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APPLICATIONS FOR INFORMATION 

TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013 

Serial No. 113–4 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

ANDY HARRIS, Maryland 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

CHRIS STEWART, Utah 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

MARK TAKANO, California 

VACANCY 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH

HON. LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana, Chair 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Thursday, February 14, 2013 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Larry Bucshon, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Research, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 

Representatives .................................................................................................... 5 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 5 

Statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................................ 7 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 8 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Kelly Gaither, Director, Visualization Lab, Texas Advanced Computing 

Center, University of Texas, Austin 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 10 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 13 

Dr. Kathryn McKinley, Principal Researcher, Microsoft 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 20 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 22 

Dr. Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and 

Engineering, University of Washington 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 34 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 36 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 47 

(1) 

APPLICATIONS FOR INFORMATION 

TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2013 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:01 p.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Larry Bucshon 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
2 

lAMAR S. SMITH. Texas CHAIRMAN 

(l::onyrrss of thE tinitrd oStatrs 

'!Ronse of 'Reprcsmtatiucs COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

2321 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING 

WASHINGTON, DC 20515-6301 

(202) 225-6371 www . .science.holl5e.gov 

Subcommittee on Research Hearing 

Applications jor Information Technology Research & Development 

Thursday, February 14, 2013 

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. 

2318 RaybUrn House Office Building 

Witnesses 

EDOIE BERNICE JOHNSON. Tel(i!I.!l 

RANKING MEMBER 

Dr. Kelly Gaither, Director, Visualization Lab, Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of 

Texas, Austin 

Dr.Kathryn McKinley, Principal Researcher, Microsoft 

Dr. Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, University of 

Washington 
3 

Purpose 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HEARING CHARTER 

Applications for Information Technology Research & Development 

Thursday, February 14,2013 

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. 

2318 Rayburn House Office Building 

On Thursday, February 14,2013, the Subcommittee on Research will hold a hearing to 

show the practical applications and benefits of the Networking and Information Technology 

Research and Development (NITRD) program and its significance to U.S. competitiveness. 

Witnesses 

• Dr. Kelly Gaither, Director, Visualization Lab, Texas Advanced Computing Center, 

University of Texas, Austin 

• Dr.Kathryn McKinley, Principal Researcher, Microsoft 

• Dr. Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, 

University of Washington 

Overview 

The United States has been the world leader in networking and information technology 

(NIT). Federal support for research and development (R&D) in NIT originally stemmed from an 

interest in and the challenge of developing computers capable of addressing complex problems, 

primarily those focused on national security and hi-end applications. Over the past decades, 

however, federal spending for NIT R&D has encompassed a broad array oftechnologies, from 

digital libraries to cloud computing. The eventual commercial applications for such federallyfunded R&D has fundamentally changed the way modern-day Americans work and live. 

Additionally, R&D in NIT provides a greater understanding of how to protect essential 

systems and networks that support fundamental sectors of our economy, from emergency 

communications and power grids to air-traffic control networks and national defense systems. 

NIT R&D works to prevent or minimize disruptions to critical information infrastructure, to 

protect public and private services, to detect and respond to threats while mitigating the severity 

of and assisting in the recovery from those threats, in an effort to support a more stable and 

secure nation. 

Originally authorized in the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, the NITRD 

program is the main R&D investment portfolio of 15 federal member agencies in networking, 

computing, software, cyber security and related information technologies totaling over $3.7 

billion in FY2013 (with the National Science Foundation being the principal contributor with 
4 

over $1.1 billion of that total). Other federal agencies participate in program activities beyond 

the 15 member agencies. The NITRO program supports a number of research areas, including 

big data, cyber physical systems, cyber security and information assurance, health technology, 

high performance computing and large scale networking. 

Federally funded NIT research and industry are tightly linked to innovation. The 

President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recently released the 

following updated "Tire Tracks" diagram in their January 2013 report titled Designing A Digital 

Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and lriformation 

Technology (See: http://www. white house. gov/s ite s/ detGult/file s/m icrosites/ostP/pcastnitrd2013.pdf) 

2 
5 

Chairman BUCSHON. The Subcommittee on Research will come to 

order. Good afternoon. Welcome to today’s hearing entitled ‘‘Applications for Information Technology Research & Development.’’ In 

front of you are packets containing the written testimony, biographies, and truth-in-testimony disclosures for today’s witness 

panel. I recognize myself now for five minutes for an opening statement. First, I want to welcome everyone today. This is my first 

hearing as the Chairman of the Research Subcommittee and I look 

forward to working with the Ranking Member, Mr. Lipinski, on 

this and many other issues in the 113th Congress. 

The topic of this afternoon’s hearing, ‘‘Applications for Information Research & Development,’’ is important to our national security, global competitiveness, and technological innovation. This 

hearing will provide us with examples of practical applications and 

the benefits of federal investment in networking and information 

technology, or NITRD research. 

The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program, or NITRD, was originally authorized in 1991 

in the High Performance and Computing Act. It coordinates the 

networking and information R&D efforts of 15 federal agencies, including DHS, NASA, NIH, EPA, and the Department of Energy. 

The program is the main R&D investment portfolio of member 

agencies in networking, computing, software, cybersecurity, and related informational technologies totaling over $3.7 billion in fiscal 

year 2013. R&D in NIT provides a greater understanding of how 

to protect essential systems and networks that support fundamental sections of our economy, from emergency communications 

and power grids to air traffic control networks and national defense 

systems. 

NITRD works to prevent or minimize disruptions to critical information infrastructure to protect public and private services, to detect and respond to threats while mitigating the severity of and assisting in the recovery from those threats in an effort to support 

a more stable and secure Nation. 

As technology rapidly advances, the need for NIT research and 

development continues to evolve. NITRD works to prevent duplicative and overlapping R&D efforts, thereby enabling more efficient 

use of brain power and resources while maintaining—while remaining good stewards of the taxpayers’ money. 

Today, our witnesses will share their professional perspectives on 

how NITRD applies to the quality of Americans’ everyday lives. I 

would like to now recognize the Ranking Member, the gentleman 

from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski, for an opening statement. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bucshon follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LARRY BUCSHON

First, I want to welcome everyone today. This is my first hearing as Chairman 

of the Research Subcommittee and I look forward to working with the Ranking 

Member, Mr. Lipinski, on this and many other issues in the 113th Congress. 

The topic of this afternoon’s hearing, Applications for Information Research & Development, is important to our national security, global competitiveness and technological innovation. This hearing will provide us with examples of practical applications and the benefits of Federal investment in networking and information technology R&D. 
6 

The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, 

or NITRD, was originally authorized in 1991 in the High Performance and Computing Act. It coordinates the networking and information R&D efforts of 15 Federal 

member agencies, including DHS, NASA, NIH, EPA and the Department of Energy. 

The program is the main R&D investment portfolio of member agencies in networking, computing, software, cyber security and related information technologies 

totaling over $3.7 billion in FY2013. 

R&D in NIT provides a greater understanding of how to protect essential systems 

and networks that support fundamental sectors of our economy, from emergency 

communications and power grids to air-traffic control networks and national defense 

systems. NIT R&D works to prevent or minimize disruptions to critical information 

infrastructure, to protect public and private services, to detect and respond to 

threats while mitigating the severity of and assisting in the recovery from those 

threats, in an effort to support a more stable and secure nation. 

As technology rapidly advances, the need for NIT research and development continues to evolve. NITRD works to prevent duplicative and overlapping R&D efforts, 

thereby enabling more efficient use of brainpower and resources, while remaining 

good stewards of taxpayer’s money. 

Today our witnesses will share their professional perspectives on how NITRD applies to the quality of American’s everyday lives. 
7 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for 

holding this hearing and also congratulate you on being named the 

Chair of this Subcommittee. I have been either Chair or Ranking 

Member of this Subcommittee now for three Congresses. I love this 

Committee and this Subcommittee. I look forward to working with 

you. I had a very good relationship with the Chair last Congress, 

and I think we could work very well together and get some good 

things done in these next two years. I am looking forward to that. 

The House has passed bipartisan legislation reauthorizing the 

NITRD program in the past two Congresses. So I believe we can 

get something done again in this Congress. Hopefully, the third 

time is the charm with the Senate. 

The most problematic issue threatening the NITRD program 

right now are the cuts and uncertainty in top-line R&D budgets. 

While authorizing NITRD wouldn’t solve these problems, it would 

signal the government’s continuing interest in investing in these 

critical research areas in a partnering with industry to help set 

R&D and workforce training priorities that prepare our nation for 

the future. 

The NITRD program evolved from a federal program established 

under the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, as the Chairman said. That Act provided the funding that led to the development of Mosaic in 1993, the World Wide Web browser that made 

the Internet user friendly and led to its explosion in the 1990s. I 

am proud to note that Mosaic was created by a team of programmers at the federally funded National Center for Supercomputing 

Applications at the University of Illinois. Netscape founder Marc 

Andreessen, who was a leader of the Illinois team before launching 

his company, was quoted as saying ‘‘if it had been left to private 

industry, it wouldn’t have happened, at least not until years later.’’ 

Without question, the 1991 Act sets the stage for a coordinated 

federal R&D investment strategy that has underpinned U.S. leadership in networking and information technology over the past 2 

decades. In Illinois, that leadership in R&D is helping to complete 

work on a Blue Waters project, a petascale supercomputer that will 

maintain the University of Illinois’ position at the forefront of high 

performance computing research. 

