ,

-   Software Engineering and Languages ,

-   Design Automation ,

-   Communications, and

-   Signal Processing Systems.

# Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS)

IIS recognizes that high quality information, its accessibility, and its
usability are important benefits provided by new technologies. The goal
of IIS is to increase the use of information by human beings by
supporting new technologies that improve their ability to generate,
store, organize, locate, communicate, and store knowledge. Fundamental
division research topics include universal access, human language
technology, knowledge modeling, scientific collaboratories, robotics,
computer vision, data mining, database access technology, human-computer
interaction, and embedded intelligent systems. IIS supports
interdisciplinary and interagency activities such as the Digital Library
and STIMULATE (Speech, Text, Image, and Multimedia Advanced Technology
Effort) initiatives.

IIS R&D is broadly focused on Human-Computer Systems and Information
Systems.

-   Human-Computer Systems programs include human-computer interaction,
    universal access, and robotics and human augmentation. Research
    topics include graphics and language to enable new ways to
    communicate between humans and computers; new techniques to support
    access for those with limited vision, hearing, or dexterity; and
    robotic devices to assist disabled individuals or augment human
    physical abilities.

-   Information Systems includes programs in information and data
    management; knowledge and cognitive systems; computers and social
    systems, including research on the economic, ethical, and social
    impacts of IT, techniques for collaborative systems to distributed
    work, and economic issues related to productivity and uses of
    computer systems; and digital libraries research, including R&D on
    incorporating sound, video, data and software into libraries
    including search and understanding methods. Research topics in
    Information systems include data visualization; datamining in
    scientific databases; image analysis from medical and other sources;
    artificial intelligence and case-based reasoning; learning systems;
    and understanding human learning and its relationship to machine
    learning.

# Division of Experimental and Integrative Activities (EIA)

EIA promotes experimental computer and communications research,
encourages multidisciplinary research involving CISE and other
disciplines, supports developing a diverse personnel pool, undertakes
exploratory and prototype projects crossing organizational boundaries,
sponsors international activities, and supports special studies and
analyses on issues affecting CISE disciplines. EIA-supported
experimental research often spans several CISE areas and frequently
addresses infrastructure needs. EIA plays a major integrative role
linking research and education through support for CISE-specific and
agency-wide activities.

The goals of EIA are to:

-   promote new and frequently multidisciplinary research initiatives;

-   eliminate institutional and procedural barriers;

-   build greater capacity in terms of people and facilities;

-   assess the impact of IT research, education, and technology on
    society; and

-   track, coordinate and enhance programs of other directorates,
    agencies and institutions.

Consistent with its mission, all EIA programs require significant
coordination with other CISE divisions, with other NSF Directorates, and
with other agencies. EIA is responsible for programs that include:

-   infrastructure and instrumentation for CISE researchers;

-   IT research workforce and human resources development with a special
    emphasis on women and under-represented groups;

-   education at the K-12 (with EHR), undergraduate, graduate and
    postdoctoral level;

-   workshops, symposia, studies and travel;

-   CISE-specific international programs; and

-   cross-NSF program coordination.

EIA currently manages 13 programs and actively participates in the four
major NSF initiatives. The Experimental Partnerships Program and
responsibility for the CISE Science and Technology Center grants add a
complimentary suite of research support.

# Information Technology Research Program (ITR)

In FY 2001, the NSF ITR program, in addition to its emphasis on
fundamental, high risk R&D, focused on research and education activities
that apply information technology to science and engineering challenges.
The program is expanding to enable research and education in
multidisciplinary areas, focusing on emerging opportunities at the
interfaces between information technology and other disciplines. This
program continues to seek innovative projects in research and education
to explain, expand, and exploit IT.

While CISE's primary ITR emphasis is on research and infrastructure,
CISE is collaborating with other NSF directorates in Education and
Applications. In FY 2001, CISE research supported the following NSTC
defined program areas:

-   Large Scale Networking;

-   High End Computing;

-   High End Computation and Infrastructure (including applications);

-   High Confidence Systems;

-   Human Computer Interface and Information Management;

-   Software Design and Productivity; and

-   Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and Workforce
    Development.

# A.2. Linking budgets with results

All CISE divisions and ITR support the three strategic outcome goals for
People, Ideas and Tools. The budget emphasis on the goals is generally
on the second two, though individual awards and programs in CISE stress
the first. Support for graduate training is emphasized in all CISE
divisions and in ITR and supports the People goal.

CISE is now using ITR funds to develop new thrust areas in CISE; they
are indirectly helping to define a "new core" of programs in the five
divisions; over the long term, we anticipate that the phase out of the
ITR program will enable fully funding programs in this emerging new
core.

CISE programs are regularly evaluated through workshops, NRC studies and
other means. Mature areas where breakthrough results are not anticipated
are considered for stable or reduced funding. Areas with significant
rates of progress of national need are emphasized for increases. This
has resulted in recent program introductions such as Trusted Computing,
Embedded and Hybrid Systems, Network Centric Middleware Services, and
Strategic Technologies for the Internet. A cluster of programs at the
interfaces of biology and IT have also been developed in EIA.

# A.3. Development and Sources of Information for this report

This report was developed primarily from two reports by Committees of
Visitors (COVs) and from reports and summaries filed by all program
managers and divisions. The COV reports are highly reliable independent
assessments by distinguished scientists and engineers evaluating the
quality and performance of CISE programs. FY 2001 COV reports used in
this report include:

-   COV report for the ACIR division's research programs.

-   COV report for the EIA division's programs.

Program reports, compiled by individual program directors, include
narrative descriptions of each program's goals and selected outcomes
derived from annual and final project reports, workshops of principal
investigators, results reported in journals and conferences, and other
sources. Selected nuggets from these sources were chosen to illustrate
key Strategic Outcomes.

Division summaries are based on COV reports (if performed during the
current fiscal year) and program reports. Division summaries select
material from program reports and COV reports to illustrate successful
outcomes. Thus, the quality of these summaries directly reflects the
quality of the base reports. Summaries also include original material
describing the division's role in the directorate, its budget
priorities, etc. Material is developed by CISE senior staff responsible
for division management and is highly reliable.

Additional information supporting elements of this report, primarily
including statistical data on proposals and awards based on uniform data
collection across the NSF is derived from the agency's Enterprise
Information System (EIS). NSF's DIS and BFA Divisions provided reports
for selected GPRA goals. All materials were provided to the CISE Office
of the Assistant Director.

The COV reports are quite complete in addressing all performance goals
and indicators. They are reliable since they are based on the expert
opinions of leading scholars in the CISE disciplines. The NSF/EIS data
is highly reliable since it is based on uniform reporting methods.

# A.4. Organizational Highlights

In FY 2001, the CISE Directorate funded innovative, energetic, and often
high-risk research that contributed directly to NSF's strategic Outcome
Goals in the areas of People, Ideas, and Tools. The following section
highlights select CISE accomplishments in these areas as well as ITR.
For more details on these and other successful CISE activities, see
Section F of this report.

**People:**

*"Girls are GREAT":* The idea of studying math and science and becoming
a scientist is too often a non-starter with young girls from minority
groups. But when they meet SDSC chemist Rozeanne Steckler or take part
in one of her programs, the abstractions of science can suddenly become
human and real. Steckler's patient and passionate work in "Girls are
GREAT"---a science enrichment program devoted to bringing young girls,
into science---has touched the lives and future prospects of thousands
of girls. Steckler, a computational chemist who also pursues a full
research program in computational chemistry, originated SDSC's Science
Enrichment Program in 1987 with a Science Interest Group for Girl
Scouts. She worked to broaden the program's reach and strove to include
underrepresented minorities, collaborating with fellow SDSC scientist
Michael J. Bailey and many other SDSC staff members.

"Girls are GREAT" started in 1997, when the San Diego-Imperial County
Girl Scout Council began offering the program during the school day to
girls in county schools that were underrepresented in Girl
Scouting\--the same schools with majority populations underrepresented
in science altogether. Steckler's collaboration introduced new
curriculum in the form of lab modules. In addition to weekly sessions
during or after school, the Girl Scout facilitators bring the students
to special Family Science nights hosted at SDSC. The program grew to
encompass 5,200 girls in grades 2---8 in San Diego County by
1999---2000, and is currently being enthusiastically adopted in areas of
Texas. (NSF Award 9619020)

*High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network on the Pala
Indian Reservation:* Located at the foot of Palomar Mountain in east San
Diego county, the Pala Indian reservation is home to 600 tribal members,
including more than 150 children who attend elementary school on the
reservation. Until last month, the tribe could only dream of access to
high-speed Internet connectivity. But collaborating with an NSF-funded
UC San Diego research project turned this dream into reality.

UC San Diego researchers recently implemented Phase I of the educational
portion of the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network,
and the Pala Tribe is already developing educational programs to take
advantage of high-speed Internet connectivity to educate their children.
Doretta Musick, coordinator of the Pala Learning Center, is working
closely with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) to develop
courses that let students use the Internet to further their educational
objectives.

Connectivity also receives a boost from the Federally funded Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program serving several tribes in
San Diego County. Serving the Pala and other nearby reservations,
including the Rincon and La Jolla reservations, TANF already provides
needy families with basic computer classes, but many recipients of this
assistance are interested in more advanced courses. The Rincon and La
Jolla reservations are currently being considered as future deployment
sites for wireless connectivity by the UC San Diego researchers, since
this kind of connectivity will allow tribal members to access TANF and
other classes at their Education Centers which serve K-12 children.
(9619020)

# Ideas:

*Intelligent robots used to search for World Trade Center victims in New
York:* Intelligent Autonomous Marsupial Robots, prototyped with NSF
funds, were used for search and rescue at the World Trade Towers Center
(WTC) during the disaster recovery efforts that commenced on September
11, 2001. These "marsupial" robots possess unique characteristics: the
"mother" carries the little ones in its "pouch" into the site as far as
she can maneuver, releasing and providing "power" as the "babies"
descend from her to perform their search negotiating smaller crevices
and hidden spaces. Equipped to maintain balance on rough terrain, the
team can reach, sense, and report on spaces that are too small and/or
too dangerous for human rescue workers to approach or enter.

After locating 5 victims and a set of remains, surveying 3 buildings and
2 voids, and training the other teams on FEMA practices and firefighters
in the use of the robots, Robin Murphy, the PI for this project, was
awarded the NIUSR Eagle Award for her work. As a result of watching the
robotic creatures in action, the FEMA Task Force has ordered various
small and semi-autonomous robots for future use. NSF has also
contributed in training and developing students in the area, and these
students proved immensely helpful in the team search and rescue at WTC.
(9320318)

*The "Computational Grid"* is a relatively new idea involved with making
networked computation readily available. It draws its name from our
national electric power grid and aspires to the same "plug in"
simplicity. If successful, grid computing may well revolutionize how
large-scale computing is done worldwide. An example is the explicit use
of grid computing concepts in the Distributed Terascale Facility
competition in FY 2001. ACR's support for the Computational Grid concept
can be dated to its support for the original "Workshop on Building a
Computational Grid" (award to Schorr, 9714359), which resulted in the
now-standard Foster/Kesselman text entitled *The Grid: Blueprint for a
New Computing Infrastructure* (<http://www.mkp.com/grids>). ACR support
has continued through various research grants for distributed computing
or grid computation. In FY 2001, ACR made additional awards in grid
computation research. (See section F2, Tools, for award numbers.)

Innovative approach to clarifying blurred images: The quality of images
made by ground based telescopes is limited by several factors. But the
dominant factor is nearly always due to atmospheric turbulence. The
familiar mirage of shimmering water, seen on roadways during hot summer
days, is similarly due to a distorting effect as light rays pass through
mixed layers of warmer and cooler air. To address this type of problem,
NSF-supported researchers use phase measurements and phase encoding in
two kinds of computations associated with optical imaging. Their recent
work extends the phase diversity method to enhance images obtained from
ground based telescopes.

In essence, the phase diversity method uses a beam splitter and two
cameras to collect two simultaneous images, each subject to the natural
limits of the optical system. One image is blurred only by the effects
atmospheric turbulence, while the other is blurred by atmospheric
turbulence plus an additional aberration deliberately introduced into
the optical path leading to the second camera. These "phase diverse"
observations allow scientists to compute an estimate of the wavefront
distortion caused by the atmosphere. This estimate is used, in turn, to
compute an estimate of the true intensity image, thus partially
reversing the blurring effect of the atmosphere. (9732070)

**Tools:**

*Terascale Computing System:* The new Terascale Computing System (TCS)
funded by NSF in Fiscal Year 2000 has begun operation well ahead of
schedule and is exceeding performance expectations. During a November 23
to December 22 acceptance test in which PSC staff evaluated its
performance, TCS consistently surpassed speed expectations and operated
virtually without interruption. Using LINPACK software - a standard
performance test in which linear-algebra equations are the benchmark -
the initial TCS achieved 75 percent of peak performance. The 64 node
precursor to the full TCS-1 now ranks 91st among supercomputing systems
worldwide, despite its being just partially configured.

The initial TCS configuration has 64 interconnected Compaq ES40
Alphaservers, each of which features four EV67 microprocessors. By
October 2001, those servers and chips are to be replaced by more than
750 faster Alphaservers, each with four of Compaq\'s new EV68 chips. The
combined peak power of the full computer system will be 6 Teraflops
making it the most powerful computer available to academic scientists in
the United States. (0085206)

Middleware research: One of three new programs in FY 01 in the
infrastructure line is the network middleware program (NMI). The purpose
of the NMI Program is to design, develop, deploy and support a reusable,
expandable set of middleware functions and services that benefit many
applications in a networked environment, and will facilitate scientific
productivity; increase research collaboration through shared data,
computing, code, facilities and applications; encourage participation of
industry partners, government labs and agencies for more extensive
development and wider adoption and deployment; establish a level of
persistence and availability so that other applications developers and
disciplines can take advantage of the middleware; encourage and support
developing standards and open source approaches; and enable scaling and
sustainability to support the larger research community. (See section
F.3 for award numbers)

# ITR:

CISE has been active as well in ITR research. While it is too early to
report results in these activities, the following award is one that
shows great promise in fulfilling strategic Outcome Goals in the area of
Ideas. For details on this and other ITR research, see Section F of this
report.

Multilingual Access to Large spoken Archives, Visual History Foundation
(0122464)

\$7,500,000 for 5 years

The project proposes to advance the state of the art in automatic speech
recognition by detecting emotional and highly accented speech and
differences based on age and gender, and then optimizing the acoustic
model for those conditions. The techniques to be developed will
dramatically improve the efficiency of professional catalogers,
leveraging automatic segmentation to suggest topic boundaries in
interviews, using domain-tuned classification algorithms to recommend
thesaurus terms, and providing automated tools to support generation of
event timelines. Efforts will be made to automate transferring
capabilities developed originally for English to other languages.

# 

## Crosscutting and Coordination Activities

**B.1. CISE Participation in NSF Initiatives**

The CISE directorate participates in all NSF-wide initiatives:

**Information Technology Research (ITR):** CISE is the lead directorate
for ITR, consistent with the directorate's mission to conduct basic IT
research in all areas. Through ITR, CISE supports larger projects that
scale up solutions to more realistic system settings, multidisciplinary
research, and multi-investigator projects. ITR funds research in seven
program component areas (PCAs): High End Computing and Infrastructure,
High End Computing Research, Large Scale Networking, Software Design and
Productivity, High Confidence Systems, Human Computer Interaction and
Information Management, and Social, Economic and Workforce Implications
of IT and IT Workforce Development.

**Biocomplexity in the Environment:** GEO is the lead directorate. CISE
contributes to this initiative mainly in funding IT related research to
support biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics. CISE researchers develop
new analysis and simulation methods; support new techniques for data
collection, processing, and analysis; and additional information
technologies.

**21^st^ Century Workforce:** EHR is the lead directorate. CISE supports
the Interagency Educational Research Initiative (IERI) effort, which
draws on CISE / EHR work on Learning Technologies; and the GK-12
program. Additionally, CISE conducted workshops to define research paths
geared toward understanding the causes of low participation rates in IT
education and careers in underrepresented groups. In FY 2001, CISE also
began to support research in this area.

