# CISE Update:  Adjusting to the Increase in Proposals

**Michael Pazzani, Kamal Abdali, Greg Andrews, and Sangtae Kim\
Division Directors, NSF/CISE**

The number of proposals submitted to the CISE directorate at NSF has
increased substantially over the past five years. A companion article,
CISE 1994-2004: A Decade in Review, discusses the statistics in more
detail. Here we discuss how CISE is adapting to the increase in
proposals while pursuing its mission.

The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering has
three goals:

-   To enable the U.S. to uphold a position of world leadership in
    computing, communications, and information science and engineering

-   To promote understanding of the principles and uses of advanced
    computing, communications and information systems in service to
    society

-   To contribute to universal, transparent and affordable participation
    in an information-based society.

To achieve its goals, CISE supports research in all areas of computer
and information science and engineering, helps develop and maintain
cutting-edge national computing and information infrastructure for
research and education, and contributes to the education and training of
the next generation of computer scientists.

A few general principles guide our policy decisions:

-   Very low acceptance rates are harmful to the computing research and
    education community and should be avoided. We realize that the
    community as a whole puts a great deal of effort into writing
    proposals and we are grateful to those who volunteer to serve on
    review panels.

-   CISE will continue to fund a broad and diverse group of principal
    investigators to fulfill its research and educational mission.

-   CISE strives to fund the most innovative projects with the potential
    for the greatest impact, and to seek peer input on both the
    intellectual merit and broader impacts of projects proposed.

-   Collaborative, multidisciplinary research is encouraged. However,
    CISE-funded research should lead to advances in computer and
    information science and engineering.

-   CISE will continue to emphasize certain areas of critical
    importance, such as computer and network security, but will also
    continue to ensure that funding for a broad range of core computer
    science research is available. This will ensure that we avoid
    creating funding gaps that are harmful to the long-term success of
    computer science.

There are several reasons for the increase in proposals to CISE. First,
there has been an increase in computer science faculty nationally.
Second, some other funding agencies and some private companies have
reduced support for computer science research at universities. Third,
the field of computer science has expanded to take on a broader mission,
e.g., including new areas such as bioinformatics.

We will illustrate how CISE is adjusting to the increase in proposals in
the Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) division. IIS received
1,220 proposals in FY2002, 2,029 in FY2003, and 2,636 in FY2004. In
FY2003, NSF received a substantial budget increase and IIS funded more
awards than in any prior year. However, the budget increase did not keep
up with the number of proposals. As a consequence, IIS declined more
proposals and a higher percentage of proposals in FY2003 than in prior
years. The growth in proposals in 2004 was not accompanied by a
substantial budget increase. Without some adjustments to our plans,
acceptance rates in 2004 would be below 10% in many competitions. As a
consequence, only a few IIS solicitations will have their usual winter
deadlines; the deadlines for the other solicitations will be delayed
from the winter to the spring of 2005. Specifically, Collaborative
Research in Computational Neuroscience, Universal Access and Science and
Engineering Information Integration and Informatics (SEIII) will
continue with their December 2004 deadlines as planned. All other IIS
solicitations will have their deadlines delayed until mid April 2005.
FY2005 funds will be used to fund some additional proposals that were
submitted in FY2004 to the competitions with unacceptably low acceptance
rates, as well as 2005 CAREER awards and awards in the solicitations
with December deadlines. Proposals submitted in April 2005 will be
funded with FY2006 funds. We anticipate that the deadlines for all IIS
programs will be the same in 2006 as in 2005, e.g., proposals submitted
in April 2006 will be funded in October 2006 with FY2007 funds.

The advantage to this adaptation is that some high quality proposals
submitted to IIS in FY2004 that would not otherwise have been funded
will indeed be funded. If these proposals were not funded, it is likely
that updated versions of these proposals would be submitted again, and
we would place an additional burden on the CISE community by asking them
to review them again. Another advantage to this adaptation is that funds
provided to NSF will be available to the IIS research community earlier
in the fiscal year. While in most years the community receives the
majority of NSF funding in the last quarter of the fiscal year, in 2005
most funds will be distributed in the first quarter of the fiscal year,
allowing students to be hired earlier, etc. Of course, the disadvantage
to this adaptation is that PIs who were intending to write proposals for
the winter deadline in hopes of receiving funding in the late summer
will not be able to receive funding until the early fall. The effects of
this delay can be mitigated by requesting no cost extensions or
supplements to existing grants, by applying to grant solicitations such
as SEIII with winter deadlines, and by NSF notifying PIs of award
decisions as early as possible so PIs may elect to charge some costs to
grants up to 90 days before the grant is received.

CISE is exploring similar strategies in the Computing and Communication
Foundations division. The Theoretical Foundations cluster and the
Emerging Models and Technologies for Computing cluster will have
proposal deadlines in January and February 2005, respectively, and
awards will be made during the summer of 2005. The deadline for the
Computing Processes and Artifacts cluster will be delayed until May
2005, with awards made in the late fall of that year. The other CISE
divisions, CNS and SCI, will have the same or earlier deadlines for
their programs in 2005.

Two other adaptations are also worth noting. First, CISE will limit the
number of proposals that one may submit to some competitions and will
enforce regulations that prohibit sending virtually identical proposals
simultaneously to more than one competition. The goal here is to reduce
the number of proposals while sending the message that it is better to
invest one's time in one high-quality, innovative proposal than to split
one's attention over many proposals of perhaps lesser quality. Second,
CISE is coordinating with a variety of agencies, including the
Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Library of Congress and the
National Institutes of Health to fund proposals of mutual interest.
Additional funds provided by these agencies help NSF and these agencies
achieve the common goal of supporting innovative research.

Finally, computing faculty are encouraged to consider funding
opportunities not only in CISE, but also in NSF priority areas (i.e.
Nanoscale Science and Engineering, Biocomplexity in the Environment,
Mathematical Sciences, and Human and Social Dynamics), centers (e.g.
Science and Technology Centers, Science of Learning Centers and
Engineering Research Centers), cross directorate programs (e.g., Major
Research Instrumentation and Integrative Graduate Education and Research
Traineeship) and other programs in NSF where information technology
advances might play an enabling role.

While CISE wishes that it could return to the days of 35% acceptance
rates, by creatively adapting to the changing environment according to
the principles enumerated in this article, we believe that CISE can
fulfill its mission by investing in the people, tools and ideas that
enable the U.S. to uphold a position of world leadership in computing,
communications, and information science and engineering.