But as with many other areas of R&D, we can no longer take for 

granted U.S. leadership in NIT. As noted by Dr. McKinley and his 

testimony, China, Japan—let me go back and—I think I may have 

said Mr.—make sure I said Dr. McKinley in her testimony—China, 

Japan, Germany, and several other countries are increasing their 

investments in NIT R&D and in their capacity to convert R&D into 

new commercial technologies. 

As we heard from witnesses at a hearing on U.S. competitiveness 

last week, R&D no longer occurs in simple linear progression from 

basic research to commercial product. There may be a clear role for 

the government in basic research, including use-inspired basic research; and a clear role for industry in the last 1 to three years of 

product development work. But there are multiple gaps between 

those efforts. And our economy benefits exponentially when our 

R&D portfolio includes partnerships that facilitate collaboration 

among universities, national labs, and industry. This applies as 

much to NIT as to any other area of R&D. In fact, historically, 
8 

some of the most economically important public-private partnerships have been in the NIT sector. 

We must also join forces in addressing NIT education and workforce challenges. While the Federal Government has a role here, I 

would like to hear our witnesses’ input on that. This is also a problem that demands the attention of state and local government, as 

well as the private sector. As I have noted several times in the 

past, I am concerned about trends in outsourcing of even high 

skills jobs. At the same time however, we hear anecdotally of thousands of U.S. NIT jobs that go unfulfilled due to a lack of qualified 

applicants. There is no doubt we need to do a better job overall in 

preparing our students for jobs of today and in the future, and in 

particular, we need to graduate more computer science majors. 

I hope the Chairman will allow me to go a little over time after 

I praised him at the beginning. Now, I don’t have too much longer. 

Finally, because PCAST discusses this topic in their latest review 

of NITRD, I want to bring up educational technology and the possible topic of discussion for this hearing. By that I mean R&D on 

technology to improve learning outcomes and increase access to 

high-quality education, including STEM education. One of the hottest topics today in higher education is Massively Open Online 

Courses, or MOOCs. Many of the MOOC courses are in computer 

science and engineering. I wonder how this is changing the NIT 

education landscape, as well as what the implications and opportunities are for education research. This is an also expansive enough 

topic on its own and maybe the Subcommittee would consider holding a separate hearing to look more carefully at these issues. 

With that, I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today, 

in particular Dr. Lazowska, who is becoming an old hand at this 

by now. I look forward to all your testimony and yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RANKING MINORITY MEMBER DANIEL LIPINSKI

Thank you Chairman Bucshon for holding this hearing. And congratulations on 

being selected to Chair this Subcommittee. 

The House has passed bipartisan legislation reauthorizing the NITRD program in 

the past two Congresses, so I believe that we can get something done again this 

Congress. Hopefully the third time is the charm for the Senate. 

The most problematic issues threatening the NITRD program right now are the 

cuts and uncertainty in top-line R&D budgets. While reauthorizing NITRD wouldn’t 

solve these problems, it would signal the government’s continuing interest in investing in these critical research areas, and in partnering with industry to help set R&D 

and workforce training priorities that prepare our nation for the future. 

The NITRD program evolved from a federal program established under the High 

Performance Computing Act of 1991. That Act provided the funding that led to the 

development of Mosaic in 1993, the World Wide Web browser that made the Internet user-friendly and led to its explosion in the 1990s. I am proud to note that Mosaic was created by a team of programmers at the federally funded National Center 

for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Netscape founder 

Marc Andreeson, who was a leader of the Illinois team before launching his company, was quoted as saying, ‘‘If it had been left to private industry, it wouldn’t have 

happened, at least, not until years later.’’ Without question the 1991 Act set the 

stage for a coordinated federal R&D investment strategy that has underpinned U.S. 

leadership in networking and information technology over the past two decades. In 

Illinois, that leadership in R&D is helping to complete work on the Blue Waters 

project, a petascale supercomputer that will maintain the University of Illinois’s position at the forefront of high performance computing research. 
9 

1Dr. McKinley cites 3,400 unfilled research and engineering positions at Microsoft alone. 

But as with many other areas of R&D, we can no longer take for granted U.S. 

leadership in NIT. As noted by Dr. McKinley in her testimony, China, Japan, Germany, and several other countries are increasing their investments in NIT R&D, 

and in their capacity to convert R&D into new commercial technologies. As we 

heard from witnesses at a hearing on US Competitiveness last week, R&D no longer 

occurs in a simple linear progression from basic research to commercial product. 

There may be a clear role for the government in basic research, including use-inspired basic research, and a clear role for industry in the last 1-3 years of product 

development work. But there are multiple gaps between those efforts, and our economy benefits exponentially when our R&D portfolio includes partnerships that facilitate collaboration among universities, national labs, and industry. This applies as 

much to NIT as to any other area of R&D. In fact, historically, some of the most 

economically important public-private partnerships have been in the NIT sector. 

We must also join forces in addressing NIT education and workforce challenges. 

While the federal government has a role here—and I’d like to hear our witnesses’ 

input on that—this is a problem that also demands the attention of state and local 

government as well as the private sector. As I have noted several times in the past, 

I am concerned about trends in outsourcing of even high-skills jobs. At the same 

time, however, we hear anecdotally of thousands of U.S. NIT jobs that go unfilled 

due to a lack of qualified applicants. 1 There is no doubt we need to do a better job 

overall in preparing our students for jobs of today and the future, and in particular 

we need to graduate more computer science majors. 

Finally, because PCAST discusses this topic in their latest review of NITRD, I 

want to bring up educational technology as a possible topic of discussion for this 

hearing. By that I mean R&D on technologies to improve learning outcomes and increase access to high-quality education, including STEM education. One of the hottest topics today in higher education is Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. 

Many of the MOOC courses are in computer science and engineering. I wonder how 

this is changing the NIT education landscape, as well as what the implications and 

opportunities are for education research. But this is also an expansive enough topic 

on its own that maybe Chairman Bucshon will consider holding a separate hearing 

to look more carefully at these issues. 

With that, I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here today, and in particular Dr. Lazowska who is becoming an old hand at this by now. I look forward 

to all of your testimony. 
10 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. 

If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening 

statements, your statements will be added to the record at this 

point. 

At this time, I would like to introduce our witnesses. Our first 

witness is Dr. Kelly Gaither. She is the Director of Visualization 

and a Senior Research Scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing 

Center. Additionally, she serves as the area Co-Director for Visualization and the National Science Foundation-funded XSEDE 

project. Dr. Gaither received her doctorate degree in Computational 

Engineering from Mississippi State University. Welcome. 

Our next witness is Dr. Kathryn McKinley, who is a Principal 

Researcher at Microsoft and an Endowed Professor of Computer 

Science at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. McKinley has a 

broad area of research interests, and her research group has produced numerous tools, algorithms, and methodologies are used in 

a variety of industrial settings. Dr. McKinley earned her B.A., 

M.S., and Ph.D. from Rice University. Welcome. 

Our final witness today is Dr. Ed Lazowska. Mr. Lazowska holds 

the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He also serves as the 

Founding Director of the University of Washington eScience Institute and the Chair of the Computing Community Consortium. Dr. 

Lazowska has received national recognition for his research and 

leadership activities. Dr. Lazowska earned his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Welcome. 

As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited to 

five minutes each after which Members of the Committee will have 

five minutes each to ask questions. I now recognize Dr. Gaither to 

present her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. KELLY GAITHER, 

DIRECTOR, VISUALIZATION LAB, 

TEXAS ADVANCED COMPUTING CENTER, 

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN 

Dr. GAITHER. Thank you, Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member 

Lipinski, and Members of the Subcommittee for this opportunity. 

I am here as the Director of Visualization and a Senior Research 

Scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. 

At TACC, our mission is to enable discoveries that advance 

science and society through the application of advanced computing 

technologies. We support thousands of researchers and partner 

with companies like Dell, Intel, Shell, Chevron, and BP to push the 

state of the art. Science can only advance if we continue to push 

the envelope. 

Computational science or the application of computer simulations 

to scientific applications is the third pillar of 21st century science. 

Significant progress has been made in the last two decades because 

of federal investments in interdisciplinary teamwork. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I have been funded to work on projects like 

the visualization and data analysis of massive scale turbulent flow 

simulations—important because of its applications in aircraft and 

automobile design, energy, storm damage, and galaxy formation. 
11 

I am also the principal investigator for the largest visualization 

cluster in the world. With this project, we have enabled more than 

619 researchers conducting large-scale computational science, and 

we have trained hundreds of people at institutions across the Nation. I am also the director of a visualization laboratory, home to 

one of the largest tile displays in the world. We have had more 

than 18,000 people come through those doors, many of which are 

K–12 students. 

We are a country of innovators and this innovation must be fostered with significant investment and patience. The NITRD program gives us that funding for resources at a scale prohibited for 

individual institutions. With respect to funding opportunities in 

NITRD, let me first commend the efforts to create national programs with increasing focus on data. However, this should not be 

done to the exclusion of funding research and development and 

modeling, simulation, and visualization. It is imperative that we 

strive to build a balanced portfolio of funding opportunities. 