**Nanoscale Science and Engineering:** ENG is the lead directorate. CISE
supports fundamental research in this priority area. Of particular
interest are design methods and nanoscale devices having potential as
computational or sensory devices.

**Mathematical Sciences Initiative:** MPS is the lead directorate.
Representatives from CISE directorates ACIR and CCR have participated in
planning for this initiative.

**Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences:** SBE is the lead
directorate. CISE participates in planning for this activity. ITR
includes a Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT
Workforce Development component that complements the expected research
areas.

**Major Research Equipment (MRE):** CISE is managing competitions for
Terascale Computing to support NSF-wide needs for high performance
computing.

CISE also participates in many NSF-wide or multi-directorate programs:

**CAREER:** Faculty Early Career Development Program. All CISE research
programs that fund individual investigator projects participate in the
CAREER program which funds faculty in the first few years of their
university careers. CISE has had a particularly high success rate in
this program, reflecting the directorate's priority to encourage
researchers to enter and stay in academic careers.

**CRCD:** Combined Research and Curriculum, is jointly managed by CISE
and ENG. CRCD supports projects that bring research into upper-level
undergraduate and graduate education.

**EPSCOR:** The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
(EPSCOR) is headed by EHR. It is intended to stimulate competitive
research in nineteen states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. CISE
participates in EPSCOR by co-funding highly competitive proposals from
these jurisdictions.

**GK-12:** The NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education program
is led by EHR and supports graduate and undergraduate fellowships for
students who work with K-12 schools. EIA/CISE has a coordinating and
management role with the program.

**GOALI:** Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry. CISE
participates in the coordination and management of this program. GOALI
supports flexible arrangements for collaborations between academic and
industry scientists, and GOALI proposals can be sent to any disciplinary
program.

**GRF:** Graduate Research Fellowships. Led by EHR, this program funds
student fellowships for graduate study and research. CISE and ENG
provide supplemental funds to support additional fellowships for highly
qualified female applicants.

**IGERT:** Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships,
supports university-based graduate study traineeships with integrative
research themes. CISE participates in the coordination and management of
this program.

**MRI:** Major Research Instrumentation is led by NSF/OIA (Office of
Integrative Activities under the NSF Director) and provides funds for
research equipment to universities and colleges. CISE participates in
the coordination and management of the program, which permits some
co-funding of instrumentation requests between directorate programs and
the OIA/MRI program.

**PFI:** The Partnerships for Innovation Program, is focused on the
connection between new knowledge created in the discovery process to
learning and innovation. Concurrently, it addresses NSF's strategic
intention to broaden the participation of people and institutions in NSF
activities. CISE participates in the coordination and management of the
program.

**PACI:** Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI)
is managed in CISE/ACIR. The program, described above, provides advanced
computational resources to scientists and engineers from all NSF
research areas.

**POWRE:** The Professional Opportunities for Women in Research and
Education program supports activities to promote development of
scholarly and institutional leaders in research and education. POWRE is
a Foundation-wide program to increase the prominence of women in science
and engineering and to enhance their professional advancement by
providing them with funding opportunities not ordinarily available
through regular research and education grant programs. CISE participates
in the coordination and management of the program.

**REU Sites:** The Research Experiences for Undergraduates Sites program
supports sites that conduct REU programs for groups of students.
CISE/EIA manages proposals for all CISE research areas for this program.

**REU Supplements:** These are supplements to other awards that support
one or two undergraduate students for research experiences. All CISE
programs accept requests for these supplements.

**RUI:** Research in Undergraduate Institutions awards are made to
researchers in primarily undergraduate institutions. All CISE research
programs accept proposals under this program.

**ROA:** Research Opportunity Awards are proposals from research
universities to host researchers from undergraduate institutions. All
CISE research programs accept proposals under this program.

**SBIR**: Small Business Innovation Research is managed by ENG. CISE
participates in the coordination and management of this program.

**STC:** Science and Technology Centers Integrative Partnerships is an
NSF-wide centers program. CISE participates in the coordination and
management of this program.

**Ultra-High-Capacity Optical Communications and Networking research
program.** CISE/ANIR, CISE/C-CR, ENG/BES, and ENG/ECS support this
research program.

# B.2. Interagency Activities

CISE is active in numerous interagency activities:

**ITR&D**, the Information Technology Research and Development effort,
is the multi-agency coordination of Federal IT research investments.
Formerly known as the HPCC program, ITR&D coordinates budgets and
activities in IT research, with the National Coordinating Office (NCO)
([http://www.ccic.gov](http://www.ccic.gov/)) providing support. The
CISE AD chairs the interagency ITR&D Working Group and its seven Program
Component Area working groups are chaired or co-chaired by CISE staff.

**Digital Libraries** is a multi-agency effort. NSF collaborates with
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Library
of Medicine (NLM), the Library of Congress (LOC), the National Endowment
for the Humanities (NEH), National Aeronautics & Space Administration
(NASA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and also partners
with National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Smithsonian
Institution (SI), and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

**The Bio-computing Working Group** coordinates activities of NSF and
DARPA in bio-computing. DARPA is the lead agency.

**INFOSEC Research Council (IRC):** Participating agencies are NSA,
DARPA, NSF, DoD, Mitre Corp. (lead), and others. The group shares
information on activities and budgets across agencies to avoid
duplication and promote common interests in information security.

**Critical Infrastructure Protection Interagency Working Group
(CIPIWG).** Departments and agencies participating include NSF, DARPA,
FBI, NSA, CIA, State, DoE, NASA, Commerce, FAA, ACDA, Treasury, HHS,
Transportation, DCI, OMB, DoD, HHS, and FEMA. The goal of this activity
is to develop strategies and budgets to address shortfalls in protecting
the nation's critical infrastructure. CISE participates in through
numerous awards in security, cryptography, networking, and other areas.
ENG and SBE also participate.

**Digital Government** is an EIA program to promote the benefits of IT
research toward broader government use. Partnerships with other agencies
with strong interests in participation and some funding have supported
university-based research. Supporting partner agencies and departments
include Agriculture, Army, Bureau of Labor Statistics, DCD, Census,
Commerce, FEMA, GSA, Intelink, Library of Congress, National Center for
Health Statistics, National Agricultural Statistics Service, NARA, NIMA,
NOAA, Navy, NSTB, Social Security Administration, and USGS. Other
partners include the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the San Diego
Association of Governments.

**IERI:** the Interagency Educational Research Initiative is led by EHR
and includes participation of the Department of Education and the
National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, part
of NIH). IERI supports research to develop a scientific basis for
understanding learning. CISE participates in learning technology areas.

**PECASE:** Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and
Engineers. CISE supports 3-4 new awards each year. Awardees are selected
from each year's CAREER awardees.

# B.3. International Activities

CISE participates in the following international activities:

**Name:** International Digital Libraries:

**Lead Country:**

**Role of NSF and other countries:** This effort fosters cooperation
between NSF and digital libraries projects supported by the United
Kingdom, Germany and the European Union.

**Funding Participation:** The participating countries jointly fund
research projects.

**Name:** NSF-CONACyT Collaborative Research Opportunities

**Lead Country:** US and Mexico

**Role of NSF and other countries:** NSF-CONACyT is a joint program of
CISE and ENG with Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT)
(National Council of Science and Technology Research) of Mexico
supporting international cooperative research and research
infrastructure in computer science, information systems, computer
engineering, and engineering research.

**Funding Participation:** Proposals for cooperative research are
submitted separately to NSF and CONACyT. If both agencies support
funding, then both proposals are funded. This leverages NSF funds with
CONACyT funds to enable large, international projects.

**Name:** NSF - CNPq Collaborative Research Opportunities

**Lead Country:** US and Brazil

**Role of NSF and other countries:** NSF-CNPq: is a joint program of
CISE and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico eTecnologico da
Pesquisas (CNPq, or National Council of Scientific and Technological
Research) to support new international cooperative research in any
CISE-related area where the efforts are likely to produce positive,
complementary, and synergistic effects.

**Funding Participation:** Proposals for cooperative research are
submitted separately to NSF and CNPq. If both agencies support funding,
then both proposals are funded. This leverages NSF funds with CNPq funds
to enable large, international projects.

**Name:** Joint NSF / EU Information Society Activity

**Lead Country:** US and European Union

**Role of NSF and other countries:** Joint NSF / EU Information Society
Activity organizes international workshops in the EU and US to promote
research collaborations.

**Funding Participation:** This is based on shared funding with each
side funding activities on its own side.

## Evaluations

The CISE directorate draws on numerous evaluations and sources of
advice. The following were completed in FY 2001.

  -------------------- ----------------- ----------------------- ---------------------------
  **Evaluations        **Scope**         **Findings**            **Availability**
  Completed in FY                                                
  2001**                                                         

  *White Paper on an   Program Analysis. Recommended that NSF    Available from Division
  NSF ANIR Middleware  This group was    support middleware      Director, ANIR, NSF.
  Initiative*          commissioned to   research and a          
                       make              complementary           
                       recommendations   middleware              
                       for an NSF        infrastructure program. 
                       middleware                                
                       program.                                  

  *Report of Review    Assessed the      Transpac and Euro-Link  Available from Division
  Committee of NSF's   value to the      are well run and        Director, ANIR, NSF.
  High Performance     research          effective. Mirnet is    
  International        community of 3    making an excellent     
  Internet Services    HPIIS awards      start. The reported     
  (HPIIS) Project*     (Transpac --      recommended a           
                       Asia-Pacific;     classification of usage 
                       Euro-Link; and    types and metrics for   
                       Mirnet -- Russia) usage. Continued        
                       that connect US   support and recognition 
                       researchers to    of needs at application 
                       researchers in    level (as illustrated   
                       other countries.  by the ITR GryPhyN      
                       Determine         project) were           
                       continuing need   recommended.            
                       for HPIIS                                 
                       program.                                  

  *Report of the       Studied the       Poll Site Internet      Available now from the
  National Workshop on feasibility of    voting offers benefits  Internet Policy Institute
  Internet Voting:     online voting at  and could be fielded    (www.internetpolicy.org).
  Issues and Research  the request of    within the next several 
  Agenda*              the White House   election cycles. Remote 
                       (memorandum,      voting and Internet     
                       December 17,      voting registration     
                       1999).            pose significant        
                                         integrity issues. It is 
                                         appropriate for the NSF 
                                         to address technical    
                                         and social science      
                                         research in this area.  

  *Making IT Better:   Identifies        Report recommends that  Available now from National
  Expanding            research areas    NSF and DARPA establish Academy Press.
  Information          that need         programs for research   (www.nap.edu)
  Technology Research  increased effort  on large scale IT       
  to Meet Society's    for the Nation to systems; boosted        
  Needs*; Computer     enjoy full        funding for basic IT    
  Science and          benefits of the   research commensurate   
  Telecommunications   IT systems.       with growth of research 
  Board, National                        challenges; increased   
  Research Council                       support for             
                                         interdisciplinary       
                                         research on social      
                                         applications of IT.     

  *The Internet's      A study of the    Recommended continued   Available now from National
  Coming of Age*;      Internet and key  support for research on Academy Press.
  Computer Science and challenges that   scaling challenges;     (www.nap.edu)
  Telecommunications   shape its         partnerships for        
  Board, National      maturation.       research to be          
  Research Council                       conducted in realistic  
                                         operational settings,   
                                         and research on the     
                                         economics of            
                                         interconnection.        

  *Report to the       Examined state of Recommendations to NSF  Available now from National
  President, Digital   research on       and other agencies.     Coordinating Office,
  Libraries: Universal digital libraries Expand research in DL   Arlington VA.
  Access to Human      (DL).             including organizing    (www.ccic.gov)
  Knowledge*;                            content, scalability of 
  President's                            systems, archival       
  Information                            storage, intellectual   
  Technology Advisory                    property, privacy and   
  Committee, Panel on                    security, and human     
  Digital Libraries                      use. Create several     
                                         large-scale DL          
                                         testbeds. Make Federal  
                                         content persistently    
                                         available on the        
                                         Internet. Play a        
                                         leadership role in      
                                         policy for intellectual 
                                         property rights.        

  *Report to the       Examined the use  Recommendations were    Available now from National
  President,           of IT in the      made in several areas   Coordinating Office,
  Transforming Health  health care       focused on NIH and      Arlington VA.
  Care Through         sector.           DHHS. Relevant to NSF,  (www.ccic.gov)
  Information                            were recommendations to 
  Technology*;                           work with NIH, DARPA    
  President's                            and DOE to design and   
  Information                            deploy a scalable       
  Technology Advisory                    computing and           
  Committee, Panel on                    information             
  Transforming Health                    infrastructure          
  Care                                   supporting biomedical   
                                         research. Several IT    
                                         research areas were     
                                         identified.             

  *Report to the       Based on growing  The Federal government  Available now from National
  President,           vulnerability in  should encourage open   Coordinating Office,
  Developing Open      the development   source software with    Arlington VA.
  Source Software to   of software for   efforts on technical    (www.ccic.gov)
  Advance High End     high end          assessment, management  
  Computing*;          computing, this   plans, policy studies,  
  President's          group assessed    etc. These              
  Information          the open source   recommendation are      
  Technology Advisory  model to address  particularly pertinent  
  Committee, Panel on  this need.        to NSF's PACI and       
  Open Source Software                   Terascale Facilities.   
  for High End                                                   
  Computing                                                      
  -------------------- ----------------- ----------------------- ---------------------------

# D. FY 2001 COV Results

## D.1. COV Schedule {#d.1.-cov-schedule .unnumbered}

The following table indicates Committee of Visitor evaluations conducted
in FY 2001 and scheduled for upcoming years.

  ----------------------------------- -----------------------------------
  FY 2001 COV's                       

  ACIR                                Advanced Computational Research

  EIA                                 All programs in six clusters
  ----------------------------------- -----------------------------------

#### D.2 Results for FY 2001

COV Results for Outcome Indicators and Goals by Program/Cluster/Division

Ratings are: S (successful); NS (not successful); NR (no rating by COV);
DNA (did not apply).

CISE had two COV reports in FY 2001. The reports are:

-   ACIR Advanced Computational Research program; Committee of Visitors;
    referred to as ACR report.

-   FY 2001 Report of NSF Committees of Visitors (COVs); Directorate for
    Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE); Division of
    Experimental and Integrative Activities (EIA); referred to as EIA
    report.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  **People - Development of \"a diverse, internationally competitive and
  globally-engaged workforce of scientists, engineers, and well-prepared
  citizens.\"**

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------

+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+
| **Indi   | Improved | A        | Globally | A public | Overall   |
| cators** | math     | science  | engaged  | that is  |           |
|          | ematics, | and      | science  | provided | Rating    |
|          | science, | te       | and      | access   |           |
|          | and      | chnology | eng      | to the   | For       |
|          | te       | and      | ineering | benefits |           |
|          | chnology | instr    | profe    | of       | Goal by   |
|          | skills   | uctional | ssionals | science  |           |
|          | for U.S. | w        | who are  | and      | COV       |
|          | students | orkforce | among    | eng      |           |
|          | at the   | that     | the best | ineering |           |
|          | K-12     | reflects | in the   | research |           |
|          | level    | Am       | world.   | and      |           |
|          | and for  | erica\'s |          | ed       |           |
|          | citizens | di       |          | ucation. |           |
|          | of all   | versity. |          |          |           |
|          | ages.    |          |          |          |           |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+
| ACR      | S        | S        | S        | S        | S         |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+
| EIA      | S        | S        | S        | S        | S         |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+
|          |          |          |          |          |           |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+

Notes:

The ACIR COV report gave specific examples of accomplishments under NSF
awards that indicate success for each of the four indicators. The report
gave an overall assessment of "very successful" for this goal.

