# Presentation: 506273

##  Committee of Visitors Report 

-  Committee of Visitors Report
- Division of Mathematical Sciences
- National Science Foundation
- Presentation to the MPS Advisory Committee
- Margaret H. Wright, COV Chair
- Computer Science Department
- Courant Institute
- New York University

##   Format: an overview of the report

- The main sound bite:
- DMS is doing a great job.

##  A review of the COV process

- Careful selection of a knowledgeable, balanced, and diverse committee                  (34 members)
- Advance preparation of data about DMS (keeping in mind the prescribed COV template)
- Warning the COV members about all-working lunches, a working dinner, and one late night

## Statutory COV tasks:

- Review of DMS processes
- Report on investments, balance, priorities, and future directions
- Comment on DMS’s response to previous (2004) COV
- Plus six “additional questions” posed to COV by MPS and DMS

- Three COV subcommittees
- ~700 proposals examined by COV
- (7727 actions within DMS during the period under review)
- Overall COV conclusion: DMS’s process is fair, effective, and well managed.

- The COV likes the “PI-proxy” strategy for improving feedback to PIs
- Continuing concern about “broader impacts” criterion
- Burden on program officers of identifying “innovative high risk” proposals
- The COV likes panel review, supplemented by mail review as appropriate

## A major overall concern:

- Too much unfunded excellence!
- Suggestion: if the DMS budget increases, it would be desirable to increase the number of awards.
- Note: The number-size tradeoff, the subject of Additional Question 3, is a “hot button” issue in the mathematical sciences community.

- Pipeline issues: a perennial concern
- (Relatively) low success rates for new investigators
- (Relatively) low success rates for women and underrepresented minorities
- Decreasing absolute support for PhD students
-    The COV knows that DMS cares and is taking action, but it’s our duty to mention these important issues.

- The DMS Institute Portfolio:
- The COV likes the institutes and the DMS strategy of treating their activities as a portfolio.
- 2. Because of changes during the past four years, the institute portfolio should be analyzed with respect to several questions, and the analysis made available to the community.

## Communication with the community

- Measuring the impact of NSF support, especially REU-funded undergraduates and PhD students

- Additional question 5: Is DMS involved with an appropriate number of collaborative opportunities (inside and outside NSF)?
- Answer: YES

- Additional question 6: Portfolio balance, and the effect of the Mathematical Sciences Priority Area (MSPA)?
- Answer: Overall, the MSPA has had a very positive effect on the DMS portfolio.

##    The most enjoyable part of the COV was having the opportunity to select outstanding results of NSF investments.

-    See Part B of the COV template for many examples.

##   A selection:

-   “People”:
-    VIGRE program at the University of Chicago (involvement with high school students; undergraduates participate in teaching)

- Okounkov (Princeton), winner of 2006 Fields Medal, work bridging probability, representation theory, and algebraic geometry.
- Strogatz (Cornell) and Ott (Maryland), an explanation of why the Millennium Bridge in London wobbled when opened to pedestrians.

## “Tools” (mainly software): 

- SLEDGE++ (Brown), widely used finite-element discretization package
- SAGE, open-source software supporting teaching in algebra, geometry, number theory, and cryptography

## To repeat the highest-level point: DMS is doing an excellent job.Questions?