We can see the evidence of a shift in the Nation’s high-end computing strategy. The decrease in funding is not limited to the resources but extends to many of the underlying scientific applications and crucial software tools as well. This dip in funding is at 

odds with the increased need for high-end computing technologies 

and open science research. 

How can we ensure a persistent pipeline to meet the Nation’s IT 

needs? I graduated from high school in one of the poorest states in 

the Nation at a time when young women were not encouraged to 

go to college. I have been supported by federally-funded computational research dollars since I was 24 years old. I am the by-product of federal funding, and persistent funding at that. Without this 

funding, I would not have had the opportunities to participate in 

many of the interdisciplinary research projects that focus on solving some of society’s most challenging issues. We need opportunities to educate students in interdisciplinary research and provide 

invaluable hands-on experience working with teams of researchers. 

We are lacking a thriving focus on research and development that 

is not driven by quarterly profit bottom line. 

In closing, I would like to reiterate my appreciation for the invitation to speak to you today about the impact that the NITRD program has had in my research. To summarize, first, we must make 

significant continued investments in the NITRD program. As a researcher, I know that investments in research will keep us at the 

forefront of innovation. We must not shortchange our commitment 

and vision to continue the successes of those that have come before 

us. 

Second, we must maintain a balanced portfolio of NITRD funding 

opportunities for researchers in computational science. We must 

find a way to continue to increase investment not to the exclusion 

of existing funding streams. It is a combination of efforts that is 

most likely to be fruitful. 

And last, we must provide exciting opportunities to entice our 

students to stay in computational science. We must deal head-on 

with the brain drain that our universities are experiencing in undergraduate and postgraduate education. While there is no magic 

bullet that will solve this problem, it seems clear that a new ap-
12 

proach is warranted. This new approach requires an investment in 

both curriculum development and student research to provide exciting opportunities for future generations of scientists. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gaither follows:] 
13 

Written Testimony of 

Dr. Kelly Gaither 

Director of Visualization/Senior Research Scientist 

Texas Advanced Computing Center 

The University of Texas at Austin 

Before the 

House Science, Space and Technology Committee 

Subcommittee on Research 

Hearing on 

"Applications for Information Technology Research & Development" 

February 14, 2013 

Thank you, Chainnan Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski and members of the 

Subcommittee for the opportunity to testify before you today. In my capacity as Director 

of Visualization and Senior Research Scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing Center 

at The University of Texas at Austin, I have direct experience on the significant impact 

federal dollars have had on infonnation technology research and development. I am 

speaking to you today as a researcher having worked at two interdisciplinary researeh 

centers: presently at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and, before that, at 

Mississippi State's National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center supporting 

high-fidelity physics simulations over complex geometries. 

We often hear that we live in the information age. To be more specific, we live in the data 

age. We are inundated with data in all aspects of our life, both personal and professional. 

Data is merely a delivery vehicle for what we are truly interested in - knowledge and 

information. The process by which we uncovcr this information is what drivcs my 

research. In my laboratory, we are dedicated to developing new methods for finding 

infonnation in what is often an enonnous amount of data. The tremendous processing 

capacity present in our visual cortex makes visualization, or the process by which we 

transform data to visual imagery, a powerful means for ferreting out information. This 

transformation requircs an understanding of algorithm design, computational gcometry, 

perception, computational science, analytics and cognitivc processes. 

Over the past twenty ycars, I havc been fortunate to research and develop methods for 

visualizing data of fluid flow ovcr aircraft, emerging stonn systems, biological proccsses 

and K-12 decision making to namc a few. This work is always done in an 

interdisciplinary format bringing together researchers from a variety of backgrounds with 

the expectation that meshing our collective expertise will provide us greater opportunities 

for advancing the state of the art in science. 
14 

The Texas Advanced Computing Center 

At the Texas Advanced Computing Center, our mission is to enable discoveries that 

advance science and society through the application of advanced computing technologies. 

To fulfill this mission, we identify, evaluate, deploy, and support powerful computing, 

visualization, and storage systems and software. Helping researchers and educators use 

these technologies effectively, and conducting research and development to make these 

technologies more powerful, more reliable, and easier to use is at the forefront of what 

we do. Thousands of researchers each year use the computing resources available at 

TACC to forecast weather and environmental disasters such as the BP oil spill, produce 

whole-Earth simulations of plate tectonics, and perform other research relevant to the 

public at large. The center is supported by the National Science Foundation, The 

University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas System, and grants from other 

federal agencies. As a leading resource provider in the NSF XSEDE project, T ACC is 

onc of eleven centers across the country providing leadership-class computing resources 

to the national research community. At T ACC, we support thousands of projects for 

thousands of researchers across all aspects of science and engineering. We partner with 

companies like Shell, Chevron, and BP to push the state of the art, providing beneficial 

advancements to their science and engineering process as well. Over the past eleven 

years, TACC has trained a multitude of professional staff and students who now work at 

companies like Google, Intel, and Microsoft. Additionally, TACC outreach programs 

have trained researchers and provided computational resources to over a hundred 

universities. 

Science Only Advances if We Continue to Push the Envelope 

As stated in the 2005 report to the president, "Computational Science: Ensuring 

America's Competitiveness," computational science has become the third pillar of 21 st 

century science. This third pillar complements theory and physical experimentation, 

allowing scientists to explore phenomenon that are too big, small, fast, or dangerous to 

investigate in the laboratory. Computational science has made significant progress in the 

last two decades, but has only been able to do so because of federal investments, 

interdisciplinary teamwork, and leveraging the successes of researchers before us. 

As a computational science researcher, focusing on visualization, I have been supported 

by funding under the NITRD vision since I was a graduate student. This funding 

facilitated my education, my professional growth, and by. extension, the students and staff 

that have trained under me over the years. Without this funding, I would have left 

academic research to pursue opportunities that would have allowed me to be selfsufficient. 

One example of the interdisciplinary research that I have been funded to work on is 

visualization and data analysis of massive scale turbulent flow simulations to track and 

understand small-scale features [1]. Turbulence, the most common state of fluid motion 

in nature and engineering, is a Grand Challenge problem for the physical and computer 

sciences and has applications in aircraft and automobile design, energy, storm damage 

1 President's Information Technology Advisory Committee Report to the President, 
15 

and galaxy formation. Effectively simulating the wide range of non-linearly interacting 

three-dimensional fluctuations typical of applications requires the largest supercomputers 

in the world today. Understanding the geometric and dynamic descriptions of intense 

events in these simulations allows scientists to get closer to a more complete 

understanding of turbulent flows and more accurate models for enginecring applications. 

Thc images shown in Figure I show the dramatic increase in data complexity as the size 

and scale grow from 5123 to 10243 to 20483 to 40963

. Our interdisciplinary team of 

researchers worked together to develop new methods for classifYing and tracking these 

minute scale features over time. 

Figure 1: Visualizations showing increasing levels of complexity in the data as the size and scate of the turbulent 

flow increases. 

I am also the principal investigator for the largest hardware-accelerated visualization 

cluster in the world, capablc of producing visualizations of data on an unprecedented 

scale. This Longhorn team is also an interdisciplinary effort bringing together 

researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, the Scientific Computing and 

Imaging Institute (SCI) at the University of Utah, the Purdue Regional Visual Analytics 

Center (RVAC), the Data Analysis Services Group at the National Center for 

Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of California Davis (UC Davis) and the 

Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) 2. As a result of this project, we 

have enabled more than 800 active projects on the system representing 619 individual 

researchers conducting large-scale computational science. This resource has facilitated 

researchers across the nation from fields of science ranging from computational physics 

and chemistry to linguistics and social science. The Longhorn team worked in 

collaboration with Dell Computers to architect a commodity based system that could be 

easily replicated at other universities on a multitude of scales. As a result of this funding, 

we have trained hundreds of people at institutions across the nation with a targeted effort 

to conduct training at Minority Serving Institutions. 

I am also tasked with setting research direction and maintaining a visualization laboratory 

that serves the University of Texas at Austin population. This 2900 square foot laboratory 

is home to one of the largest tiled displays in the world, with a peak count of 328 million 

pixels. In this laboratory, wc research and develop tools and interaction mechanisms for 

2 Gaither, K. (PI), "Enabling Transformational Science and Engineering Through 

Integrated Collaborative Visualization and Data Analysis for the National User 

Community," NSF XD VIS ($7,000,000) August 2009 - July 2012. 
16 

next generation visualization environments that can be replicated at a variety of scales 

across a multitude of institutions. We also designed and constructed a large-format touch 

table that has 32 point touch capability at 5mm resolution. This touch table behaves much 

like an ovcrsized iPad providing a natural mechanism for learning and rapidly testing 

new research concepts. Additionally, the visualization laboratory has had more than 

18,000 people come through the doors, many of which are K-12 students. While we work 

diligently to provide a production visualization laboratory to the UT Austin constituency, 

we also research and develop displays and interaction mechanisms for visualizing next 

generation science. To this end, we recently submitted a proposal to research a new 

paradigm for data exploration through the seamless integration of multiple spatially 

aware visualization systems that form a visualization ecosystem. Recent advances in 

human-centered computing have introduced computing interfaces that enable the user to 

interact with, and manipulate compute devices and data displays in a more intuitive 

manner. Specifically, recent trends in mobile computing, cloud computing, and 

ubiquitous computing have simplified human-computer interactions with everyday 

devices. The trends and advancements in these areas have laid the foundation for a new 

abstraction that will bridge a gap in human-computer interaction. This abstraction, shown 

in Figure 2, will provide a seamless environment in which individuals can navigate data 

unimpeded by the physical constraints and boundaries set by compute devices and 

displays, and will provide a reactive environment that evolves with user defined 

interactions. 

figure 2: This next generation visualization laboratory is an analog of the biological ecosystem that seeks to 

develop an interactive, reflective, and reactive computing environment for \'isualization. 