The EIA COV evaluated 6 program clusters. For each program cluster
except two, the COV concluded that performance was successful on all
four indicators and overall for the People goal. For the other program
clusters, each had one indicator rated Does Not Apply (DNA). The overall
assessment of the COV for the entire EIA division was successful for all
four indicators and successful for the People goal.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  **Ideas \-- Enabling \"discovery across the frontier of science and
  engineering, connected to learning, innovation, and service to
  society.\"**

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------

+----------+--------------+----------+----------+------------+------+
| **Indi   | A robust and | Dis      | Part     | Research   | Ove  |
| cators** | growing      | coveries | nerships | and        | rall |
|          | fundamental  | that     | co       | education  |      |
|          | knowledge    | advance  | nnecting | processes  | Ra   |
|          | base that    | the      | d        | that are   | ting |
|          | enhances     | f        | iscovery | sy         |      |
|          | progress in  | rontiers | to       | nergistic. | For  |
|          | all science  | of       | inn      |            |      |
|          | and          | science, | ovation, |            | Goal |
|          | engineering  | eng      | l        |            | by   |
|          | areas        | ineering | earning, |            |      |
|          | including    | and      | and      |            | COV  |
|          | the science  | tec      | societal |            |      |
|          | of learning. | hnology. | adva     |            |      |
|          |              |          | ncement. |            |      |
+----------+--------------+----------+----------+------------+------+
| **       |              |          |          |            |      |
| Program/ |              |          |          |            |      |
| Cluster/ |              |          |          |            |      |
| Di       |              |          |          |            |      |
| vision** |              |          |          |            |      |
+----------+--------------+----------+----------+------------+------+
| ACR      | S            | S        | S        | S          | S    |
+----------+--------------+----------+----------+------------+------+
| EIA      | S            | S        | S        | NR         | S    |
+----------+--------------+----------+----------+------------+------+

The ACIR report gave specific examples supporting success for all four
indicators and rated the programs successful overall.

The EIA report rated all four indicators successful for all but one of
the six program clusters. For the remaining program cluster, one
indicator was rated DNA. The overall assessment of the COV for EIA was
successful on all four indicators and successful for the overall goal.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  **Tools \-- Providing \"broadly accessible, state-of-the-art
  information-bases and shared research and education tools.\"**

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------

+----------+-----------------+----------------+--------------+------+
| **Indi   | Shared-use      | Networking and | Information  | Ove  |
| cators** | platforms,      | connectivity   | and policy   | rall |
|          | facilities,     | that take full | analyses     |      |
|          | instruments,    | advantage of   | that         | Ra   |
|          | and databases   | the Internet   | contribute   | ting |
|          | that enable     | and make       | to the       |      |
|          | discovery and   | science,       | effective    | For  |
|          | enhance the     | mathematics,   | use of       |      |
|          | productivity    | engineering    | science and  | Goal |
|          | and             | and technology | engineering  | by   |
|          | effectiveness   | information    | resources.   |      |
|          | of the science  | available to   |              | COV  |
|          | and engineering | all citizens   |              |      |
|          | workforce.      |                |              |      |
+----------+-----------------+----------------+--------------+------+
| ACR      | S               | S              | DNA          | S    |
+----------+-----------------+----------------+--------------+------+
| EIA      | S               | S              | DNA          | S    |
+----------+-----------------+----------------+--------------+------+

The ACIR report gave specific examples supporting success for the first
two indicators. The codes developed, stored in databases, and shared
over the internet (awards 9813362 and 9725909) demonstrate success for
both indicators. This program does not support information and policy
analyses.

The EIA report rated the first two indicators successful for all of the
six program clusters. For the remaining program indicator, all clusters
were rated DNA except for one rated successful. All program clusters
were judged successful for the Tools goal. The overall assessment of the
COV for EIA was successful on all three indicators and successful for
the overall Tools goal.

**D.3. Issues of Substance**

The ACR report commented that program management was exemplary. They did
not find that the panelists for the program addressed both review
criteria. They did note that the PD addressed both criteria. The report
expressed concern that some panels did not have enough reviewers (and
attributed this to wide collaborations leading to conflicts of
interest.) It commented that outside of the CAREER program, integration
of research and education is not obvious and commented that panelists
should be encouraged to more aggressively assess opportunities for this.
The COV noted that software creation and support within individual
proposals is inhibited by limited funding; the members recommended that
further consideration be given to program proposal portfolios such that
longer funding periods and broader teams of investigators could secure
more funding.

Response: A detailed response from the AD is in a letter with the COV
report.

The EIA COV raised several substantive issues. It noted that site visits
should be made prior to funding decisions for the Research
Instrumentation and CADRE programs. The report commented that due to the
wide range of disciplines and activities supported within individual
programs, there were times when a panel did not have an expert in a
particular proposal area. They added that this may be inevitable. They
expressed concern about the time to decision increasing in the last few
years; and this increase is most dramatic in the last year as ITR
increased the workload of program directors. The report noted that in
the Education cluster, there was a shortage of proposals from smaller
institutions; they speculated that this is due to a cost-sharing
requirement. The report noted variability in the effectiveness of
program directors to help guide proposers to revise and resubmit
proposals.

In the context of the Ideas goal, they commented that panel reviews seem
conservative and that high risk, high payoff projects were not in great
evidence.

Some of the clusters made recommendations to combine or merge programs
to streamline the system. The COV members expressed concern about the
excessive workload for program directors and that this has increased due
to the ITR program. The COV recommended an increase in program directors
and support staff. Some clusters (e.g. Workforce and Experimental
Systems) had rapid turnover of program directors resulting in increased
dwell times and loss of continuity.

Response: A detailed response from the AD is in a letter with the COV
report.

Comments on the COV / GPRA Process by COVs:

The EIA COV executive summary mentioned two areas for comment.

> 'The two most common comments were that the COV review was rushed -
> "two full days are needed for the COV review process" - and that the
> "template needs revision." Several clusters complimented the program
> directors for helping to make the task manageable by assisting them in
> finding the information needed.'
>
> 'One cluster recommended that the award portfolio include an overall
> roadmap, crafted by the program manager, of how the various projects
> fit together. This "big picture" would help the COV evaluate how well
> the program met its goals.'

The ACIR report commented:

> 'The COV is emphatically of the opinion that the whole review process
> as it is now constituted is extremely complex, duplicative, obscure
> and ill-defined.
>
> 'A COV for any NSF program will consist of very busy people assembled
> at relatively short notice for a one or two day meeting. They cannot
> be expected to master the complexities of the dense web of NSF rules,
> regulations and precedent that would be necessary to generate reports
> of the kind that seem presently required.
>
> 'The ACR COV recommends in the strongest possible terms that the NSF
> urgently reassess the whole COV review process for programs with a
> view to simplifying it to its key essentials that are stated in clear,
> short, unambiguous language that can be easily understood and mastered
> by COVs of busy people.
>
> 'Though the COV for ACR believes it was able to carry out as thorough
> a review as possible in the circumstances, too much of its valuable
> and limited time was taken up with trying to understand the
> complexities of what was required rather than focusing on what it was
> formed to do -- give an independent assessment of the success of the
> ACR Program. In particular, the COV found the whole GPRA process both
> overly complex and beyond what a committee established under the
> condition that COVs are, can be really expected to accomplish in such
> a short period of time. The COV strongly recommends that the GPRA part
> of the review process should be extracted and made the object of some
> other more realistic review mechanism.
>
> 'The COV asks that these comments be brought to the attention of the
> CISE Acting AD and any other NSF officials who are responsible for
> determining the structure of the review process for programs.'

#### 

## E. Summary of CISE Directorate Achievements for Outcome Goals {#e.-summary-of-cise-directorate-achievements-for-outcome-goals .unnumbered}

#### E.1. Outcome Goals

People: Development of \"a diverse, internationally competitive and
globally-engaged workforce of scientists, engineers, and well-prepared
citizens.\"

+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------+
| **In  | Improved      | A science   | Globally  | A public | Ov    |
| dicat | mathematics,  | and         | engaged   | that is  | erall |
| ors** | science, and  | technology  | science   | provided |       |
|       | technology    | and         | and       | access   | R     |
|       | skills for    | in          | en        | to the   | ating |
|       | U.S. students | structional | gineering | benefits |       |
|       | at the K-12   | workforce   | prof      | of       | For   |
|       | level and for | that        | essionals | science  |       |
|       | citizens of   | reflects    | who are   | and      | Goal  |
|       | all ages.     | America\'s  | among the | eng      | by    |
|       |               | diversity.  | best in   | ineering |       |
|       |               |             | the       | research | CISE  |
|       |               |             | world.    | and      |       |
|       |               |             |           | ed       |       |
|       |               |             |           | ucation. |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------+
|       |               |             |           |          |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------+
| CISE  | S             | S           | S         | S        | S     |
+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------+
|       |               |             |           |          |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------+
|       |               |             |           |          |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-------+

Ideas \-- Enabling \"discovery across the frontier of science and
engineering, connected to learning, innovation, and service to
society.\"

+-------+---------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-------+
| Indic | A robust and  | Discoveries | Part     | Research  | Ov    |
| ators | growing       | that        | nerships | and       | erall |
|       | fundamental   | advance the | co       | education |       |
|       | knowledge     | frontiers   | nnecting | processes | R     |
|       | base that     | of science, | d        | that are  | ating |
|       | enhances      | engineering | iscovery | syn       |       |
|       | progress in   | and         | to       | ergistic. | For   |
|       | all science   | technology. | inn      |           |       |
|       | and           |             | ovation, |           | Goal  |
|       | engineering   |             | l        |           | by    |
|       | areas         |             | earning, |           |       |
|       | including the |             | and      |           | CISE  |
|       | science of    |             | societal |           |       |
|       | learning.     |             | adva     |           |       |
|       |               |             | ncement. |           |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-------+
| CISE  | S             | S           | S        | S         | S     |
+-------+---------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-------+
|       |               |             |          |           |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-------+
|       |               |             |          |           |       |
+-------+---------------+-------------+----------+-----------+-------+

Tools \-- Providing \"broadly accessible, state-of-the-art
information-bases and shared research and education tools.\"

+-------+----------------+-------------------+---------------+-------+
| **In  | Shared-use     | Networking and    | Information   | Ov    |
| dicat | platforms,     | connectivity that | and policy    | erall |
| ors** | facilities,    | take full         | analyses that |       |
|       | instruments,   | advantage of the  | contribute to | R     |
|       | and databases  | Internet and make | the effective | ating |
|       | that enable    | science,          | use of        |       |
|       | discovery and  | mathematics,      | science and   | For   |
|       | enhance the    | engineering and   | engineering   |       |
|       | productivity   | technology        | resources.    | Goal  |
|       | and            | information       |               | by    |
|       | effectiveness  | available to all  |               |       |
|       | of the science | citizens          |               | CISE  |
|       | and            |                   |               |       |
|       | engineering    |                   |               |       |
|       | workforce.     |                   |               |       |
+-------+----------------+-------------------+---------------+-------+
| **C   | S              | S                 | S             | S     |
| ISE** |                |                   |               |       |
+-------+----------------+-------------------+---------------+-------+
|       |                |                   |               |       |
+-------+----------------+-------------------+---------------+-------+
|       |                |                   |               |       |
+-------+----------------+-------------------+---------------+-------+

# E.2 Management Goals:

+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| # Management Goals                     | #### Directorate Result     |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
|                                        | **Goal met/not met**        |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Diversity                              | ## Goal Met                 |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+

In 1997, CISE hired 4 Scientists and Engineers of whom 1 was Asian and
none were female for a total number of 1 hire from underrepresented
groups. In 2001, CISE hired 2 Asian males and 4 (non Asian) women, for a
total number of 6 hires from underrepresented groups.

+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| **Investment Process Goals**           | #### Directorate Results    |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
|                                        | #### Goal met/not met       |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Implementation of Merit Review         | Not Met                     |
| Criteria - Reviewers                   |                             |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Implementation of Merit Review         | Met                         |
| Criteria -- Program Officers           |                             |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Time to Prepare Proposals              | ### Met                     |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Time to Decision                       | Not Met                     |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Award Size                             | Met                         |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Award Duration                         | Met                         |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Openness in System                     | Met                         |
+----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+

Implementation of Merit Review Criteria -- Reviewers: CISE, along with
other directorates, has prepared a statement with suggested criterion 2
activities for proposers. When approved, this will go on the CISE WWW
pages ([www.cise.nsf.gov)]().

Implementation of Merit Review Criteria -- Program Officers: CISE
program officers have been effective in considering criterion 2 for
award decisions.

Time to prepare proposals: The goal is to have at least 95% of program
announcements mad available at least 90 days before the deadline or
target date. CISE had 100% of program announcements available.

Time to Decision: The goal is to be able to tell applicants whether
their proposals have been declined or recommended within 6 months of
receipt for at least 70% of proposals. CISE achieved the 6 month
deadline for 52% of proposals. CISE has improved significantly since
2000 on Time to Decision -- from 28% on 2000 to 52% in 2001. The
Directorate has added language addressing timely processing of proposals
to staff appraisal criteria. Proposal processing is regularly discussed
at senior management meetings. The Directorate has been subject to a
heavy workload due to ITR and has recently been given encouragement to
hire additional program directors and support staff to better handle the
load.

Award Size: The NSF goal is to increase the average annualized award
size to \$110,000. CISE has reached an average annualized award size of
\$134,438 for 2001.

Award Duration: The goal is to increase to average duration of awards to
at least 3.0 years. The average duration of CISE awards for 2001 was 3.2
years.

Openness in System: The goal is to award 30 percent of research grants
to new applicants. CISE awarded 34% of research grants to new
applicants.

**F. Outcome and Output Examples Reported in FY 2001**

In FY 2001, the CISE Directorate funded innovative, energetic, and often
high-risk research that contributed directly to NSF's strategic Outcome
Goals in the areas of People, Ideas, and Tools. The following section of
this report details select projects in these areas, as well as ITR, that
have been supported by CISE and its divisions. These Outcome Goal
"Nuggets," a sampling of those submitted in COV reports (ACIR and EIA),
program reports, and a call to CISE divisions, illustrate successful
outcomes and promising research resulting from the directorate's
programs.

# F.1 People

Research in this area focuses on the development of a diverse,
internationally competitive, and globally-engaged workforce of
scientists, engineers, and well-prepared citizens. Select research
includes the following:

**Project Title:** Girls are GREAT

**NSF Award Number:** ACIR 9619020

**PI Names:** Rozeanne Steckler, Michael J. Bailey

**PI Institutions:** SDSC

**Relevant Indicators:** Improved mathematics, science, and technology
skills for U.S. students at the K-12 level and for citizens of all ages,
so that they can be competitive in a technological society.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Broadening Participation

**Source for Report:** Division report

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="1.80625in"
height="1.1847222222222222in"}The idea of studying math and science and
becoming a scientist is all too often a non-starter with young girls
from minority groups. Most have never even had the chance to meet a
scientist. But when they meet SDSC chemist Rozeanne Steckler or take
part in one of her programs, the abstractions of science can suddenly
become human and real. Steckler's patient and passionate work in "Girls
are GREAT"---a science enrichment program devoted to bringing young
girls, into science---has grown during the past two years into a
phenomenon touching the lives and future prospects of thousands of
girls. Designed and begun by Steckler for use in San Diego schools, the
program landed in Houston in September, 2000. It has already reached
nearly 2,000 young girls from the second to eighth grades according to
Gladys Birdwell, Director of Community Outreach for the Girl Scout
Council of San Jacinto.

Steckler, a computational chemist who also pursues a full research
program in computational chemistry, originated SDSC's Science Enrichment
Program in 1987 with a Science Interest Group for Girl Scouts. She
worked to broaden the program's reach and strove to include
underrepresented minorities, collaborating with fellow SDSC scientist
Michael J. Bailey and many other SDSC staff members.

"Girls are GREAT" started in 1997, when the San Diego-Imperial County
Girl Scout Council began offering the program during the school day to
girls in county schools that were underrepresented in Girl
Scouting\--the same schools with majority populations underrepresented
in science altogether. Steckler's collaboration introduced new
curriculum in the form of lab modules. In addition to weekly sessions
during or after school, the Girl Scout facilitators bring the students
to special Family Science nights hosted at SDSC. The program grew to
encompass 5,200 girls in grades 2---8 in San Diego County by
1999---2000. In addition, Steckler also runs a week-long summer day camp
for the students. Karyl O'Brien of the Council estimates that the
program has now reached some 10,000 young girls in the two large
Southern California counties.

The modules designed by Steckler and her collaborators bring students
through 50 minutes of hands-on inquiry in Earth science, life sciences,
and basic physical science. Steckler also created curriculum training
units for "Girls are GREAT" staffers employed by the Girl Scout Council,
making them independently responsible for curriculum units and
materials. The staff consists of college students majoring in science or
education and women who were teachers in Mexico before coming to the
United States.

**Title:** Computer literacy for all students

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 0090043

**PI Names:** Jane Margolis, Jeannie Oakes

**PI Institutions:** University of California Los Angeles

**Relevant Indicators:** Improved mathematics, science, and technology
skills for U.S. students at the K-12 level and for citizens of all ages,
so that they can be competitive in a technological society. A science
and technology and instructional workforce that reflects America\'s
diversity.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Broadening Participation

**Source for Report:** Information Technology Workforce Program Report

Jane Margolis, a researcher in gender issues in computer science, and
Jeannie Oakes, an Education researcher\--both at the University of
California, Los Angeles\--are conducting a project that is investigating
why so few male and female African American and Latino students study
computer science at the high school level. Three urban public high
schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, each with large
numbers of under-represented minority students, are participating in the
research study. Each school is designated as a "digital high school" and
each has received a California Education Technology Grant to fully
integrate computers, networks, training, and software. The outcome goal
is to achieve computer literacy in all pupils and faculty and to improve
overall academic achievement. The UCLA research team is interviewing and
observing 9th and 10th grade African-American and Latino students over a
three-year period, and will explore physical surroundings, dynamics
among teachers, students, and peers as well as psychosocial and cultural
factors confidence and racial identity that may influence the study of
computer science.

Preliminary data shows that low numbers of under-represented minorities
and women are enrolling in CS beyond the introductory level, and that
mathematics is acting as a gatekeeper. However, some counter-intuitive
events have occurred. For example, participation in the robotics after
school club at one of the schools is largely Latina, a phenomenon
requiring further study.

**Title:** : NSF Advanced Networking Project With Minority-Serving
Institutions (AN-MSI)

**NSF Award Number:** ANI 9980537

**PI:** Mark A. Luker (mluker@educause.edu)

**Institution:** Educause

**Relevant Indicator:** A public that is provided access to the benefits
of science and engineering research and education.

**Relevant area of Emphasis:** Broadening participation.

**Source for this Report:** Project Abstract

This award to Educause enables minority-serving institutions to prepare
for and participate in national advanced networking initiatives
including Internet2 and NGI. Included are workshops and training
programs to assist administrators in devising technology strategies and
financing plans for their institutions. Similar programs will develop
the human support infrastructure in these colleges and universities and
additional activities will prepare faculty and students to use high
performance networks. An important aspect of the latter range of
activities is the involvement of the Education, Outreach, and Training
(EOT) program, part of NSF\'s Partnerships for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure (PACI). Integral to these programs and activities are
experiments with and prototypes of advanced, innovative network
technologies for Internet, vBNS, or Abilene access. These advanced
technologies attack the problems of cost and access for locations with
limited telecommunications options.

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 9522207; EIA 0080940

**PI Names:** Ann Q. Gates, Andrew Bernat, David G. Novick, Sergio D.
Cabrera, Patricia J. Teller

**PI Institution:** University of Texas El Paso

**Relevant Indicator:** A science and technology and instructional
workforce that reflects America\'s diversity

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Broadening Participation

**Source for Report:** CISE Minority Institutions Infrastructure Program
Report

With support from two EIA-MII awards, University of Texas El Paso
researchers are addressing retention and participation of traditionally
underrepresented groups in computing. Developing a framework involving
undergraduate and graduate students in research, they have created
laboratories to support research in neuro-fuzzy systems, parallel and
distributed systems, signal processing and communication systems,
software engineering, and theoretical applications.

Students involved in this study include: 73 graduate students (12 Ph.D.
students); 102 undergraduate students; 136 students from
underrepresented groups (38 female); 61 students graduated with BS; 38
students graduated with MS; two students graduated with a Ph.D.; 31
undergraduate students continued to graduate school. The breakdown of
publications, talks, and awards over the five years is as follows: over
150 research publications; over 100 research publications (journal and
conferences) with students as co-authors; 23 publications and talks on
the Affinity model; 66 student presentations at student conferences; 25
student awards and recognition.

One notable research contribution was made by two undergraduate
students, Michael Maxwell and Luis Rauda, whose work resulted in the
design of a performance-friendly system for monitoring the integrity of
software during runtime. Although the value of checking for correct
behavior of programs is beyond dispute, runtime software monitoring has
not been widely adopted because of the degradation of performance caused
by adding monitoring code. The students investigated an approach that,
through snoopy hardware, delegates monitor responsibilities to a process
other than the one executing the application program. Their paper
describing this work, "An Initial Design of a Coprocessor/Snoopy
Hardware Integrity Constraint-Checking Simulator," won the Best Student
Paper Award at the 1998 International Test and Evaluation Workshop on
Modeling and Simulation. In addition to the cash award that they
received, the conference donated money to the scholarship fund in the
College of Engineering.

**Title:** Educational Portion of High-Performance Wireless Research and
Education Network

**NSF Award Number:** ACIR 9619020

**PI Names:** Doretta Musick

**PI Institutions:** University of California-San Diego; SDSC

**Relevant Indicators:** Improved mathematics, science, and technology
skills for U.S. students at the K-12 level and for citizens of all ages,
so that they can be competitive in a technological society.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Broadening participation; tribal
colleges.

**Additional Strategic Outcome Addressed:** Tools

**Additional Relevant Indicators:** Networking and connectivity to take
advantage of the Internet and make science, mathematics, engineering,
and technology information available to all citizens.

**Source for Report:** Division report

![](media/image2.png){width="1.3229166666666667in"
height="1.9166666666666667in"}Located at the foot of Palomar Mountain in
east San Diego county, the Pala Indian reservation is home to 600 tribal
members, including more than 150 children who attend elementary school
on the reservation. Until last month, the tribe could only dream of
access to high-speed Internet connectivity. But collaborating with an
NSF-funded UC San Diego research project turned this dream into reality.

UC San Diego researchers recently implemented Phase I of the educational
portion of the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network,
and the Pala Tribe is already developing educational programs to take
advantage of high-speed Internet connectivity to educate their children.
Doretta Musick, coordinator of the Pala Learning Center, is working
closely with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) to develop
courses that let students use the Internet to further their educational
objectives.

Connectivity also receives a boost from the Federally funded Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program serving several tribes in
San Diego County. Serving the Pala and other nearby reservations,
including the Rincon and La Jolla reservations, TANF already provides
needy families with basic computer classes, but many recipients of this
assistance are interested in more advanced courses. The Rincon and La
Jolla reservations are currently being considered as future deployment
sites for wireless connectivity by the UC San Diego researchers, since
this kind of connectivity will allow tribal members to access TANF and
other classes at their Education Centers which serve K-12 children.

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 0085348

**PI Name:** Linda Jackson

**PI Institution:** Michigan State University

**Relevant Indicator:** Improved mathematics, science, and technology
skills for U.S. students at the K-12 level and for citizens of all ages,
so that they can be competitive in a technological society.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Broadening participation.

**Additional Relevant Strategic Outcomes:** Ideas, Tools

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Research and education processes that are
synergistic, networking and connectivity that take full advantage of the
Internet and make science, mathematics, engineering, and technology
information available to all citizens.

**Source for this Report:** Web site: www.homenettoo.com

The HomeNetToo project focuses on the home Internet use of low-income
families, many of whom are first-time computer users. Internet use is
automatically computer-logged and surveys are administered at 5 points
over the 18-month trial to address the antecedents and consequences of
Internet use. Preliminary findings indicate that cognitive style is
related to Internet use and influences the relationship between race and
use as does socioeconomic status (i.e., education and income).
Subsequent analyses will identify additional culturally-based factors
that influence this relationship.

23 undergraduates served as technology facilitators during the project's
first year, nearly half (10) of whom were members of underserved
minority groups (9 African-Americans, 1 Hispanic-American). Almost half
(11) were female. All are majoring in Computer Science. The graduate
student who served as Project Director in the first year is an
African-American male, majoring in educational technology

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 0119532

**PI Names:** Paul A. Fishwick, Jane Douglas, Timothy A. Davis

**PI Institutions:** University of Florida

**Relevant Indicator:** A public that is provided access to the benefits
of science and engineering research and education.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Addressing near-term workforce needs;
broadening participation

**Source for this Report:** Educational Innovation Program Report

The goal of "Digital Arts and Sciences," being developed by Paul
Fishwick and his colleagues at the University of Florida, is to train
students to acquire a hybrid-knowledge of computer engineering and the
arts, enabling them to understand the formalism of visualization and the
practicality of human communications that deal with aesthetic
interpretation. This will enable students to work effectively in
production-oriented teams focused on education, interactive games,
scientific and engineering visualization, software engineering, and
video production. Research will be integrated in an Aesthetic Computing
course and a series of Digital World Production Studio courses to the
curriculum. Both Fine Arts as well as CISE students will take these
courses, and the PIs will team-teach the studio course. "Aesthetic
Computing" uses genres and styles in fine art as metaphors for formal
and diagrammatically rendered model structures commonly found in
computing, including automata, data flow graphs, data models, and the
comprehensive Unified Modeling Language (UML). This work involves areas
generally regarded outside the sphere of computer science, including
semiotics, linguistics, analogy, metaphor, and the arts.

The project has a strong arts component to help personalize and enrich
the user's modeling interface. For example, representation of a finite
state machine can be crafted through metaphor mapping to a scale or
virtual model of a building. The building's style can be based on a
substantial variety of existing architectural traditions without
limiting its representation to abstract entities. Elements of music and
story schemata can be simultaneously mapped onto the architecture,
further personalizing the interface.

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 9732388, 9820687, 0071215, 0097467

**PI Name:** Fred Jelinek

**PI Institution:** Johns Hopkins University

**Relevant Indicator:** Globally engaged science and engineering
professionals who are among the best in the world

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Enhancing instructional workforce

**Source for this Report:** Workshop attendance. See www.cslp.jhu.edu.

For several years, Prof. Jelinek has run a workshop to teach
computational linguistics research techniques to graduate students and
junior faculty. In this six-week program, attendees attack a real
problem using statistical learning techniques in cooperation with senior
faculty and employing the resources of Johns Hopkins University's Center
for Statistical Language Processing. The workshop has been successful in
bringing new researchers on board, such as Joe Picone. Once a junior
attendee, he now he attends as a faculty advisor. This workshop has been
of great importance in developing skills and data resources in the area.

**NSF Award Number:** Presidential Faculty Fellowship ACI 9553068

**PI Names:** Chris Johnson

**PI Institutions:** University of Utah

**Relevant Indicators:** Globally engaged scientific and engineering
professionals who are among the best in the world.

**Additional Strategic Outcome Addressed:** Ideas

**Additional Relevant Indicators:** Partnerships connecting discovery to
innovation, learning, and societal advancement.

**Source for Report:** program report; PI's web page:
<http://www.sci.utah.edu/~crj/>

Chris Johnson, whose "Presidential Faculty Fellowship" (PFF) ended in
FY01, has already had an illustrious career in numerical methods,
computer graphics, and parallel software. The centerpiece of his PFF
award is the SCIRun Problem Solving Environment (PSE). SCIRun allows a
scientist or engineer to interactively steer a computation, changing
parameters, recomputing, and revisualizing within the same programming
environment. The tightly integrated modular environment provided by
SCIRun allows computational steering to be applied to a broad range of
advanced scientific computations. Topics that Johnson and his co-workers
have studied include investigating bioelectric fields, improving the
design of heart defibrillators, solving problems in geosciences, and
tracking environmental science simulations. The SCIRun system has been
released to the public as open source software for. In addition to
SCIRun, the PFF award enabled Johnson to found the Scientific Computing
and Imaging (SCI, pronounced "ski") Institute, now is home to 50
faculty, staff, and students. The Institute enjoys an international
reputation for high-quality scientific computing research.

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 0085852

**PI Names:** Ken Kraemer

**PI Institution:** University of California\--Irvine

**Relevant Indicator:** Globally engaged science and engineering
professionals who are among the best in the world

**Additional Strategic Outcome:** Tools

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** New types of scientific databases and
tools for using them.

**Source for this Report:** COV Annual Report

UC-Irvine researchers are creating a "Global E-Commerce Database" that
contains data on 42 countries in the study with regard to industry
structure, information infrastructure, human and financial resources,
consumer and social factors, and diffusion of E-commerce. Data are
available for multiple years beginning with 1995. Data were collected
from multiple sources, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, OECD,
and International Labor Organization. The data are currently being
developed and shared with international collaborators.

**Title:** SC2000 Launched a \$2 Million Teacher Training Program

**Relevant Indicator:** A science and technology and instructional
workforce that reflects America's diversity.

**Relevant Areas of Emphasis:** Broadening participation, addressing
near-term workforce needs.

**Additional Strategic Outcome:** Ideas

**Additional Relevant Areas of Emphasis:** Partnerships connecting
discovery to innovation, learning, and societal advancement

**Source for this Report:** Division report

With support from Federal research agencies, professional associations,
and leading hardware and software manufacturers, a new program to train
teachers from around the country in new ways to apply computers to
solving scientific problems in the classroom was launched last November
at SC2000, the annual conference of high performance networking and
computing. Supporters of the program were NSF, Association for Computing
Machinery, Compaq Computer Corporation, High Performance Systems, IEEE
Computer Society, Microsoft Corporation, NASA, Shodor Education
Foundation, and Wolfram Research.

Initiated under a \$1.13 million NSF grant, the program brought together
25 teams of four teachers each for a week of immersive training at
SC2000 followed by monthly seminars and a Summer Institute in
Huntsville, Alabama. A second group of 25 4-teacher teams will begin a
similar training program at SC2001 year in Denver. The result of the
project will be a comprehensive set of classroom modules that follow
national education standards and is available to all high schools across
the country.

Thanks to a donation of state-of-the-art laptop computers from Compaq
Computer Corp., teachers received hands-on training in using computers
to facilitate scientific research in the classroom. The teachers took
the computers back to their schools after the week of training to
continue participation in the 18-month program. This project will also
High Performance Systems' "Stella" modeling package, Microsoft's "Excel"
spreadsheet program, and Wolfram Research's "Mathematica" as modeling
and simulation building blocks for the classroom. The program is
designed to incorporate computational science, an emerging method of
scientific investigation that complements the traditional methods of
theory and experimentation. Computational science allows researchers to
test theories through computer modeling and simulations and then check
the accuracy of their work by comparing the results with those of
laboratory experiments.

Participating teacher teams were carefully selected and represent 18
states: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa,
Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina,
North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, along with a U.S.
Department of Defense school for military dependents in Germany. The
teams primarily consist of high school teachers, and 44 percent of the
teams come from lower-income areas. More than half of the teams
represent schools with high minority populations and about two-thirds
are from rural school districts. *(EIA).*

**Title:** EOT-PACI and AN-MSI host Cluster Computing Workshop for
Minority Serving Institutions

**Relevant Indicator:** A science and technology and instructional
workforce that reflects America's diversity.

**Relevant Areas of Emphasis:** Broadening participation, addressing
near-term workforce needs.

**Additional Relevant Areas of Emphasis:** Networking and connectity
that take full advantage of the Internet and make science, mathematics,
engineering and technology information available to all citizens.

**Source for this Report:** Workshop Report

A Minority Serving Institution High Performance Computing (MSI HPC)
Workshop on Cluster Computing was held at the National Computational
Science Alliance (Alliance) ACCESS Center April 26 and 27, 2001. The
workshop drew participants from 14 Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs)
across the nation.