The funding for these projects and othcrs has enabled me to have a national impact by 

developing leading programs in visualization and training for future computational 

scientists. The investment in computational science in general, and high end computing 

specifically, have provided much needed resources for me and for a large number of 

researchers working on national open science problems. Thcsc resources and 

technologies require a significant investment. Without them, we as researchers would be 

bound by investments at the institutional scale, significantly inhibiting our ability to fully 

exploit intellectual meritorious research at full scale. 

Science can only advance with better, more capable tools - be they software, hardware or 

some blend therein. Building on prior knowledge and capabilities allows us to leverage 

the innovations of researchers that have come before us. Without new scientific 

capabilities, we hamstring research and inhibit our ability to move forward. We are a 
17 

country of innovators and this innovation must be fostered with significant investment 

and patience. Building on the work of others fundamentally depcnds on us having access 

to new capabilitics that prior researchers did not have. The NITRD program gives us 

those resources and funding for rcsources at a scale that individual institutions would not 

be able to afford otherwise. 

Significant Research Directions NITRO Should be Pursuing 

First let me commend the cfforts to crcate national programs with increasing focus on 

data. There are many fields of science that depend on our ability to quickly process vast 

amounts of data. Currently, data growth rates far outstrip our ability to process and 

analyze it. However, increasing the focus on data intensive computing should not be donc 

to the exclusion of funding research and dcvelopment in modeling and simulation. It is 

imperative that wc, as a national IT strategy, strive to build a balanced portfolio of 

funding opportunitics that focus on all aspects of next generation science. 

We can see evidence of a shift in the nation's High End Computing strategy. Thc 

National Science Foundation is now funding one or two high-end resources every other 

year versus the one or two a year they funded in the past. This decrease in HEC funding 

is not limited to the resources themselves, but extends to many of the underlying 

scientific applications and crucial software tools as well. This dip in resource 

provisioning is at odds with the increased need for high end computing technologies in 

open scicnce rescarch. 

Additionally, thcre has always been a lack of persistent funding for visualization. It is 

generally agreed that visualization is a powerful means of synthesizing data, but many 

equate visualization with vision and take it for granted. However, the transformation from 

data to visual imagery is rooted in scientific principles that include concepts in human 

perccption, numerical linear algebra and cognition. Blending these conccpts in a 

reproducible, concise visual context allows us to crcate meaningful information from vast 

amounts of data. While it is generally recognized that visualization is a crucial part of the 

science pipeline today, it will only be more crucial in the big data era. We need students 

and researchers well versed in numerical algorithms, data mining, statistics, and computer 

science, but there is nothing as efficient as a great visualization to communicate science. 

As complexity increases, so does the need for visualizations that act as both a 

communications mechanism and a tcaching tool. Persistent funding is needed for 

visualization - including scientific visualization, information visualization and visual 

analytics. At TACC, we arc committed to researching and developing visualization tools 

and providing visualization resources to both local and national user communitics. At 

present, there is very little funding for this relative to the need in the open science 

community. 

Ensuring a Persistent Pipeline to Meet the Nation's IT Needs 

I graduated from high school in one of the poorest states in the nation at a time when 

young women were not encouraged to pursue higher education, let alone major in 

computer science. Fortunately, I was encouraged by my family to make some strategic 

decisions regarding career choices, and I have had the opportunity to work with a number 
18 

of mentors in all aspects of computational science. I have been paid by federally funded 

computational research dollars since I was roughly 24 years old. I am a by-product of 

long-term federal funding for basic and applied research. Without this funding, I would 

not have had the opportunities to participate in many of the interdisciplinary projects that 

focus on solving some of society's most challenging issues - hurricane prediction, 

imaging the human body at the subcellular level, and designing safer, more fuel efficient 

vehicles to name a few. There is no substitute for immersing students in all aspects of 

computational research throughout their educational process. This immersion, however, 

requires persistent commitments from funding agencies and educators alike. We need 

opportunities to educate students in interdisciplinary research and provide invaluable 

hands-on experience working with teams of researchers. Funding for research programs 

and graduate studcnts to work on these programs is crucial to making fundamental 

advances. There is no substitute for more research funding. However, in national IT at the 

leading edge, we also need a curriculum change to carve out a home for students to 

thrive. The overwhelming business need in the dot.com era shifted the attention to focus 

specifically on those needs, a necessary shift at that time. We are missing a thriving focus 

on research and development that is not driven by quarterly profit bottom line. There 

needs to be much more investment in curriculum development for people to work on the 

science and data intensive applications for large-scale problems. To put it succinctly, 

there must be curriculum, there must be funding, and there must be exciting opportunities 

for our students to stay in the field. 

Summary of Testimony 

I would like to reiterate my appreciation for allowing me to speak to you today about the 

impact that the NITRD program has had in my research and subsequently for the general 

public. In closing, I would like to summarize the key points I have spoken about today: 

1. Make significant continued investments in the NITRD program. As a 

taxpayer, I recognize that these are tight economic times. However, as a 

researcher I know that investments in research will keep us at the forefront of 

innovation. We must not shortchangc our commitment and vision to continue the 

successes ofthose that have come before us. 

2. Maintain a balanced portfolio of NITRD funding opportunities for 

researchers in computational science. We must find a way to fund additional 

investments, not to the exclusion of existing funding streams. It is a combination 

of efforts that is most likely to be fruitful. 

3. Provide exciting opportunities to entice students to stay in computational 

science. We must deal head on with the brain drain that our universities are 

experiencing in undergraduate and post-graduate education. While, there is no 

magic bullet that will solve this problem, it seems clear that a new approach is 

warranted. This new approach requires an investment in both curriculum 

development and student research to provide exciting opportunities for future 

generations of scientists. 

[1] K. P. Gaither, H. Childs, K. Schulz, C. Harrison, B. Barth, D. Donzis, and P. 

Yeung. Using Visualization and Data Analysis to Understand Critical Structures 
19 

in Massive Time Varying Turbulent Flow Simulations. IEEE Computer Graphics 

and Applications, 32(4):34-45, 2012. 
20 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you, Dr. Gaither. 

I now recognize Dr. McKinley for five minutes to present her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. KATHRYN MCKINLEY, 

PRINCIPAL RESEARCHER, MICROSOFT 

Dr. MCKINLEY. Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski, 

and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting Microsoft to testify and your attention to how IT innovation helps the 

Nation create jobs and grow our economy. I am Kathryn McKinley. 

My experiences with the National Science Foundation, the National 

Academies, DOE, and DARPA, and as an Endowed Professor at the 

University of Texas at Austin, and my current role as Principal Researcher at Microsoft inform my testimony. 

First, I would like to point out that an interconnected IT research ecosystem has made the United States the world’s leading 

economy with the best defense capabilities. The results of IT research include new billion-dollar industries that create jobs and 

make us safer, healthier, more efficient, and delight us. 

One example is the Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect. With Kinect, your 

voice and your body are the game controller. Kinect combines decades of research at Microsoft and elsewhere on artificial intelligence, graphics, motion detection, and voice recognition. New 

technologies inspire more innovation, and now, Kinect is advancing 

learning, health, and retail. Kinect exists because Microsoft’s business strategy is to make long-term investments and bets. Twenty 

years of investment in Microsoft Research has made Microsoft Research the largest and most successful computing research organization in the world. Yet Microsoft thrives as a part of a larger research ecosystem partnering with government, industry, and academia. 

Key IT research areas for our Nation and for NITRD include big 

data, privacy, and building trustworthy systems. A particularly important research challenge that I work on is that your computer is 

no longer getting faster every year. In the past, doubling of performance every two years drove new computing capabilities and accelerated innovation in IT. Unfortunately, current technology is up 

against some fundamental limits, and no new technologies are 

ready to overcome them. 

The technical challenges are compounded by global competition. 

Substantial investments in Asia and Europe have increased their 

contributions to the research ecosystem and their participation in 

the global IT economy. While the United States still enjoys an advantage, the gap is narrowing. Significant research investments in 

areas such as semiconductors, materials, architecture, and programming systems are needed. If the overall rate of innovation 

slows, it will be easier for other countries to close the gap and the 

United States will lose its economic and national security advantages. 

Let us talk about education. Technology is and will infuse all aspects of life in the 21st century. People who understand IT will 

flourish in the global knowledge economy. The U.S. computing 

workforce demands are outpacing its supplies. Forty thousand people earned a computing Bachelor’s degree last year, but that is not 
21 

enough because we are projected to have 120,000 openings for jobs 

that require a computer science degree. The United States, including federal agencies, must strengthen computing education at all 

levels, including K through 12, to fill these jobs. 

A particular challenge in computing is the limited participation 

of women, Hispanics, and African-Americans. My community, 

through efforts such as the Computing Research Association, where 

I am a Board Member and a Committee Co-Chair, has programs 

that are proven to increase the success of women and minorities by 

mentoring Master’s and Ph.D. graduate students and giving undergraduates research experiences. But we need more success stories. 