![](media/image3.wmf)Sponsored by NSF's Advanced Networking with
Minority Serving Institutions (AN-MSI) project, the National Center for
Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), and the Education, Outreach and
Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(EOT-PACI)\--a co-project of the Alliance and the National Partnership
for Advanced Computational Infrastructure)\--was designed to impart
theory and hands-on experience in building and using clusters of
inexpensive commodity components to implement high end research
computing. Cluster computing techniques level the playing field for
research opportunities with larger, better-funded institutions.

# Included in the tutorial sessions was practice in using the Open Source Cluster Applications Resources (OSCAR, [**http://www.csm.ornl.gov/oscar/**](http://www.csm.ornl.gov/oscar/)) software library which provides quick and easy ways of implementing and managing simulation software on clusters with up to 64 nodes. The sponsoring organizations provided grants to reach groups that have traditionally not had access to high performance computing, such as faculty members and advanced graduate students of the MSI community: Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). *(EIA).* 

# F.2 Ideas

Research in this area focuses on enabling discovery across the frontier
of science and engineering, connected to learning, innovation, and
service to society. Select research includes the following:

**Title:** Intelligent Autonomous Marsupial Robots

**NSF Award Numbers:** 9320318 (CISE/IRIS) \"Reactive Sensing for
Autonomous Mobile Robots\"; 9531730 (CISE/CDA) \"Multiple Autonomous
Robots for Search and Rescue Applications\"; 9617309 (CISE/CDA)
\"Intelligent Assistance for Multiple Robots\"; 9732601 (CISE/EIA)
\"Multiple Autonomous Mobile Robots for Search and Rescue
Applications\"; 9996356 (CISE/EIA) \"Multiple Autonomous Robots for
Search and Rescue Applications\" (REU)

**PI Names:** Robin Murphy

**PI Institution:** University of South Florida, Colorado School of
Mines

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary, or innovative research across all NSF programs.

**Source for this Report:** <http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Stories/polb/>

Intelligent Autonomous Marsupial Robots, prototyped with NSF funds, were
used for search and rescue at the World Trade Towers Center (WTC) during
the disaster recovery efforts that commenced on September 11, 2001.
These "marsupial" robots possess unique characteristics: the "mother"
carries the little ones in its "pouch" into the site as far as she can
maneuver, releasing and providing "power" as the "babies" descend from
her to perform their search negotiating smaller crevices and hidden
spaces. Equipped to maintain balance on rough terrain, the team can
reach, sense, and report on spaces that are too small and/or too
dangerous for human rescue workers to approach or enter.

After locating 5 victims and a set of remains, surveying 3 buildings and
2 voids, and training the other teams on FEMA practices and firefighters
in the use of the robots, Robin Murphy, the PI for this project, was
awarded the NIUSR Eagle Award for her work. As a result of watching the
robotic creatures in action, the FEMA Task Force has ordered various
small and semi-autonomous robots for future use. NSF has also
contributed in training and developing students in the area, and these
students proved immensely helpful in the team search and rescue at WTC.

Five years ago, Robin Murphy, then at Colorado School of Mines, was
awarded an NSF equipment grant "Intelligent Assistance for Multiple
Robots" (CDA-96-17309), that was used to create two of the actual robots
that she and her students used during the recent exercise. Robin also
received a grant for Research Experience for Undergraduates
(EIA-99-96356) that allowed hiring an undergraduate who then went on to
graduate school and accompanied her at the WTC site. Over the years,
Robin Murphy has been recipient of 5 NSF grants supporting this and
earlier work (IRIS-93-20318, CDA-95-31730, EIA-97-32601).

**Title:** Parallel Sparse Matrix Computations; Robust Limited Memory
Sparse Solvers

**NSF Award Number:** ACI 9502594; ACI 0102537

**PI Name:** Padma Raghavan

**PI Institution:** Pennsylvania State University

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology, partnerships connecting discovery
to innovation, learning, and societal advancement.

**Source for this Report:**
[*http://www.cse.psu.edu/\~raghavan/*](http://www.cse.psu.edu/~raghavan/)

Padma Raghavan's CAREER proposal "Parallel Sparse Matrix Computations"
has led to advances in both computer science and physical science.
Countless large-scale scientific and engineering applications require
the solution of linear systems in which the coefficient matrix is large
and sparse. Raghavan developed a latency-tolerant scheme that uses
parallel matrix-vector multiplication after a "selective inversion" step
to perform repeated system solves. The scheme shows ideal scaled speedup
on multiprocessors with as many as 512 processors. Collaborating with
scientists at Sandia and other national laboratories, Raghavan has used
this solver on scientific problems ranging from structural analysis to
improved stratospheric ozone concentration prediction. Raghavan's
initial work has led to a follow-on grant, "Robust Limited Memory Sparse
Solvers."

**Title:** GRID Computing

**NSF Award Numbers:** ACI 9843977; ACI 0093300; ACI 0093166; ACI
0107839

**PI Names:** Schorr, Schopf, Wolski

**PI Institution:** University of California-San Diego, and others

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology, partnerships connecting discovery
to innovation.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary, or innovative research across all NSF programs.

**Source for this Report:** [ACIR](http://graphics.cs.ucdavis.edu/)
Division Report/COV

The "Computational Grid" is a relatively new idea involved with making
networked computation readily available. It draws its name from our
national electric power grid and aspires to the same "plug in"
simplicity. If successful, grid computing may well revolutionize how
large-scale computing is done worldwide. An example is the explicit use
of grid computing concepts in the Distributed Terascale Facility
competition in FY01. ACR's support for the Computational Grid concept
can be dated to its support for the original "Workshop on Building a
Computational Grid" (award to Schorr). This workshop resulted in the
standard Foster/Kesselman text entitled *The Grid: Blueprint for a New
Computing Infrastructure* (<http://www.mkp.com/grids>). ACR support has
continued through various research grants for distributed computing or
grid computation. In fiscal year 2001, ACR made additional awards in
grid computation research:

-   "CAREER: Affinity and Scheduling for the Computational Grid" (award
    0093300 Schopf).

-   "CAREER: Effective Grid Programming with Everywhere and G-commerce"
    (award 0093166 Wolski).

-   "Global Grid Forum Travel Funding" (workshop award 0107839 Schopf).

**Title:** Measuring System Dynamics for the Direct Assessment of
Software Security Violation Characteristics

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9804075

**PI Names:** John Munson

**PI Institution:** University of Idaho

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology.

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI

Munson and his team built a Linux based system capable of identifying
and stopping all intrusive behavior on the system it was protecting. The
system can completely halt the cyber-terrorism threat. The technology
can identify assaults in progress, stop the offending process, and
disable the IP address of the culprit. As a proof of concept, the team
placed a highly vulnerable version of the Linux system (no security
patches) on the net as a web server and invited hackers throughout the
world to root the machine. There were over 13,000 attacks on this box
and not one successful intrusion.

**Title:** Survival Enhancement for Breast Cancer Patients via
Chemotherapy

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9729842

**PI Names:** Olvi Mangasarian

**PI Institution:** Univ. of Wisconsin

**Relevant Performance Goal:** Discoveries advancing the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology; Partnerships connecting discovery
to societal advancement.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisiciplinary, or innovative research across all NSF programs.

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI;
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/dmi/tech-reports/01-03.ps

Data mining techniques were used to identify breast cancer patients for
whom chemotherapy could prolong survival time. This identification was
achieved by clustering 253 breast cancer patients into three prognostic
groups: Good, Poor and Intermediate. All patients in the Good group
received no chemotherapy while all patients in the Poor group did. Each
of the three groups has a significantly distinct Kaplan-Meier survival
curve. Of particular significance is the Intermediate group, because
patients with chemotherapy in this group do better than those without
chemotherapy in the same group. This is the reverse of what is true in
the overall population of 253 patients for which patients undergoing
chemotherapy have worse survival than those who do not. These results
suggest that the patients in the Good group should not receive
chemotherapy while those in the Intermediate group should receive
chemotherapy based on the findings from survival curve analysis. This is
the first instance of a classifiable group of breast cancer patients,
the Intermediate group, for which chemotherapy can possibly enhance
survival.

**Title:** Geometric Structure in Geographic Information Systems and
Molecular Modeling

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9988742

**PI Name:** Jack Snoeyink

**PI Institution:** University of North Carolina -- Chapel Hill

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries advancing the frontiers of science;
partnerships connecting discovery to innovation

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** ITR

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI

A computer algorithm uses time and memory as resources to solve a given
problem. Because computers use a fixed number of digits in their
arithmetic, sometimes algorithms require more accuracy than the hardware
provides. In such situations, computer algorithms can compute wrong
results, or even crash. Jack Snoeyink has undertaken a study of
arithmetic precision as a resource to address these problems. This study
of limited-precision algorithms has produced new algorithms that prove
more robust for foundational problems in geographic information systems
and computer graphics, important in such areas as polygon overlay,
Boolean operations, and polygon intersection. Yet these new algorithms
are no more complex than standard algorithms currently in use, but
assure correct results.

**Title:** Phase Measurements for Deblurring Images

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9732070

**PI Names:** Robert J. Plemmons and Todd C. Torgersen

**PI Institution:** Wake Forest Univ.

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** ITR

The quality of images made by ground-based telescopes is limited by
several factors. But the dominant factor is nearly always due to
atmospheric turbulence. The familiar mirage of shimmering water, seen on
roadways during hot summer days, is similarly due to a distorting effect
as light rays pass through mixed layers of warmer and cooler air. To
address this type of problem, Plemmons and Torgersen utilize phase
measurements and phase encoding in two kinds of computations associated
with optical imaging. Their recent work extends the phase diversity
method to enhance images obtained from ground-based telescopes.

In essence, the phase diversity method uses a beam splitter and two
cameras to collect two simultaneous images, each subject to the natural
limits of the optical system. One image is blurred only by the effects
of atmospheric turbulence, while the other is blurred by atmospheric
turbulence plus an additional aberration deliberately introduced into
the optical path leading to the second camera. These \"phase diverse\"
observations allow scientists to compute an estimate of the wavefront
distortion caused by the atmosphere. This estimate is used, in turn, to
compute an estimate of the true intensity image, thus partially
reversing the blurring effect of the atmosphere. An example of phase
diverse binary star data and their multi-frame image restoration is
illustrated in Figure 4. The data shown in Figure 4 was collected at an
observatory in Hawaii. While it is somewhat counter-intuitive that a
blurred image combined with a further blurred image provides more
information than a single image alone, phase diversity is proving a
useful technique when applied to the incoming field of light, allowing
researchers to implicitly record information that would otherwise not be
observed. Phase diversity cannot be applied to a single image that has
already been "time integrated," such as a still photograph. In this
case, the incoming field of light that formed the image is no longer
available.

![](media/image4.jpeg){width="5.9944444444444445in"
height="2.2270833333333333in"}

Figure 4: Multi Image Restoration of star image.

Another application of wavefront encoding is to extend the depth of
focus using a "cubic phase filter," which, when combined with an image
restoration technique, results in restored images exhibiting an extended
depth of focus. Figure 5 illustrates the effect of the cubic phase
filter and the progress of various restoration methods after three
iterations. A preconditioning technique (PMRNSD) effectively accelerates
the computation of the restored image as shown in the lower right image
in Figure 5. The microscopy data shown here is representative of image
restoration work in this area.

![](media/image5.jpeg){width="5.855555555555555in"
height="4.201388888888889in"}

Figure 5.

**Title:** Next Generation Software: A Collaborative Problem Solving
Environment for Modeling of Broadband Wireless Communication Systems

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 99-74956

**PI Names:** Theodore S. Rappaport, Layne T. Watson, Clifford A.
Shaffer, Naren Ramakrishnan

**PI Institution:** Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary or innovative research

**Source for this Report:** Next Generation Software Program Report

Theodore S. Rappaport, Layne T. Watson, Clifford A. Shaffer, Naren
Ramakrishnan of Virginia Tech have formed an interdisciplinary group of
electrical engineers and computer scientists to work on wireless
communication systems of the future. Their goal is to design a
comprehensive design and support system, called "Site-Specific System
Simulator for Wireless Communications" (S4W). The S4W project is a
collaboration between the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group
(MPRG) of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the
Computer Science Department at Virginia Tech.

Broadband wireless systems are essential for the success of the Next
generation Internet and future generations of portable multimedia
communicators. However, adequate design and analysis tools for
supporting these environments do not exist. This project is aimed to
support fundamental problem-solving in broadband wireless communications
systems, and will be used not only for the design of wireless systems,
but also to validate new wireless communications modeling approaches. It
is also expected to serve as a testbed to develop collaborative,
problem-solving environments. The broader impact of the project is that
final composition environments will serve as a central test bed for
wireless systems design engineers and scientists and as a tool for the
entire mobile communications community, allowing scientists and
engineers to achieve increased levels of interactivity to address new
kinds of technologies. Such technologies have a ubiquitous presence and
need for scaling to very large numbers of entities. For this reason, the
ability to performance-engineer such systems will be ever more
important.

**Title:** Classroom 2000 project

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 98-06822

**PI Names:** Irfan Essa, Gregory D. Abowd, Christopher G. Atkeson,
Umakishore Ramachandran

**PI Institution:** Georgia Institute of Technology

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering and technology

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary or innovative research

**Source for this Report:** 2001 EIA Committee of Visitors Report;
Experimental Systems Program Report

The objective of this research is to substantially reduce the human
input for creating and accessing large collections of multimedia,
particularly multimedia created by capturing what occurs in an
environment. The existing software system used as the starting point for
this investigation is Classroom 2000, which is designed to capture what
happens in classrooms, meetings, and offices. Classroom 2000 integrates
and synchronizes multiple streams of captured text, images, handwritten
annotations, audio, and video. In a sense, it automates note-taking for
a lecture or meeting. The research challenge is to make sense of this
flood of captured data. The project explores how the output of Classroom
2000 can be automatically structured, segmented, indexed, and linked.
Machine learning and statistical approaches to language are employed to
understand the captured data. Techniques from computational perception
are used to find structure in the captured data. An important component
of this research is an experimental analysis of the software system
being built. It is expected that this research will have a dramatic
impact on how humans work and learn, as the developed technology will
aid humans by capturing and making accessible what occurs in an
environment.

**Title:** Commonwealth Project

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 97-06685

**PI Names:** Azer Bestavros, David J. Yates, Mark E. Crovella

**PI Institution:** Boston University

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology.

**Source for this Report:** 2001 EIA Committee of Visitors Report; CISE
Research Infrastructure Program Report

The phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web imposes considerable strain
on Internet resources and Web servers, prompting concerns about the
Web\'s continued viability. The success of high-performance Web servers
in alleviating these performance problems is ultimately limited unless
Web services are inherently scalable. Azer Bestavros and his colleagues
at Boston University founded the Commonwealth Project to design,
implement, and evaluate a prototypical architecture and a set of
associated protocols for scalable Web services. The Commonwealth
architecture for hosting scalable Web services allows scalability
through parallel processing on tightly-coupled nodes within a Web site,
and load distribution across loosely-coupled Web sites. Commonwealth's
underlying philosophy is to achieve a wealth of performance through the
use of common components, and to do so along an incremental upgrade
path.

Bestavros and his colleagues have filed for two provisional patents on
Web caching and scalable web services. SURGE, a scalable URL reference
generator, was developed and is being distributed. Over 100 labs,
including major telecom companies and universities, have put SURGE into
use. BRITE, the Boston University Representative Internet Topology
Generator, has been developed and is being distributed via the World
Wide Web. Two start-up companies\--InfoLibria, Inc. and Commonwealth
Network Technologies, Inc.\--have been formed as a result of the
infrastructure. The latter has been purchased by WebManage, which in
turn, was purchased by Network Appliances, Inc.

**Title:** Music representation and retrieval

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 0085945

**PI Name:** Bill Birmingham

**PI Institution:** U. of Michigan

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary, or innovative research across all NSF programs.

**Source for this Report:** Website: Joint Conference on Digital
Libraries.

Vast musical databases are currently accessible over computer networks,
creating a need for sophisticated methods to search and organize these
databases. This project, analogous to feature extraction in image
analysis, looks for musical themes in sound and enables the searching of
sounds as well as images and text.

Because music is a multifaceted, multi-dimensional medium, it demands
effective, specialized representations, abstractions, and processing
search techniques that are fundamentally different from those used for
other retrieval tasks. By exploiting reductionist theories of musical
structure and performance such as musical style, this project is
developing hierarchical, stochastic music representations and
concomitant retrieval mechanisms well-suited to music's unique
psycho-acoustical characteristics. The project is developing a software
system to exploit these representations and retrieval mechanisms. It
accepts sonic input, compares abstractions of this input to those in a
database of digital recordings, returns sonic samples of the database
that best match the query, and allows the user to refine the query using
music/acoustic-based interfaces of varying degrees of complexity.

**Title:** 3-D Printers

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 9874781

**PI Names:** Tim Rowe

**PI Institution:** University of Texas

**Relevant Indicator:** Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering, and technology.

**Source for this Report:** Annual Division Report.

This project is producing 3-D scans of fossil vertebrates and building
copies of them using 3-D "printers". They accomplish this with
industrial CT scanners traditionally used for parts inspections, which
permits them to perform non-destructive investigation and reproduction
of extremely rare, fragile, and valuable materials. In the process of
performing the scans, researchers have discovered that some fossils
previously believed to be important are actually fakes, thus creating
the field of forensic paleontology.

![](media/image6.png){width="2.9277777777777776in"
height="1.4534722222222223in"}

**Title:** CAREER: Unification of Data Reduction and Multiresolution
Methods for Use in Scientific Visualization and Education in Scientific
Visualization

**NSF Award Number:** ACI 9624032; ACI 9982251

**PI Name:** Bernard Hamann

**PI Institution:** University of California-Davis

**Relevant Indicator:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas including
the science of learning.

**Source for this Report:**
[*http://graphics.cs.ucdavis.edu/\~hamann/hamann.html*](http://graphics.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hamann/hamann.html)

Bernd Hamann has long been contributor to scientific visualization with
his CAREER project "CAREER: A Proposal Regarding the Unification of Data
Reduction and Multiresolution Methods for Use in Scientific
Visualization and Education in Scientific Visualization." He now
continues that work with collaborators at UC-Davis in the Large
Scientific and Software Data Set Visualization project "Multiresolution-
and Topology-Based Visualization of Large Scientific Data Sets in
Parallel and Distributed Computing Environments." Datasets up to a
terabyte in size are becoming increasingly common, ranging from large
CFD simulations to digital libraries. The complexity of such massive
data collections overwhelms our cognitive abilities to analyze them. To
gain higher-level insight into such data, Hamann's work develops
technology to support interactive data exploration at different levels
of abstraction. One of many advances pursued in this research is the
development of efficient parallel methods to identify surfaces of
interest in massive datasets by means of a new wavelet transform based
on uniform bicubic B-spline subdivision.

**Title :** Understanding and Surviving Computation in the Wild

**NSF Award Number:** ANI-9986555

**PI:** Stephanie Forrest

**Institution:** University of New Mexico

**Relevant Indicator:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas including
the science of learning.

**Source for Report:** ANIR

The explosive growth in the contacts between separately administered
computing resources on the Internet has created new opportunities and
risks. Applets, agents, viruses, email attachments, and downloadable
software are escaping the confines of their original systems and
spreading through communication networks. This "computation in the wild"
is a far cry from the carefully isolated, controlled, and managed
computer systems of the past. One school of thought argues that
networked computer systems can be better understood, controlled, and
developed if viewed as living systems, regarding the rich and dynamic
network environment of benign and malicious software collectively as a
software ecosystem. This, in turn, encourages rethinking current
computing practice from operating system design, to communication
mechanisms, to computer security.

Stephanie Forest's project, "Understanding and Surviving Computation in
the Wild," investigates biologically inspired methods to understand,
control, and develop networked computer systems. Research emphasizes
methods to allow software to survive and continue running in
rapidly-changing environments that are highly networked and separately
administered, and populated by software that is mobile, diverse, buggy,
and in many cases, malicious. The project encompasses:

-   Development of a prototype homeostatic operating system to monitor
    processes and make adaptive, corrective changes

-   Development and deployment of an intrusion-detection system across
    workstations, based on knowledge of the immune system

-   A genetic programming mutation operator to reduce the size of
    generated programs

-   Preliminary experiments, based on intercellular interactions in
    immune responses, showing that genetic algorithms can to determine
    which interactions are most effective in regulating a system

**Title:** The Simplex Method is Provably Polynomial

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9972532

**PI Name:** Shang-Hua Teng

**PI Institution:** Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne

**Relevant Indicator:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas and
education.

**Relevant Areas of Emphasis:** ITR, MSR

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI

Shang-HuaTeng, jointly with Dan Spielman of MIT, solved a long-standing
open question in mathematical programming, optimization, and theoretical
computer science, proving that the Simplex Method for Linear Programming
usually takes a polynomial number of steps. They developed a new
algorithm-analysis framework, called smoothed analysis, that can help
explain the success of many algorithms and heuristics that traditional
algorithm-analysis frameworks, such as the worse-case and average-case
analysis, cannot. The simplex algorithm is a classic example of an
algorithm known to perform well in practice yet consumes exponential
time in the worst case. It has been an active subject for mathematical
and experimental studies for more than 50 years.

**Title:** Efficient Human Eye Models

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 0084438

**PI Name:** Steve McCormick

**PI Institution:** Univ. of Colorado

**Relevant Indicator:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas and
education.

**Additional Performance Goal:** Tools

**Relevant Additional Area of Emphasis:** New type of scientific tool

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI

Co-funded by NSG, this project combined several methodologies and
technologies to develop an accurate and efficient model of the human
eye, involving a delicate modeling of the interaction of the aqueous
humor (fluid) and the iris (structure) in a complicated moving domain.
The grids that are produced for the fluid chamber look much like the
2-and 3-dimensional examples depicted in Figure 7 and Figure 8,
respectively. These figures give a typical snapshot of a fluid domain
grid that moves in time and interacts with the grid for the iris. The
project is applying a powerful new least-squares approach that treats
the fluid and structure as a unified problem of minimizing a certain
energy functional. The principal technological tools used for this
minimization are finite elements that convert the problem to a
finite-dimensional one, multilevel adaptive methods that tailor the grid
to the problem, and the "Overture" software package that provides a
highly efficient parallel implementation of these methods on
high-performance computers. The project's aim is to provide the
physician with a diagnostic tool for glaucoma. Results with a limited
model have already given insight into the physiology of glaucoma. Tests
show that blinking and iris attachment location have little effect on
iris position in healthy and glaucomatous eyes, but accommodation plays
an important role in displacing the iris and in maintaining iris lens
contact in glaucomatous eyes. Further, the model has helps predict
quantitatively the effects of hydrodynamic changes on iris position and,
hence, the potential development of pigmentary glaucoma.

**Title:** Provably Secure Cryptographic System

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9877138

**PI Names:** Michael Rabin

**PI Institution:** Harvard University

**Source for this report:** New York Times, February 20, 2001

**Relevant Indicators:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas and
education. Discoveries that advance the frontiers of science,
engineering, and technology.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** ITR, MSR

Michael Rabin announced the invention of the first cryptographic system
(the ADR protocol) that allows provably secure communication. This
cryptosystem is unbreakable in the same way a "one-time pad" is secure,
whereas current cryptosystems are based on the difficulty of difficult
mathematical problems that may become less so over time as algorithms
and computer hardware improve. Rabin's system uses instead a steady
stream of random numbers generated by satellites or some other source.
These are captured at an agreed-upon point by the sender and receiver of
the encrypted file and plugged into the key. The numbers disappear
without a trace immediately upon use. Thus, even if an eavesdropper
retains an encrypted message for future decryption, the key has
vanished---making decryption impossible. This research made national
headlines.

### 

**Title:** CISE Research Infrastructure: Asymmetric Bandwidth Channels:
Applications to Real-Time Computing and Robotics

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 97-03220

**PI Names:** R. Vijay Kumar, Insup Lee, David J. Farber, Jonathan M.
Smith

**PI Institution:** University of Pennsylvania

**Relevant Indicators:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas including
the science of learning; Discoveries that advance the frontiers of
science, engineering and technology.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary or innovative research across all NSF programs

**Sources for this Report:** 2001 EIA Committee of Visitors Report; CISE
Research Infrastructure Program Report; Leslie J. Nicholson, "'Walking'
wheelchair within Penn\'s GRASP," *The Philadelphia Inquirer*, February
12, 1998. Seife, \"Freewheeling,\" *Scientific American* January 1996

Vijay Kumar and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania are
developing advanced techniques for the communications, coordination, and
vision of autonomous multi-robot systems. This inter-disciplinary team
of computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering
researchers are focusing on areas such as multi-robot co ordination,
cooperative sensing, and efficient wireless transmission techniques.
They developed cooperative control algorithms that allow robots to
coordinate with each other in varying environments. When obstacles are
presented in their path, the multiple robots can re-arrange themselves
to navigate around the object and then return to their original
formation. Researchers also developed techniques allowing multiple
robots to coordinate the sensing and execution of basic tasks. For
example, three small robots can coordinate themselves to sense,
coordinate, and move a large object that could not be moved by a single
robot. They developed efficient transmission techniques for power-aware
medium access control to maximize the life of the robot and the quality
of the data transmitted between the robots.

One of the many applications of this important basic research is robotic
support for the disabled. Kumar has built a motorized chair that
consists of a conventional wheelchair fitted with a two 2 degree of
freedom manipulators/legs. The design incorporates a number of desirable
features to make this chair as versatile and general purpose as
possible. The chair is compact with a width less than 30 inches so that
it can fit in a conventional doorway and weighs less than 70 kilograms
so it can operate indoors. Safety is the most important concern, so the
chair is a statically stable machine.

**Title:** Discovery of Serious Security Flaws in Wireless Networks

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 0093337

**PI Names:** David Wagner

**PI Institution:** Univ. of California Berkeley

**Relevant Indicator:** A robust and growing fundamental knowledge base
that enhances progress in all science and engineering areas and
education.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** ITR

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI and The Wall Street
Journal; http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.html

Wagner has pointed out serious security defects in the 802.11 wireless
networks used by millions worldwide. The news spread rapidly, appearing
in The Wall Street Journal (page one of the business section), the New
York Times, and elsewhere, giving industry the opportunity to deploy
short-term countermeasures before the weaknesses were exploited. Since
then, Wagner's discoveries have led to follow-on work by groups at U.
Maryland, AT&T Research, Cisco, and the Technion Institute. As a result,
IEEE is developing a new standard for security in 802.11 wireless
networks and security research group at UC Berkeley is participating in
this process. This research will have a significant impact on the next
standard, enabling designers to deploy a much more secure solution in
the next year or so.

### International and National Recognition:

The following major awards have contributed or are expected to
contribute significantly to NSF's "Ideas" strategic outcome, addressing
the relevant indicator of "supporting a robust and growing fundamental
knowledge base":

**Title:** Turing Award for Year 2000

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9820885

**PI Name:** Andrew Yao

**PI Institution:** Princeton University

**Source for this Report:** ACM Press Release

The Turing Award is computer science's most prestigious award, the
equivalent, in many ways, of the Nobel Prize. The 2000 Turing Award
given to Andrew Yao was for his lifetime achievements in theoretical
computer science, including cryptography, pseudorandom number
generation, and communication complexity. Much of Yao\'s most recent
work has been in quantum cryptography, where he recently demonstrated
that the fundamental problem of having two strangers unconditionally
commit to a common value\--impossible in conventional computing and
communication\--can at least be closely approximated using quantum
cryptography.

**Title:** 2001 NSF Alan T. Waterman Award

**NSF Award Number:** CCR-0130844

**PI Name:** Vahid Tarokh

**PI Institution:** MIT

**Source for this Report:** National Science Board Meeting;
[*http://www.nsf.gov/search97cgi/vtopic*](http://www.nsf.gov/search97cgi/vtopic)

Vahid Tarokh, the primary inventor of "space time coding,"---a new
technique that significantly improves the speed and reliability of
wireless data transmission---was awarded the 2001 NSF Alan T. Waterman
Award. The Waterman Award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in
any field of science or engineering supported by NSF and carries with it
a 3-year grant for \$500,000.

**Title:** 2000 IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement
Award

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9996208

**PI Name:** Georgios Giannakis

**PI Institution:** Université of Minnesota

**Source for this Report:** Communication from PI; IEEE Trans. on Signal
Processing, vol. 47, pp. 1988-2022, July 1999.

Georgios Giannakis received the 2000 IEEE Signal Processing Society
Technical Achievement Award. He was granted the award for his
"fundamental contributions to non-Gaussian and non-stationary signal
analysis, system identification, and equalization of single- and
multi-user communication systems." The papers for which the award was
given were "Redundant Filterbank Precoders and Equalizers. Part I:
Unification and Optimal Designs" and "Redundant Filterbank Precoders and
Equalizers. Part II: Blind Channel Estimation, Synchronization, and
Direct Equalization."

**Title:** 2001 IEEE W.R.G. Baker prize

**NSF Award Number:** CCR-9988262

**PI Name:** Keshab Parhi

**PI Institution:** Univ. of Minnesota

**Source for this Report:** IEEE

Keshab Parhi was awarded the 2001 IEEE W.R.G. Baker prize paper award
for his paper entitled "Low-Energy CSMT Binary Adders and Carry
Generators." This award is given to the authors of the most outstanding
paper published in any IEEE Transactions, Journals, or Magazines in a
given calendar year. Parhi's paper was published in Dec. 99 issue of the
IEEE Trans. on VLSI Systems.

**Title:** Lanchester Prize of the Institute of Operations Research

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9729842

**PI Names:** Olvi Mangasarian

**PI Institution:** Univ. Of Wisconsin

**Source for this Report:** Institute of Operations Research

Olvi Mangasarian received the Lanchester Prize of the Institute of
Operations Research and Management Sciences on November 6, 2000. This
prize is awarded to a collection of papers or a book that is deemed to
be the most influential contribution to the field in the preceding three
years. Previous winners include Karp, Garey and Johnson, Karmarkar,
Rockafellar, and Tarjan.

**Title:** Major Press Story

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 0100485

**PI Names:** Hendrik Lenstra

**PI Institution:** Univ. of California, Berkeley

**Source for this Report:** New York Times

Hendrik Lenstra, who is co-funded by C-CR and DMS, was mentioned in Why
Mathematicians Now Care About Their Hat Color, a New York Times story by
Sara Robinson published on April 10, 2001.

**Title:** Election to National Academy of Science

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9877049

**PI Name:** Leslie Valiant

**PI Institution:** Harvard University

**Source for this report:** National Academy of Science Announcement

It may be possible to build quantum computers that are several orders of
magnitude superior to conventional computers in speed, memory, and
energy efficiency. Such machines, however, may lie far in the future as
only very tiny quantum computers have been built to date. Leslie Valiant
advanced scientists' understanding quantum computing's fundamental
limits and possibilities by showing that a large class of problems can,
in fact, be solved almost as fast on a conventional computer as on a
quantum computer.

**NSF Award Number:** ANI 9986679

**Title:** iMASH: Adaptive Middleware and Networking Support for the
Nomadic Healer

**PI:** Rajive Bagrodia (rajivecs.ucla.edu)

**Institution:** University of California\--Los Angeles

**Relevant Indicator:** Partnerships connecting discovery to innovation,
learning, and societal advancement.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** ITR

**Additional Strategic Outcome Addressed:** People

**Additional Relevant Indicator:** A public that is provided access to
the benefits of science and engineering research and education.

**Source for Report:** Project Abstract

Within the next few years, mobile and wireless Internet access will
likely become the norm. This project plans to develop and deploy iMASH,
a network system to support anytime, anywhere, multi-platform access to
the electronic patient records database for health care providers. The
specific target of this project is healthcare applications. The
objective: to provide real-time, multimedia communication enabling a
physician in any location to access a patients record and other relevant
information filtered by the physician's user profile. Such communication
should be able to migrate ongoing application sessions seamlessly to
platforms ranging from high performance diagnostic workstations in the
physician's office to PDAs in the examination room.