The United States simply cannot afford to fail to capitalize on the 

creativity of 70 percent of its population if it wants to remain globally competitive. The IT knowledge economy depends on the flow 

of the best people and ideas between academia, government, and 

industry. 

I would like to finish with a little of my own personal story. I 

did not go to college intending to become a researcher or even a 

computer scientist. I came from a family of lawyers. I took a computer science course and then Professor Don Johnson at Rice University hired me for a summer research project. That experience 

opened my eyes to the excitement of solving problems where no one 

knows the answers. And that could be my job. But tight integration 

of research and education makes the U.S. research universities the 

best in the world. 

I thank you for this opportunity to testify and your Committee’s 

long-standing support for IT research and innovation. I would be 

pleased to answer questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. McKinley follows:] 
22 

Written Testimony of 

Dr. Kathryn S. McKinley 

Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research 

Before the 

Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Hearing on 

"Applications for Information Technology Research and Development" 

February 14, 2013 

Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Subcommittee, my name is Kathryn S. 

McKinley, and I am a Principal Researcher at Microsoft. Thank you for the opportunity to share 

perspectives on information technology research in the U.S., including in universities and at 

companies. I appreciate the time and attention the Committee has devoted to this topic, and r 

commend you for advancing the dialogue on innovation and competitiveness in information 

technology. 

Microsoft deeply believes that investment in research and education lay the groundwork for 

advances that benefit society and enhance the competitiveness of U.S. companies, U.S. security, 

and the lives of individuals. In my testimony, I will describe 

• Key elements of the information technology research and development (R&D) ecosystem. 

• Microsoft Research and an illustration of how innovative new products build on a wide range 

of research activities. 

• The two core pillars of NITRO - investment in discovery and investment in people - and 

examples of important research areas for NITRD going forward. 

A brief summary of the key points covered in my testimony is provided at the end of this document. 

My testimony today is informed by my experiences in academia and industry. I am a Principal 

Researcher at Microsoft Research and an Endowed Professor of Computer Science at the 

University of Texas at Austin, and previously was a Professor at the University of Massachusetts, 

Amherst. My research interests include programming language implementation, compilers, 

memory management, runtime systems, security, reliability, and computer architecture. I 

particularly focus on practical research that results in systems that substantially improve the 

performance, correctness, security, and, most recently, power of applications. The National 

Science Foundation (NSF), IBM, DARPA, Microsoft, Google, CISCO, and Intel all supported my 

research in academia. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley. Microsoft. before the House Science Commillee on 21141201 J Page 1 
23 

Today, in addition to my work at Microsoft and on NSF, !BM, DARPA, Microsoft, Google, 

CISCO, and Intel research community activities, I am a member of the Board of the Computing 

Research Association (CRA), co-chair of the CRA's Committee on the Status of Women in 

Computing Research (CRA-W), and a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency's Information Science and Technology Study Group (ISAT). 

The IT R&D Ecosystem 

The commercial information technology (IT) industry is a well-known and appreciated success 

story of American innovation and leadership. American ingenuity turned advances in IT into an 

incredible driver for global competitiveness, military preparedness, and economic growth. Today, 

IT contributes about 5% to overall U.S. GOP, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Yet 

the success was not solely the outcome of visionary and very hard-working people at companies 

across the U.S., such as Microsoft. Instead, the success and impact of IT is the result of a tightly 

interconnected ecosystem of people, ideas, projects, and resources from government, academia, 

and industry. 

The nature of this complex partnership is illustrated in the 2012 report Continuing Innovation in 

Information Technology.' This report illustrates how fundamental research in IT, conducted in 

industry and universities over decades, and supported by Federal agencies, has and continues to 

lead to the introduction of entirely new product categories that ultimately have become the basis 

of new billion-dollar industries. In all these cases, there is a complex interweaving of fundamental 

research and focused development that subsequently create opportunities for new research, new 

products, and new markets. Innovations in academia continue to drive breakthroughs in industry, 

and vice versa, fertilized with ideas, technologies, and people transitioning among disciplines and 

institutions. 

Without research agencies and universities to focus research on the ever-shifting frontiers of 

multiple computing sub-disciplines, to explore connections across disciplines, and to expose and 

train each generation of students to create the next set of innovations, companies will not have the 

reservoir of ideas and talent to maintain the U.S. lead in today's IT sector and to build the next set 

of multi-billion dollar job-creating industries. 

Microsoft Research 

Microsoft is a direct beneficiary of, and wholly committed to, its role in the innovation ecosystem 

described above. This commitment requires Microsoft to make significant investments in all 

elements of this ecosystem. Across the company, more than $9 billion a year is directed toward 

research and development (R&D) with the vast majority of those funds supporting development 

activities focused on specific products. A critical element, although small in relative terms, of our 

overall R&D investment is in more fundamental explorations at Microsoft Research (MSR). 

Founded in 1991, MSR is now the largest and highest quality industrial computing research 

organization in the world, with over 800 Ph.D.s working in more than 55 research areas. MSR is 

I Continuing Innovation in Information Technology; Committee on Depicting Innovation in Information 

Technology; Computer Science and Telecommunications Board; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; 

National Research Council. http://sites.nationalacademies.orgiCSTB/CurrenIProjects/CSTB 045476. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley, Microsoft, before the House Science Committee on 211412013 Page 2 
24 

dedicated to advancing the state of the art in computing, often in collaboration with academic 

researchers (graduate students, undergraduate students, and professors) and government agencies, 

and to creating new technologies for Microsoft's products and services. This organization and 

these people allow Microsoft to respond more rapidly to changing markets and emerging 

technologies and to provide a reservoir of technology, expertise, and people that can be quickly 

brought to bear to respond to and create new technologies, new business models, and new markets. 

While MSR activities are distinct from the short-term development activities conducted at 

Microsoft and other companies, distinctions such as "basic" versus "applied" do not really apply 

to computing research. In fact, computing research is an evolving blend of invention, discovery, 

and engineering. MSR researchers collaborate with leading academic, government, and industry 

colleagues and often move in and out of universities and Microsoft business groups as their 

activities shift in focus between research, applications of that research, and technology transfer 

and implementation. 

A recent example of how research comes to fruition in Microsoft is Microsoft's Kinect product, 

which links to an Xbox system and allows you to control your Xbox games and other functions 

with your body and voice. The most innovative achievements of Kinect are the creation of a system 

that recognizes people and their voices in a variety of environments; that tracks and responds to 

their body motions in real time; and that this system can be produced in bulk. The technology 

builds on decades of blue-sky and disruptive research, conducted both in academia and in MSR, 

in a range of areas, including machine learning, image processing, audio processing, and natural 

language processing. Furthermore, this technology is now inspiring new directions in crossdisciplinary research on virtual and augmented reality, secure video presence, health monitoring, 

and education. 

The impact of Kinect is just one example of the connections and synergies between industry and 

academia that are discussed in the Continuing Innovation in Information Technology report and 

that illustrates how information technology shifts and evolves from research to products back to 

research. By providing a flexible and affordable system by which visual and voice feeds can be 

processed and used by a computer, Kinect is already transforming a variety of academic research 

projects and applications in robotics, human-computer interaction, online education, and more. In 

addition, the advances originally targeted at the gaming and entertainment business are having 

multiplier effects outside the IT sector as the technology is investigated for deployment in retail 

(virtual car tours)2 and for healthcare applications (such as autism or post-stroke physical 

therapy).) 

NITRO 

As a nation, we can be proud of the achievements and innovations due to the IT R&D ecosystem 

to date, including those spurred by the Federal government under NITRD, but U.S. global 

leadership, the future health of the economy and national security depend on government 

investment in research to accelerate technological innovation, address societal challenges, and 

2 More infonnation about how the Kinect is being used in other commercial sectors is available at 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/. 

3 More infonnation about how the Kinect is being used in healthcare, education, the arts, and other applications is 

available at http://www.xbox.com/en-USlKinectiKinect-Effect. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley. Microsoft. before the House Science Committee on 2/1412013 Page 3 
25 

train a globally competitive workforce. The actiVities and investments of the past lay the 

groundwork on which we can build going forward. Support, oversight, and reauthorization of 

NITRO is a critical step toward providing Federal research agencies with the resources and 

guidance they need to stimulate our innovation ecosystem. 

Investing in Research 

The potential results and impact of research are often unknown when the research is started. The 

value and payoff of a sustained and healthy investment in research is often realized well after the 

initial investment and research. Today, the U.S. is reaping the benefits in our quality of life, the 

global competitiveness of our companies, and our national security that build on past investments, 

as is highlighted in the Continuing Innovation in Information Technology report. 

Looking ahead, NITRO investments to advance computing capabilities are required in a range of 

areas to generate the next generation of technological innovations, as has been discussed in reports 

and past testimony4: 

• Data volumes are growing exponentially. Health, cameras, video, motion, and other sensors 

can produce and stream an enormous volume of electronic information. "Big data" and 

"streaming data" pose great challenges, including how to collect, manage, access, search, 

analyze, and act on this data efficiently in bulk and in real time. Solutions require substantial 

innovations in software, networking, and hardware (from embedded to mobile to cloud), and 

have the potential to revolutionize society with applications ranging from personalized 

education, continuous health monitoring, personal assistants, enhanced social networks, 

robotics, smart buildings, and efficient transportation. 