Researchers will develop a clinical testbed to serve as a laboratory for
developing, testing, and evaluating advanced information technology as
it relates to patient care. The testbed will reveal user requirements
that will drive iMASH architecture design, and will permit direct,
realistic validation of research results. Researchers expect to: 1)
Develop a middleware infrastructure to support anytime, anywhere,
multi-platform access to the Internet; 2) Develop a suite of wireless
networking protocols and algorithms to provide quality of service
support in a mobile, heterogeneous networking environment; 3) Deploy
iMASH within the UCLA Medial School and conduct a controlled study to
evaluate its effectiveness in reducing health care costs and improving
physician effectiveness; 4) Create a system emulator that can evaluate
the performance and scalability of the middleware services and protocols
across multiple dimensions including users, devices, types of
applications, and geographical area. The emulator will be used to "test
drive" novel protocols and applications prior deploying them on the
physical testbed.

A strong research and development team is supporting iMASH. A longer
term goal of this effort is to deploy iMASH-like technology widely
within the UCLA campus to support ubiquitous multimedia access for
students and faculty and wireless distance education.

**Title:** COPLINK

**NSF Award Number:** EIA99-83304 \[prior award IRI 9411318; PI: B.
Schatz, University of Illinois\]

**PI Name:** Hsinchun Chen

**PI Institution:** University of Arizona

**Relevant Indicator:** Partnerships connecting discovery to innovation,
learning, and societal advancement.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Appropriate balance of high risk,
multidisciplinary or innovative research

**Source for this Report:** Digital Government Annual Report; Alan D.
Fischer "COPLINK nabs criminals faster," *Arizona Daily Star*, Tucson,
Arizona, Sunday, January 7, 2001.

Hsinchun Chen of the University of Arizona\'s Artificial Intelligence
Lab (Digital Government: COPLINK Center: Information and Knowledge
Management for Law Enforcement), in collaboration with the Tucson Police
Department, has developed an integrated justice information database
available over a secure intranet through a cost-effective remote
graphical interface. The COPLINK Connect system has been deployed at the
Tucson Police Department. The system, used by over 300 law enforcement
professionals, has gained overwhelming success and acceptance. COPLINK
Detect is still in the deployment phase with 32 law enforcement
professionals currently using this system. Consortia are being formed
within the state of Arizona to share information via COPLINK with over
15 agencies participating statewide. Plans are being developed to deploy
COPLINK in Texas, Michigan, California, Washington DC, Arlington County
Virginia, and South Carolina.

COPLINK is an excellent example of multi-agency efforts supported under
the Digital Government program. The fundamental research that led to
COPLINK\--a subcontract under an award to Bruce Schatz at the University
of Illinois\--was supported by NSF and DARPA under the Digital Library 1
initiative. The technology was developed at the UA Artificial
Intelligence Lab with a \$1.1M grant from the National Institute of
Justice (NIJ). In cooperation with NIJ, the Digital Government program
provided \$1.6M for further development and the initial evaluation of
the COPLINK technology. Knowledge Computing Corporation, new start-up
company, entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with the
University of Arizona to develop and market the technology, and the
company received further support from NIJ and \$2.6 million from private
investors to launch its business.

# 

**ITR:**

The following two new awards demonstrate success in two areas of
emphasis: Information Technology Research and Appropriate balance of
high-risk, multidisciplinary or innovative research in areas across all
NSF programs.

**Multilingual Access to Large spoken Archives, Visual History
Foundation (Award 0122464)**

The project proposes to advance the state of the art in automatic speech
recognition by detecting emotional and highly accented speech and
differences based on age and gender, and then optimizing the acoustic
model for those conditions. The techniques to be developed will
dramatically improve the efficiency of professional catalogers,
leveraging automatic segmentation to suggest topic boundaries in
interviews, using domain-tuned classification algorithms to recommend
thesaurus terms, and providing automated tools to support generation of
event timelines. Efforts will be made to automate transferring
capabilities developed originally for English to other languages. The
collection of spoken material used in this project will be the 116,000
hours of video recordings held by the Survivors of the Shoah Visual
History Foundation, a set of already digitized video recordings of great
historical importance. This will produce significant impact, both
through improved access to our cultural heritage and through the
application of the techniques to other important problems.

**Methodologies and Tools for Designing and Implementing Large Scale
Real-Time Systems, Vanderbilt (0121658)**

This research will develop methodologies and tools for designing and
implementing very large-scale real-time embedded computer systems that
(a) achieve ultra high computational performance through use of parallel
hardware architectures, (b) achieve and maintain functional integrity
via distributed, hierarchical monitoring and control, (c) are required
to be highly available, and (d) are dynamically reconfigurable,
maintainable, and evolvable. The specific application that will drive
this research and provide a test platform for it is the trigger and data
acquisition system for BTeV, an accelerator-based High Energy Physics
(HEP) experiment to study matter-antimatter asymmetries (also known as
Charge-Parity violation) in the decays of particles containing the
b-quark. The data-taking phase of the experiment requires a massively
parallel, heterogeneous cluster of computing elements to reconstruct 15
million particle interactions (events) per second and to use the
reconstruction data to decide which events to retain for further data
analysis. Creating usable software for this type of real-time embedded
system will require research into solutions of general problems in the
fields of computer science and engineering. The proponents plan to
approach these problems in a way that is general, and to produce
methodologies and tools that can be applied to many scientific and
commercial problems. During this project, the research results will be
carried into the high-school system through projects, which enhance
existing educational opportunities.

# F.3 Tools

Research in this area focuses on providing broadly accessible,
state-of-the-art information-bases and shared research and education
tools. Select research includes the following:

**Title:** Polymerase Prediction

**NSF Award Number:** ACIR 9619019

**PI Names:** Tamar Schlick, Suse Broyde, Samuel H. Wilson, Linjing
Yang, Bill Beard

**PI Institution:** NYU, National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences (NIEHS)

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Source for this Report:** <http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Stories/polb/>

![](media/image7.png){width="2.3020833333333335in"
height="2.1354166666666665in"}An impressive "quality control system"
system is busily at work replicating DNA. It makes a mistake only once
every 10 billion operations. One important part of this DNA copying
machine is polymerase, a protein enzyme that makes sure complementary
bases are placed with one another as a strand of bases becomes
duplicated DNA.

An interdisciplinary team of investigators from NYU and NIEHS) is using
the Alliance's SGI Origin2000 supercomputer at NCSA to create the first
molecular dynamics simulations that show the sequence of actions of a
particular polymerase known as pol β as it takes part in the DNA repair
process. The team includes Tamar Schlick, a mathematics, chemistry, and
computer science professor at NYU; Suse Broyde, a biology professor at
NYU; Samuel H. Wilson, deputy director of NIEHS; Linjing Yang, Schlick's
postdoctoral associate; and Bill Beard, Wilson's colleague at NIEHS.

To model pol β, the team used the CHARMM molecular mechanics and
dynamics software package to make computational representations of the
polymerase in its open and closed states and an intermediate state. The
five-nanosecond simulations used one, two, or 150 femtosecond timesteps
depending on the range of the molecular force being modeled. The force
calculations were then carefully merged and updated using advanced
integration algorithms. Applying these algorithms for the first time on
such a large, complex biological system, the team meticulously verified
the algorithmic protocols' reliability, comparing the results to those
obtained through standard methods. The team's use of the integration
algorithms sped up the modeling process significantly. The simulations
also greatly benefited from parallelization on the Origin2000 using the
Parallel Virtual Machine protocol and Message Passing Interface on 16
processors. Still, each five-nanosecond simulation of the system of
nearly 50,000 atoms required about 25,000 CPU hours.

![](media/image8.jpeg){width="1.273611111111111in"
height="1.6979166666666667in"}**Title:** Omniguiding Light

**NSF Award Number:** ACIR 9619020

**PI Names:** Joannopoulos, Ibanescu, Fink, Fan, Thomas,

**PI Institution:** MIT

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Source for this Report:** M. Ibanescu, Y. Fink, S. Fan, E.L. Thomas,
and J.D. Joannopoulos (2000): An all-dielectric coaxial waveguide,
*Science* **289,** 415-419.

P. Ball (2001): The next generation of optical fibers, *Technology
Review* 104, 55-61. For more information see:
[www.omni-guide.com](http://www.omni-guide.com/)

Fading of the light signal over distance is a factor that limits the
performance of optical fiber networks. To compensate for this on
trans-Atlantic optical cable, for instance, there are amplifiers every
50 km---amplifiers costing about a quarter of a million dollars apiece
that require their own power supplies. To gain a fundamental,
atomic-level understanding of the properties of optical materials, a
group at MIT directed by John Joannopoulos has found what may prove to
be an ideal answer. They have designed a way of using "photonic band
gap" materials to reflect and concentrate light in a new kind of
waveguide. The work was published as a cover story in *Science,* and
articles about it have appeared in other media.

Modern optoelectronics and telecommunications systems are built on a
backbone of waveguides. Metallic coaxial waveguides, used for radio
frequency transmission, are useless at optical wavelengths because light
is absorbed by the metal. Dielectric (modern optical fiber) waveguides
confine light better, particularly when clad with material that has a
lower refractive index than the inner fiber. The total internal
reflection results in low losses, but it cannot preserve polarized input
or bend around sharp corners.

The solution devised by Joannopoulos, colleagues Yoel Fink and Edwin L.
Thomas, postdoctoral researcher Shanhui Fan, and graduate researcher
Mihai Ibanescu, combines some of the best features of metallic coaxial
cable and conventional dielectric waveguides. Fink had originally
designed a "perfect mirror" consisting of multiple alternating
micron-thick layers of polystyrene and tellurium, photonic band gap
materials that completely reflect infrared light at wavelengths between
10 and 15 microns coming from any angle. These materials trap and
channel photons in much the way semiconductor devices do electrons. When
the mirror material is rolled into a tube, it can steer light from a
carbon dioxide laser through a 90-degree bend with a 1 cm radius of
curvature. The light runs through air, which has the lowest refractive
index of any material.

Various configurations of the hollow coaxial waveguide design were
simulated on the Cray T90 at SDSC. The calculations focused on
configurations in which the radius of the inner air core was varied.
Each geometry tested took some 240 CPU hours on the T90 and required
memory of up to 50 Mwords.

**Title:** Managing Terabytes from Terra

**NSF Award Number:** ACIR NA

**PI Names:** Richard Ullman NASA/EOS

**PI Institution:** NCSA/NASA

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Source for this Report:** <http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Stories/HDF/>

When Terra, one of the satellites in NASA's Earth Observing System
(EOS), began beaming data back to Earth last year, it became the first
satellite to simultaneously monitor many of the Earth's natural systems
on a daily basis. Equipped with a wide array of instruments, Terra
offers new perspectives on the Earth's land, ecosystems, radiation, and
life forms and gives insight into how these systems interact and
influence one other. Scientists all over the globe marveled at the
quantity and variety of the data gathered by Terra.

Since 1994 NASA has been committed to using HDF for storing and managing
all data gathered by its EOS sensors. In addition to NASA, which uses it
on their Landsat satellites, other organizations that use HDF as the
standard file format include the DOE\'s ASCI, and NOAA's National
Geophysical Data Center.

There are currently two versions of HDF in use: HDF4 and HDF5. HDF4 is
backward compatible with all earlier versions and is currently used by
NASA. The newer version, HDF5, has been developed for new information
technologies, such as parallel processors and extremely large files. The
Terra satellite uses HDF-EOS4, based on HDF4. Upgrading to a new version
of HDF would have been difficult for these projects that have been
underway for some time, says Richard Ullman, information architect for
the EOS Earth Sciences Data and Information Systems. Aqua and Aura, two
later EOS satellites, will rely on HDF5. Ullman says the new HDF-EOS5
will be backward compatible with the earlier version.

NCSA's HDF software is used to organize 1 terabyte of new EOS satellite
data every day. The amount of data generated by the Terra satellite
alone is 850GB per day, including all the processed data produced. Terra
sends 194 GB/day of raw data, which is almost as much as the Hubble
Space Telescope acquires in a year. Landsat-7 (another HDF product)
takes in another 150 GB per day.

**Title:** Terascale Computing System (TCS)

**NSF Award Number:** ACIR 0085206

**PI Names:** Michael Levine, Ralph Roskies

**PI Institution:** Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC)

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Terascale Computing System

**Source for this Report:** [Division
report.](http://www.omni-guide.com/)

![](media/image9.jpeg){width="2.6041666666666665in"
height="1.9166666666666667in"}The new Terascale Computing System (TCS)
funded by NSF in Fiscal Year 2000 has begun operation well ahead of
schedule and is exceeding performance expectations. During a November 23
to December 22 acceptance test in which PSC staff evaluated its
performance, TCS consistently surpassed speed expectations and operated
virtually without interruption. Using LINPACK software - a standard
performance test in which linear-algebra equations are the benchmark -
the initial TCS achieved 75 percent of peak performance. The 64 node
precursor to the full TCS-1 now ranks 91st among supercomputing systems
worldwide, despite its being just partially configured.

The initial TCS configuration has 64 interconnected Compaq ES40
Alphaservers, each of which features four EV67 microprocessors. By
October 2001, those servers and chips are to be replaced by more than
750 faster Alphaservers, each with four of Compaq\'s new EV68 chips. The
combined peak power of the full computer system will be 6 Teraflops
making it the most powerful computer available to academic scientists in
the United States.

**Title:** Surveying the Digital Future: A Longitudinal International
Study of the Individual and Social Effects of PC/Internet Technology

**NSF Award Number:** ANI-9982219

**PI Name:** Jeffrey I. Cole cole@ucla.edu

**PI Institution:** U of Cal Los Angeles

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared use database

**Relevant area of Emphasis:** Networking and connectivity that take
full advantage of the Internet and make science, mathematics,
engineering, and technology information available to all citizens.

**Source for this Report:** Project Abstract

This award supports an important study of the impacts of the Internet
and PC technology on society and families. Using survey methods and
well-accepted techniques for social science data analysis, the research
team will conduct a long-term longitudinal study. An important component
of this work will be the involvement of comparable research teams in
several other countries. The project is under the auspices of the UCLA
Center for Communications Policy. Research results will be disseminated,
and research data will be made available for others to use in further
study and analysis.

**Title:** Research and Education Network: An Interdisciplinary
Collaboration on Performance Aspects of a High Performance Wireless

**NSF Award Number:** ANI-0087344

**PI Name:** Hans-Werner Braun hwb@nlanr.net

**PI Institution:** U of Cal San Diego

**Relevant Indicator:** Networking and connectivity that take full
advantage of the Internet and make science, mathematics, engineering,
and technology information available to all citizens.

**Source for this Report:** Project Abstract

Rural areas across the nation are affected by the lack of network
access. Solutions are either prohibitively expensive, or many years away
from implementation. The research and education communities have
immediate connection needs at reasonable performance levels\--for
researchers working in remote areas (in the field, in observatories, and
with autonomous telemetry sensors) and for remote educational
facilities\--to the Internet.

The goal of this project is to create a substantial and robust wireless
backbone network for bidirectional traffic flows by expanding upon a
prototype connection recently installed by the Measurement and Network
Analysis Group of the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research
(NLANR) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography (SIO), as well as the School of Engineering
and its Center for Wireless Communications (CWC). This project is a
collaboration between network researchers and disciplinary researchers
in geophysics, and other fields. Multiple different users with different
impacts will help to define requirements and appropriate parameters for
implementing a high performance wireless networking environment whose
performance extends beyond raw speed to include predictability and
spacial and temporal availability. The project is heavily leveraged with
the existing network measurement and analysis activity of NLANR, as well
as the seismic measurement and analysis activities at SIO. The immediate
impact of providing services to researchers and telemetry stations in
the field and a delivery mechanism for distance education in
disadvantaged areas (in San Diego County) is clear. Such a network will
accommodate a high volume of data for both communications and telemetry,
thus increasing the scope and area of projects currently limited by
these constraints. The wireless network's primary function as an applied
testbed to address distance access issues over a relatively large rural
area and the assessment of its performance characteristics will result
in long-term advances in the area of Internet technology. The impact of
this Internet Technologies project will be substantial and widespread.
Benefits to the research and education communities\--and ultimately, the
public\--include improved functional capabilities across several
disciplines, facilitated collaborations between institutions, better and
more reliable network access, and a prototype that can be emulated
throughout rural areas in the U.S.