• Computing systems must be trustworthy and privacy preserving. As more of government, 

the economy, and individuals depend on information technology, we must create and combine 

technical, social science, and policy solutions to meet the wide range of risk and trust 

environments. 

• Technologies driving computer hardware capabilities are reaching fundamental limits. 

Over the past three decades, we have enjoyed exponential improvements in computing 

hardware performance due to substantial innovations in materials, hardware, and software, and 

because the hardware/software interfaces did not change much, the improvements created a 

virtuous cycle of innovation on both sides of the interface. However, today, on the hardware 

side, the physical constraints on power, wire delay, and feature sizes are forcing singleprocessor performance to plateau. These constraints require substantial research and 

4 Relevant reports and testimony include: 

The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level?, Samuel H. Fuller and Lynette l. Millett, 

Editors, National Research Council Committee on Sustaining Growth in Computing Performance, National 

Academies Press, 2010. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record id=12980 

Two reports entitled Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development Networking and 

Information Technology, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010 and 2013. 

http://www.whitehouse. gov/sites/defaultlfi les/microsites/ostp/pcast-n itrd-report-20 I 0 .pd f and 

http://www. whitehouse.gov/sites/defaultlfi les/microsites/ostp/pcast -n itrd20 13 .pdf 

Testimony by Dr. Peter Lee, Microsoft Research, before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and 

Transportation on September, 2012. 

Testimony of Kathryn /yfcKinley. Microsoft. before the House Science Committee on 2/1412013 Page 4 
26 

innovations up and down the hardware/software stack to provide continued growth in 

computing capabilities. 

As examples of how computing research will connect with national and business priorities going 

forward, I will discuss at greater length two key research areas: (I) increasing hardware capabilities 

as traditional hardware reaches its limits, and (2) managing the energy usage of information 

technology in a wide range of settings. 

In the first area, the National Academies recently completed a study on The New Global Ecosystem 

in Advanced Computing: Implications for u.s. Competitiveness and National Security5 that 

addresses these research needs and consequences if they go unaddressed. (I am an author of this 

report.) Over the past 35 years, the IT industry and all those who use IT products, have benefitted 

greatly from the steady and dramatic (exponential) increases in microprocessor performance. 

Every two years until about 2005, performance of computers doubled, which underpinned and 

drove rapid, dramatic, and systemic increases in the speed of software and increases in new 

software capabilities. However since 2005, the advances in performance have plateaued due to 

fundamental limits of physics and silicon materials. No new technology is waiting to replace this 

technology. One current solution industry is pursuing is parallel computing (more processors, 

rather than faster processors), but this solution presents substantial hardware and software 

challenges, since, in particular, most software is not parallel. There are many research ideas on 

how to continue the scaling of computing performance, but more than ever before this research 

depends on achieving greater levels of hardware/software integration, innovation, and co-design 

than ever before. This incredibly challenging, exciting, and important problem is one that is 

arguably underfunded today. 

However, if the performance engine of the virtuous cycle of hardware and software capabilities 

goes dry, the gap between our nation's capabilities and other nations' will narrow substantially. 

Significant investment in hardware and coordinating programming software system capabilities 

are needed by government, academia, and industry to establish a new virtuous cycle of 

hardware/software innovation in the post-Moore's Law era. 

Global competition is compounding the technical challenges. Whereas until recently, the vast 

majority of computing research was centered in the U.S, substantial investments in Asia and 

Europe are spurring global IT innovation. For example, studies of papers published, patents, and 

collaborations occurring internationally show that in four key computing fields - semiconductor 

devices and circuits, architecture, applications, and programming systems - the distribution of 

research and innovation is shifting. For example, Figure 1 shows the international collaboration 

network on scientific publications at the most prestigious and influential scholarly publication 

venues in these areas, reproduced from The New Global Ecosystem in Advanced Computing.s The 

U.S. is still the leader in these areas, but it is no longer the sole locus and driver of innovation, 

countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Great Britain, and Germany have increased both 

5 The New Global Ecosystem in Advanced Computing: Implications/or u.s. Competitiveness and National Security; 

Committee on Global Approaches to Advanced Computing; Board on Global Science and Technology; Policy and 

Global Affairs; National Research Council. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record id=13472. 

Testimony ,,[Kathryn McKinley, Microsoft, be/ore the HOllse Science Committee on 2//4/2013 Page 5 
27 

their contributions to the research ecosystem and their ability to convert research into technological 

advancements. While the U.S. enjoys an edge, the gap is narrowing. 

Semiconductor Devices and Circuits 

ndgilltt) 

Genmmy • 

Architecture 

1996: 

Applications 

H(lngKO!1g $ 

KOOla- Brazil OAfglmtl\'!3 China , 

Programming Systems 

Each d:rele represents a £ingle country; .circle size indicates 

the number of papers p~ by tfuit country. Each line 

conne<:ting two. circles teptesoots a co~authQred paper; tine 

width indicates the number of coallthored papers. 

FIGURE 2~ 1 International conference collaboration networks. Data compiled from the following conferences: 

ASPLOS, HPCA, JSCA and MICRO (architecture); ECOOP. OOPSLA, PLDI, POPL, and PPoPP (programming 

systems); SC, SIGGRAPH, VLDB, and WWW (applications); and IEDM and ISSCC (semiconductor devices and 

circuits). Collaboration maps were generated using the Science nfScience (Sci2) Tool available at 

hltp://sci2.cns.iu.edu. 

Figure 1. From The New Global Ecosystem in Advanced Compziling: Implications for us. Competitiveness and National 

Security; Committee on Global Approaches to Advanced Computing; Board on Global Science and Technology; Policy and 

Global Affairs; National Research Council. http://W\'~v,nap,cdu/catalog,php?rccord id=13472, 

Testimony qf Kathryn McKinley, Microsoft, before the House Science Committee on 211 4120 13 Page 6 
28 

This change in circumstances has implications for the U.S both in its internationally-leading IT 

sector and its national defense strategies. Both our companies and our defense technologies have 

benefitted from having first access to steadily improving overall IT functionality, but as the 

innovation networks and supply chains become more global, the U.S. must prepare and adapt. In 

particular, if the rate of innovation slows, closing the gap becomes easier and the U.S. will lose its 

competitive advantage. From a research perspective, as the report notes, "major innovations in 

semiconductor processes, computer architecture, and parallel programming tools and techniques 

are all needed if we are to continue to deliver ever-greater application performance." This research 

will build on sustained past investment in these areas supported by NITRD and requires intellectual 

and practical contributions from universities, government, and companies. 

In the second area, the expanding deployment of computing devices at all sizes and scales (from 

mobile devices in every pocket to massive data centers that require their own power plants) has 

highlighted the challenge of efficiently powering microprocessors to perform a vast array of 

different tasks. Also, the technological shifts described above mean that IT designers face 

tradeoffs between performance and power in everything from checking a phone'S location via GPS 

to running searches on thousands of servers in data centers. Research on power and performance 

tradeoffs will have implications for hardware, architecture, and application design going forward 

with a first order effect on mobile user experiences and the economics of cloud services. 

Furthermore, advances in both have direct effects on enhancing the safety and effectiveness of the 

military, ranging from improving military intelligence and planning, to helping soldiers during 

combat. 

The above list and examples are not meant to imply that NITRD is not working on these and other 

important areas. To the contrary in the past several years, we have seen significant interagency 

collaboration on research targeted at major challenges and opportunities. Two recent examples are 

the initiatives in robotics and big data. Similar to the examples described above, they are 

simultaneously areas for cutting-edge fundamental research on hard problems that will occur at 

universities, industry, and government laboratories, and also the focus of development and 

deployment activities at corporations and agencies. 

Investing in People: The Nation's computing workforce demands are outpacing its supply. 

To create the next generation of highly skilled IT workers requires improving the nation's K-12 

education in computing to feed our universities and requires broadening the IT talent pool to 

include the missing 70%, women and under-represented minorities. 

As information technology permeates more aspects of our day-to-day lives and becomes a critical 

element of sectors from manufacturing to healthcare, from retail to education, U.S. industry and 

government will be searching for people with the core knowledge and creativity to reinvent how 

we do business and keep American companies at the forefront of the global economy. Careers in 

teChnology, engineering, science, and mathematics will be growing, especially those in computing. 

Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, jobs in computing occupations are expected to account 

for 62 percent of the projected annual growth of newly created science, technology, engineering, 

and mathematics (STEM) job openings from 2010 to 2020. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley, Microsoft. before the House Science Committee on 21 J 4120 13 Page 7 
29 

At Microsoft, we are very aware of this issue today. The success of Microsoft is strongly 

dependent on the capabilities of our employees. We aggressively seek out talented people who will 

help build our company into one that is successful in improving our current products and creating 

new ones as we participate in the rapid change that characterizes our innovation-based economy. 