**Title:** Software Security and Integrity via Logic-Based Design

**NSF Award Number:** CCR 9875171

**PI Names:** George Necula

**PI Institution:** University of California Berkeley

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** New type of scientific tool

**Source for this report:** Communication with PI

Developers are often willing to give up the efficiency of C for the
memory safety of Java. As an alternative, Necula designed the CCured
compiler for C that exploits the fact that most C programs are actually
type safe. CCured uses a fast program analysis to figure out the parts
of a C program that can be statically verified to be type safe and then
points out what exact run-time checks must be performed on the remaining
parts of the program to ensure type safe behavior. CCured works on
existing C programs with a typical slowdown due to the run-time checks
of 20-200%, which is comparable to that of Java. CCured uncovered
several new errors in C programs that had been used widely for many
years.

**Title:** Statistical Information

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 98-76640

**PI Names:** Gary J. Marchionini, Carol A. Hert, Ben Shneiderman,
Elizabeth D. Liddy

**PI Institutions:** University of North Carolina Chapel Hill,
University of California at Berkeley, Syracuse University, the
University of Maryland, Textwise, Inc.

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** New types of scientific databases and
tools for using them.

**Source for this Report:** Digital Government Program Report

Government statistical information is essential to the day-to-day lives
of all citizens. The importance of such data is illustrated by the
efforts of multiple federal government agencies to create the National
Statistical Information Infrastructure. Data from agencies such as
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic
Analysis determine costs of everything from apples to zinc, the
locations of new businesses, and the indexes for all government programs
and payments. Web-based technologies offer citizens broader access to
the vast array of statistical data so that they may make better personal
decisions. Examples include baby-boomers planning for retirements,
unemployed or underemployed individuals looking to relocate, school
children exploring careers.

For broader segments of the population to take advantage of government
statistical information, however, the data must both be easy to find and
easy to interpret and use. Sites that provide government statistics
cannot assume users access the data frequently enough to learn arcane
codes and complex search strategies, nor that users have high levels of
statistical literacy. Ease of search in this setting depends on helping
users articulate needs, on distributing these articulations to different
datasets across the Federal government, unifying the results, and
presenting them in forms most useful to user needs. Gary Marchionini and
his colleagues have successfully completed work on graphical
representation, manipulation, browsing, and usability over the Web for
Federal statistical (tabular) data. As the system becomes commercially
available to the users of Federally collected and archived statistical
data, the primary challenge is to ensure it will improve the usefulness
of data in establishing, for example, the Consumer Price Index, the
unemployment rate, and the determination of Federal congressional
districts.

**Title:** EVL Research

**NSF Award Number:** EIA 97-20351; EIA 98-02090; EIA 01-15809

**PI Names:** Thomas A. DeFanti, Ugo A. Buy, Boaz J. Super, Maxine D.
Brown, Milos Zefran, Pat Banerjee, Thomas G. Moher, Robert V. Kenyon,
Andrew E. Johnson, Robert L. Grossman, Barbara DiEugenio, Francis Quek,
Nong Ye, Rhonda Franklin Drayton, Stellan Ohlsson

**PI Institution:** University of Illinois Chicago

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

Networking and connectivity that take full advantage of the Internet and
make science, mathematics, engineering and technology information
available to all citizens

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** Major Research Instrumentation

**Additional Strategic Outcome:** People

**Additional Performance Goal:** Improved mathematics, science, and
technology skills for U.S. students at the K-12 level and for citizens
of all ages, so that they can be competitive in a technological society.

**Source for this Report:** 2001 EIA Committee of Visitors Report; CISE
Research Infrastructure Program Report

![](media/image10.png){width="3.25in" height="2.41875in"}Thomas DeFanti
leads the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of
Illinois Chicago whose projects have included Deep Learning and
Visualization Technologies; CISE Research Infrastructure: CAVERN: The
CAVE Research; MRI: Development of Instrumentation for AGAVE: The Access
Grid Autostereo Virtual Environment. Since the 1970s, the EVL's research
has focused on the developing tools, techniques and hardware to support
real-time, highly interactive visualization. Current efforts continue
through the development of virtual reality (VR) devices, software
libraries/toolkits and applications for collaborative exploration of
data over national and global high-speed networks - called
"tele-immersion." After building first and second-generation VR devices
(the CAVE in 1991 and the ImmersaDesk in 1995) to support tele-immersion
applications, EVL is now conducting research in 'third-generation' VR
devices to construct variable resolution and desktop/office-sized
displays. EVL continues to develop and refine a robust and
VR-device-independent software library, as well as the software tools
for building tele-immersion applications. This software infrastructure
supports collaboration in design, training, scientific visualization,
and computational steering in VR. Through advanced networking
techniques, researchers can access distributed computing, storage and
display resources more efficiently than ever. Some of the outcomes of
this project thus far include:

-   CAVERNsoft G2 \-- a system for the development of highly reusable
    tele-immersion service,

-   Data Space Transfer Protocol \-- a data-mining tool that enables the
    correlation of data from disparate sources located on the network,

-   LIMBO \-- an application framework for building tele-immersion
    applications, and

-   QoS Internet Monitoring Tool (QoSIMoto) \-- a Cave-based Netlogger
    visualization tool for monitoring and visualizing network flows in
    applications that use network QoS.

EVL is extensively involved in education using the toolsets they have
developed. One example is NICE, a project that applies virtual reality
to creating a family of educational environments for young users. Their
approach is based on constructionism, where real and synthetic users,
motivated by an underlying narrative, build persisting virtual worlds
through collaboration. This approach is grounded on established
paradigms in contemporary learning and integrates ideas from such
diverse fields as virtual reality, human-computer interaction, CSCW,
storytelling, and artificial intelligence.

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 9907257

**PI Names:** Robert Reynolds

**PI Institution:** Wayne State

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** New types of scientific databases and
tools for using them

**Source for this Report:** Project report; publications available e.g.
IEEE Trans. Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

Researchers have digitized over 200 hand drawn maps of the Oaxaca Valley
of Mexico (where one of the first archaic urban centers in the world
emerged in Monte Alban) describing archaic regional sites, road
networks, monuments, temples, residences, and other features. These are
available to the scientific community on CD-ROM. Based on multi-agent
simulation models, researchers have found that warfare is an important
variable in determining settlement location at certain areas in the
valley, and different systems of intensive agriculture were identified,
each with a different history. Early in the evolutionary sequence
finding land suitable to one of the known methods of agriculture was
critical. Later, inter-village conflict became so great that finding
defensible land locations was more important than agriculture. To
digitize the maps, researchers developed new evolution-based machine
learning tools based on \"Cultural Algorithms\" (a traditional decision
tree algorithm is embedded within a hybrid evolutionary learning
framework.)

**Title:** Agent-Based Models of Social Interaction and the Emergence of
Multi-Agent Institutions

**NSF Award Number:** IIS 9820872

**PI Names:** Joshua Epstein, Robert Axtell

**PI Institution:** Brookings Institution

**Relevant Indicator:** Shared-use platforms, facilities, instruments,
and databases that enable discovery and enhance the productivity and
effectiveness of the science and engineering workforce.

**Relevant Area of Emphasis:** New types of scientific databases and
tools for using them

**Source for this Report:** Science, Sept. 7, 2001.

In the September 7, 2001 issue of ***Science***, co-PI Axtell published
a paper entitled "Zipf Distribution of U.S. Firm Sizes." He developed a
multi-agent model that predicted a power law in firm sizes all the way
down to the smallest firms having 1 or 2 employees. Many economists
argued against this finding, however, as little is known about small
firms. So, Axtell made a request of the Census Bureau to provide a
custom tabulation of the tax data they husband on firms. (Due to
anonymity requirements no one outside Census has access to the raw
data.) The ***Science*** paper summarizes the results, which conclude
that indeed the power law holds all the way down to the smallest firm
sizes, confirming the prediction made by the agent model. *The New York
Times*, the *Wall Street Journal*, the *Washington Post* and radio news
programs have requested interview, which will provide an opportunity to
promote these ideas well beyond scientific circles.

### Title: Network Middleware Program (NMI)

NSF Award Number: see below

Relevant Indicator: Networking and connectivity that take full advantage
of the Internet ...

One of three new programs in FY01 in infrastructure is the network
middleware program (NMI). The purpose of the NMI Program is to design,
develop, deploy and support a reusable, expandable set of middleware
functions and services that benefit many applications in a networked
environment, and will facilitate scientific productivity; increase
research collaboration through shared data, computing, code, facilities
and applications; encourage participation of industry partners,
government labs and agencies for more extensive development and wider
adoption and deployment; establish a level of persistence and
availability so that other applications developers and disciplines can
take advantage of the middleware; encourage and support developing
standards and open source approaches; and enable scaling and
sustainability to support the larger research community.

The NMI program consists of two separate, but linked components. The
first is a set of three Cooperative Agreements to develop and deploy
middleware. The second consists of nine individual awards to prototype
and experiment with middleware solutions in a testbed environment, or
address longer-term fundamental research issues in middleware.

The program has just completed its first proposal review and award cycle
with the following results. (ANI).

*Three Cooperative Agreements:*

**Title:** Designing and Building a national middleware infrastructure:
Towards a National GRIDS Center.

**NSF Award Number:** ANI-0123973

**PI Name and Institution:** Carl Kesselman, Information Sciences
Institute, University of Southern California; co-PIs: Sandal Butler,
NCSA; Ian Foster, University of Chicago; Philip Papadopoulos, University
of California, San Diego

Title: Deploying and Supporting a national middleware infrastructure:
Towards a National GRIDS Center.

NSF Award Number: ANI-0123961

PI Name and Institution: Randal Butler (PI), National Center for
Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois -- Urbana-Champaign;
Co-PIs include Ian Foster, University of Chicago; Carl Kesselman,
Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California; Miron
Livny, University of Wisconsin -- Madison; Daniel Reed, University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Title: Supporting Research and Collaboration through Integrated
Middleware

NSF Award Number: ANI-0123937

PI Name and Institution: Ken Klingenstein (PI), University Corporation
for Advanced Internet Development. Co-PIs include Jerry Draayer, SURA;
Renee Frost, Internet2; Mark Luker, EDUCAUSE, and Doug Van Houweling,
UCAID.

*Nine Individual Middleware Research Awards*

Title: Adaptive Middleware Services for Situation-Aware Communication in
Ubiquitous Computing Environments

NSF Award Number: ANI-0123980

PI Name and Institution: Stephen Yau, Arizona State University

The project will take an integrated hardware and software approach to
develop essential services to support a wide variety of distributed
applications in heterogeneous environments. The services include
investigation of: situation-aware inter-object communications, group
management service to establish device communities, feasibility of using
cellular automata computational model to design a scalable dissemination
service, and a service that will use context-sensitivity to perform
trade-offs between transparent and QoS assisted adaptations. The
proposal will develop an open-source, open-schematic and open standard
middleware Reconfigurable and Context-Sensitive Middleware on top of
Bluetooth standards.

Title: Collaboration Bus for Environment-Adaptive Groupware

NSF Award Number: ANI-0123910

PI Name and Institution: Ivan Marsic, Rutgers University New Brunswick

The objective of the project is to develop and demonstrate a middleware
framework for performance-optimized ubiquitous collaboration over
heterogeneous networks. It will enable quality-of-service applications
and support selective data distribution. The key component of the
proposed framework is the collaboration bus\--middleware to support
group communication in data-centric groupware.

Title: Collaborative Research: Middleware Support for Multicast Data
Dissemination

NSF Award Number: ANI-0123705, ANI-0123929

PI Name and Institution: Vincenzo Libertore, Case Western Reserve
University and Panos Chrysanthis, University of Pittsburgh

A collaborative project involving University of Pittsburgh & Case
Western Reserve University, the proposal will explore fundamental
questions and associated middleware development issues to support
broadcast and multicast data dissemination. When many people try to
access the same information (for example, news sites during the
Election), servers are often overwhelmed, resulting in long delays. If
an effective multicast capability existed across the Internet, a single
server could serve all the requests, saving both computer power as well
as reducing the amount of overall Internet traffic.

Title: Developing Performance Monitoring and Analysis Middleware based
on the Network Weather Service

NSF Award Number: ANI- 0123911

PI Name and Institution: Richard Wolski, University of Southern
California

The NWS operates a distributed set of performance sensors, applies a set
of fast statistical forecasting techniques in near real-time, and
generates forecast reports for the resources being monitored. This
project will develop a scalable performance monitoring and dynamic
prediction infrastructure based on The Network Weather Service (NWS).
The implementation is portable among all the Grid middleware
infrastructures.

**Title:** A Middleware Testbed for Supporting Flexible Consistency and
Mobility

**NSF Award Number:** ANI- 0123985

**PI Name and Institution:** Ambuj Singh, University of California --
Santa Barbara

The project will investigate the long-term issues of mobility and
efficiency in the design of scalable middleware for distributed systems,
including the implementation of a distributed middleware for mobile
environments. The results of these investigations will be development of
an experimental prototype that uses the researched algorithms and
protocols. To experiment with the prototype, a number of applications
will be implemented in a campus environment. The goal of the research is
to help guide long-term development of middleware at large scale.

**Title:** Mobility of Legacy Code

**NSF Award Number:** ANI- 0123930

**PI Name and Institution:** Xian-He Sun, Illinois Institute of
Technology

The project will develop the High Performance Computing Mobility (HPCM)
middleware, which will increase the mobility of legacy codes written in
C, Fortran or C++. HPCM consists of different components including
middleware interface, pre-compiler system, and run-time libraries. HPCM
can also be used as a low-level layer under Java to support mobility of
local native codes, and can support complex data structures,
heterogeneous network environments, and scalable parallel computing.
HPCM is designed to increase the mobility while maintaining the high
performance of legacy codes.

Title: A Secure and Scalable Bandwidth Management Platform for Open
Market-based Dynamic and Distributed Provisioning Diff Serv
Interconnection

NSF Award Number: ANI- 0123939

PI Name and Institution: Junseok Hwang, Syracuse University

The goal of the project is to design, evaluate, develop and test new
dynamic Quality of Service and bandwidth management mechanisms and
systems that allow secure and scalable dynamic open provisioning for the
interconnection of Differentiated services. The proposal will develop a
Bandwidth Management Point to manage scalable and secure control, and
performs the functions of service assignment, admission control, traffic
conditioning, and class routing.

Title: A Semantic Caching Service for Wireless Centric Environments

NSF Award Number: ANI- 0123950

PI Name and Institution: Niki Pissinou, Florida International University

The rapid development of wireless communications technologies and their
impact on everyday life has greatly increased over the last couple of
years. But, the traditional client/server architecture, where the client
relies completely on the server for information, is not useful in the
wireless environment, as the server is often not reachable because it is
not connected. This project focuses on developing wireless
communications technologies and plans to design, develop, and implement
a "client/proxy/server system" where a client-side proxy assumes the
role of a local server during the disconnections.

Title: TerraDir: Scalable, Configurable Distributed Directories for the
Internet

NSF Award Number: ANI- 0123765

PI Name and Institution: Samrat Bhattacharjee, University of Maryland
College Park

The project describes TerraDir; a set of protocols for implementing
customizable, distributed, peer-to-peer directories over which wide-area
resource discovery applications can be implemented. The architecture
addresses scalability and flexibility. Each TerraDir Directory is a
private namespace, and multiple TerraDirs can be active at the same time
to provide other virtual directors. Since the TerraDir is designed to be
implemented over the existing Internet, the protocols address end-to-end
requirements and do not require any special network support.