Yet in January 2013, Microsoft had more than 3,400 unfilled research and engineering positions 

in the United States, a 35 percent increase in our number of unfilled positions for these types of 

positions compared to a year ago. Microsoft has proposed a "National Talent Strategy" that 

couples responding to our short-term workforce challenges with long-term investments in 

improving our STEM education system, including computing education in high school, and we 

are working with other companies, organizations, and governments on these challenges.6 

Ensuring that students have the opportunity to explore careers in computing and the support to 

succeed in those careers requires contributions from the government, industry, and education 

communities and improvements at all levels of the educational pipeline. For example, the National 

Science Foundation's Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21)7 program has helped 

create innovative new courses for high school students to inform and inspire more participation in 

computing. Unfortunately, in 2009 only 5% of high schools offered the AP Computer Science 

class (2, 100 out of 42,000). Furthermore, only nine states allow computer science courses to count 

toward "core" math and science high school graduation requirements. More information about 

the opportunities and policy challenges is available from the Computing in the Core coalition 

(http://www.computinginthecore.org/), of which Microsoft is a founding member. 

A particular element of the challenge relates to the relatively limited participation of women and 

Hispanic and Black minorities in computing. The failure to capitalize on the creativity of these 

groups is a huge opportunity cost to our nation's leadership in technical innovation. The business 

case for a diverse work force is compelling. A 2007 study from the National Center for Woment 

in IT shows that IT patents issued to mixed gender teams are cited 26% to 42% more than similar 

IT patents by all men or all women teams.s In 2009, Herring found that companies with the highest 

levels of racial diversity had 15 times more sales revenues than those with lower diversity.9 

In 2011, white men were 31 % of the U.S. population and yet received 61 % of the bachelor 

degrees in computer science (see Figure 2). Looking specifically at the research workforce in 

2011, out of 1782 Ph.D.s in 2011, women earned only 345 Ph.D.s, less than 20%. 

6 The Microsoft National Talent Strategy is available at http://www.microsoft.com/enuslnewsldownloadlpresskitslcitizenshiplMSNTS.pdf. 

7 The National Science Foundation's Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21) program focuses on 

generating knowledge and activities related to computing education with the goal of building a robust computing 

research community, a computationally competent 21st century workforce, and a computationally empowered 

citizenry. The program is described at http://nsf.gov/funding/pgm summ.jsp?pims id=503582. 

8 Who invents IT? An Analysis of Women 's Participation in In/ormation Technology Patenting, C. Ashcraft and A. 

Breitzman, Technical report, NCWlT, March 2007. 

9 Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender and the Business Case for Diversity, C. Herring. American Sociological 

Review, 74(2):208-224, 2009. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley, .'oIicrosoji, before the House Science Committee on 211412013 Page 8 
30 

The U.S. simply cannot afford to stand by while 70% of its population does not 

participate in the computing ecosystem af the "knowledge economy" and remain 

globally competitive. 

After I joined Microsoft Research in 2011 and with the enthusiastic support of Microsoft, 1 became 

the co-chair of the Computing Research Association (CRA) Committee on the Status of Women 

in Computing Research (CRA-W), which is working to fill the computing workforce needs with 

programs that accelerate innovation by improving the participation and success of undergraduates, 

graduate students, and Ph.D. women and minorities in computing research. Furthermore, CRAW recently helped establish the CRA Center for Evaluation of the Computing Research Pipeline 

(CERP) to evaluate how well intervention programs work and what leads students to pursue 

computing research careers. 

Figure): Computing Demographics: The Missing 70% 10 

CS Bachelor Degrees* 

'US Citizens 

US Population 

US needs Women & Minorities to 

meet computing workforce needs 

10 Sources for figure: Computing Research Association, Taulbee Survey 2010-2011, available at 

http://www.cra.orglresourcesltaulbeel (providing voluntary responses from Ph.D.-granting universities on new 

enrollments and degrees awarded in their undergraduate.CSICE programs. U.S. Census Data 2011, available at 

http://quickfacts.census.gov/gfd/states/OOOOO.html 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley, Microsoji, before the House Science Committee on 211412013 Page 9 
31 

Below are two examples of ongoing CRA-W programs that expand the research workforce, as 

shown by comparisons of program participants with the national pool of computing students. 

• Support for Women in Graduate School: The CRA-W Grad Cohort is a two day mentoring 

workshop that brings computing graduate students together with successful senior women 

researchers, who serve as role models, give practical advice and information on navigating 

graduate school, and provide personal insights on the challenges and rewards of their own 

careers. The workshop provides group and individual mentoring, networking, and peer support 

for women master's and Ph.D. students-this experience is something their home institutions, 

most with very few women, do not provide. Between 2004 and 2012, 2089 graduate students 

participated in a Grad Cohort and 245 attended in 2012, impacting an enormous fraction of the 

women who subsequently go on to earn Ph.D.s. Surveys comparing Grad Cohort participants 

with nonparticipants in a national survey, showed participants were twice as likely to publish 

and over three times more likely to be a first author on a research publication. Ph.D. students 

who have a broader technical network and publish are more competitive in the job market. 

• Undergraduates and Research Experiences: Each year, CRA-W and the CRA Coalition to 

Diversify Computing (CDC) match between 50 and 100 women and minority undergraduate 

students with faculty across the U.S. based on mutual research interests. Students, many whose 

home institutions are without computing research programs, spend an intense 10 weeks 

working closely with a faculty researcher, typically at another university. Faculty serve as role 

models and research mentors. The student and faculty agree on a research project, report on 

their progress monthly, publish a web page, and issue a final research report. Some of these 

reports turn into peer-reviewed research publications. These programs inform and encourage 

women and minorities to pursue computing research careers, and enhance and expand their 

experiences beyond the classroom. Undergraduate program participants are significantly more 

likely to apply (51 % vs. 23%) and enroll (39% to 19%) in graduate school in computing than 

nonparticipants, and, ifat graduate school, to enroll in a Ph.D. program (81% vs. 18%). 

These activities are a community effort, supported by the National Science Foundation, by 

Microsoft, by other companies, by universities, and by volunteer participants throughout the 

community. They are complemented by other activities targeted at women, at minorities, and at 

the student population in general. For example, at Microsoft, we bring over 1,800 student interns 

to Redmond each year, with over 300 in Microsoft Research. The MSR interns participate in 

cutting-edge research and learn about how advances fit into the context of a company that must 

continuously provide innovative products to thrive. This experience helps prepare students for a 

variety of career paths as professors, as entrepreneurs, as industry researchers, and some as 

Microsoft employees. 

rmproving students' opportunities to explore and succeed in computing careers and research 

careers, including the participation of women and minorities, is critical to assuring our nation's 

security and building an innovative and growing economy. Federal agencies should continue to 

support efforts to strengthen computing education at all levels. rn addition, general Federal STEM 

programs must recognize that computer science is a critical component of their purview due to its 

largest predicted workforce gap, and thus articulate its particular needs for curriculum reform and 

clearly support its inclusion through their solicitations, outreach, and review criteria. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley. Microsoft, before the House Science Commillee on 211412013 Page 10 
32 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that the U.S. has a strong and effective innovation system in 

information technology in which Federal agencies, companies, and universities all play major 

roles. This ecosystem ensures new knowledge is created and deployed for the sake of the nation's 

economic competitiveness, national security, and society's well-being, and that our education 

system produces the next generation of computing workers and leaders that are required to sustain 

and accelerate innovation in the information technology ecosystem. 

Finally, let me thank you for this committee's longstanding support for IT research, discovery, and 

innovation. I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley. Microsoft. before the House Science Committee on 211412013 Page 11 
33 

Summary of Testimony 

• Past investment in computing research has spawned multiple new billion-dollar infonnation 

technology (IT) industries that have significant positive impact on the U.S. economy as well 

as enabling innovation in multiple sectors, such as manufacturing, healthcare, energy, 

entertainment, education, and retail. 

• Govemment, universities, and industry each playa critical role in advancing IT innovation and 

discovery. In particular, Federal investment, through the NITRO program is vital in providing 

sustained support of research in existing and emerging computing areas and in enabling the 

training and flow of people and ideas throughout the IT R&D ecosystem. 

• Research at Microsoft is a critical investment for the company and contributes to the creation 

of new products, such as Kinect, that build on, accelerate, and inspire advancements in multiple 

areas of computing. Furthennore, Microsoft Research thrives within the larger computing 

research community, which provides ideas and a pool of talented researchers that Microsoft 

hires and with whom Microsoft researchers collaborate. 

• Looking ahead, there are a number of key investments to be made in computing research, and 

NITRD in particular. Areas with economic, societal, and security impacts include 

fundamental multi-disciplinary computing challenges in areas such as big data and robotics, 

as well as the computing advances needed to tackle national challenges in energy, education, 

health, and defense. 

o In particular, a major research challenge and opportunity is due to the plateauing of 

single-processor performance and shifts in global innovation networks with 

implications for the U.S. economy and defense. 

• The 21st century will be a technology-infused world, where our innovators, employees, and 

citizens will need computing knowledge and skills. We must continue to strengthen students' 

ability to access rigorous and engaging computing education at all levels (K -12, undergraduate, 

and graduate) and include computer science in broader science, technology, engineering, and 

mathematics education efforts. 

o In particular, work must continue on ensuring that the full range of our population, 

including women and under-represented minorities, have the opportunity to explore 

and succeed in computing and computing research careers. 

• Support, oversight, and reauthorization of NITRO is an important step toward providing 

Federal research agencies with the resources and guidance they need to contribute to our 

innovation ecosystem. 

Testimony of Kathryn McKinley, Microsoji, before the House Science Commit/ee on 211412013 Page 12 
34 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you, Dr. McKinley. 

I now recognize Dr. Lazowska to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. ED LAZOWSKA, 

BILL AND MELINDA GATES CHAIR 

IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, 

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. Well, I, too, would like to thank Chairman 

Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski, and the Members of the Subcommittee for the opportunity to speak today. 

My name is Ed Lazowska. I am a longtime faculty member at 

the University of Washington. I have been a member or Chair of 

many federal IT Advisory Committees. Most recently, I was CoChair of the Working Group of the President’s Council of Advisors 

on Science and Technology that conducted a review of the overall 

NITRD program in 2010. 

What that review found—and you have heard about this from 

the other two witnesses—is that the research ecosystem supported 

by the NITRD program has been the primary factor in America’s 

world leadership in information technology. And if we are going to 

remain competitive in this increasingly competitive world, there is 

honestly no field in which it is more important to maintain our 

leadership than information technology. 

So what I want to do today is focus on one aspect of my written 

testimony, and that is the unique and essential role of the relatively modest federal investment in IT R&D. The National Research Council over many years, going back to 1995, a report I participated in, has constructed a series of diagrams that attempt to 

explain how this works, how this ecosystem fits together. I want 

to say for Mr. Lipinski, who has seen previous versions of this diagram, that this one is new and improved, just out a few months 

ago. And in fact, the individual who produced this is Peter Lee, 

who is the Vice President for Microsoft Research in the United 

States. 

This diagram is a timeline that runs from bottom to top and it 

tracks the growth of eight major sectors of the IT industry, 

broadband and mobile, microprocessors, personal computing, and 

so on. They are labeled near the top. There are three lines for each 

sector. Let me just take a second and explain this. The red line 

shows research performed in universities mostly with NITRD funding. The blue line in the middle shows when industry R&D organizations were working in the same sector largely with private-sector 

funding. The dotted black line shows when the first product was 

introduced. When that line becomes green, it became a billion-dollar market sector. When the green line gets thicker, it becomes a 

$10 billion market sector. The small diagonal arrows you can barely see are the flow of specific key people and ideas between academia and industry and between the sectors. It looks like someone 

just tossed those on there, but in fact, there is a spreadsheet that 

says what each one corresponds to. And above the lines are some 

of the multibillion-dollar companies that resulted in these sectors. 

So the diagram shows many key aspects of this really incredibly 

productive IT R&D ecosystem. And let me just note a few of them. 

First, research can take a long time before it pays off, in many of 
35 

those examples, 15 years from critical research advances to the 

first product introduction. Secondly, research often pays off in unanticipated ways. We are not very good at predicting where the biggest impact is going to be. Third, advances in one sector often enable advances in other sectors. It really is an interconnected network. Fourth, the research ecosystem is fueled by the flow of people 

and ideas back-and-forth between academia and industry. And finally, every one of these multibillion-dollar sectors has a clear relationship to federal research investment. 

So it is important to realize—and you have heard it from the 

other two witnesses—that federal investment does not supplant 

private-sector investment; it complements it. Here is why: the vast 

majority of industry R&D is development, the engineering of the 

next release of the product. This is totally appropriate. Developing 

products is hard. Also, research takes many years to pay off in 

many cases. Even at Microsoft and IBM, which invest far more 

than any other IT companies in work that looks out more than one 

or two product cycles, this investment constitutes only about five 

percent of total R&D. At most companies it is 0 percent in IT. 

Here is a great example—in addition to Kinect which you heard 

about from Dr. McKinley. It is this cute little iPad. Now, it is a 

product that maybe only Apple could have designed, just like 

Kinect is a clever product maybe only Microsoft could have designed, but every distinctive aspect of this device—the multi-touch 

interface, the sensors, the processor—has its origins in federallysponsored research. 

So IT R&D leads to exciting companies, but it does far more. It 

drives the economy, as you heard, directly through the growth of 

the IT industry, indirectly through productivity gains in other sectors. 

Looking to the future—and Chairman Bucshon did a wonderful 

job of describing this in his introductory remarks—dramatic advances are necessary in meeting all of our national and global challenges; improved healthcare, advanced manufacturing, increased 

national and homeland security, revolutionizing transportation, 

personalized education—hopefully, we will talk about MOOCs in a 

minute—putting the smarts in the smart grid, driving advances in 

all fields. 

Given the broad influence, it is not surprising that the demand 

for IT workers is strong. Dr. McKinley spoke to that clearly. What 

I would say is all STEM is important, but from a workforce point 

of view, all STEM is not created equal. 

So to summarize, computing research changes our world, drives 

our prosperity, enables advances in all other fields, and is essential 

to meeting our national and global challenges. The government has 

played an essential role in fostering these examples. The future is 

bright. There is opportunity and need. There is also tremendous 

need for well-educated graduates. The government’s role in supporting fundamental research is essential and doesn’t supplant private sector investment. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Lazowska follows:] 
36 

TESTIMONY OF 

EDWARD D. LAZOWSKA 

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 

BEFORE THE HOUSE SCIENCE, SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION 

HEARING ON 

APPLICATIONS FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 

FEBRUARY 14, 2013 

Thank you Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski, and the other members of the 

Subcommittee, for this opportunity to discuss the Federal government's Networking and 

Information Technology Research and Oevelopment program. I am pleased add my 

perspective on the Committee's questions, drawn from nearly 40 years as a member of 

the computing research community, my experience as the current chair of the 

Computing Research Association's (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC), 

and as a member and chair of many Federal IT advisory committees - including, most 

recently, as the co-Chair of the Working Group of the President's Council of Advisors on 

Science and Technology (PCAST) to review the NITRO program. 

In 2010, PCAST conducted a detailed assessment of the NITRO program, and in 2012 

PCAST reviewed the progress of NITRO in implementing those recommendations. 1 As 

the co-chair of the PCAST Working Group that conducted that initial assessment, my 

testimony is informed by both reviews, though I present this testimony as an informed 

individual and not as a representative of PCAST. 

What both the 2010 and 2012 reviews found, and indeed, what reviews over a 20-year 

period of the NITRO program and its predecessors have found, is that the research 

ecosystem supported by NITRO - a complex interplay between Federally supported 

researchers in U.S. universities and Federal labs, privately funded research and 

development in industry, and the flow of people and ideas between them - has been the 

primary factor in the U.S becoming the world leader in information technology. And if the 

U.S. is to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive world, there is perhaps no 

sector more important in which to retain leadership than information technology. 

Information Technology R&D Changes the World 

The importance of this hearing's topic is hard to overstate. Advances in information 

technology are transforming all aspects of our lives. Virtually every human endeavor 

1 Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information 

Technology, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, December 2010 

(hltp:llwww.whitehouse.gov/siles/defauIVfiles/microsites/ostoIpcast-nitrd-report-2010.pdf) and January 2013 

(http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defauIVfiles/microsites/osto/pcast-nitrd2013.pdf) 
37 

today has been touched by IT, including health care, energy, manufacturing, 

governance, national security, communications, the environment, commerce, education, 

employment, entertainment, science and engineering. We have doctors empowered by 

virtual agents that can help navigate tricky drug interactions or diagnose with data and 

not gut feeling alone, intelligent power grids with smart homes that work together to 

more efficiently utilize power resources, advanced robotics that enable the nation to 

retain a competitive manufacturing sector, govemment that works more transparently, a 

military that achieves dominance through information superiority, a network of friends 

reachable instantly anywhere around the globe, a planet wired with sensors feeding us 

real-time information about its health, the world's products available to us with the click 

of a mouse, instruction tailored to individual students and delivered from hundreds or 

thousands of miles away, the ability to be as productive from our couch at home as we 

are in our offices, movies and music and games that engage all our senses and take us 

to places no previous generation has seen, and a science and engineering enterprise 

primed with all the tools and data to enable discovery at a pace never before possible -

all because of advances in computing systems, tools and services enabled by research 

and development. 

Information Technology R&D Drives Our Prosperity 

Advances in information technology are also driving our economy - both directly, in the 

growth of the IT sector itself, and indirectly, in the productivity gains all other sectors 

achieve from the application of IT. In fact, it is this latter effect that has had the most 

profound effect on the economy and the Nation's competitiveness. Across every sector 

of the economy, businesses large and small utilize IT systems, tools and services to 

improve their labor productivity, boost their operational efficiency and increase their 

economic output to an unprecedented extent. large companies like Walmart and UPS 

have used the tools of IT to track and manage inventory on a minute-by-minute basis. 

Companies like Ford and Procter & Gamble use high-performance computing to design 

super-efficient automobiles, or even model the airflow over potato chips on a production 

line to minimize breakage and loss. Small manufacturers use IT to do virtual 

prototyping, avoiding costly prototype construction and allowing them to compete with 

much larger firms for lucrative manufacturing contracts. Advances in IT empower U.S. 

businesses, augment their competencies, and enable them to compete in an 

increasingly global economy. The development and application of NIT-related systems, 

services, tools and methodologies have boosted U.S. labor productivity more than any 

other set of forces in recent decades. (See Figure 2.) 

Information Technology is the Dominant Factor in American S& T Employment 

Given information technology's influence in so many sectors of our lives, it should not 

be surprising that demand for IT workers is strong. The latest monthly hiring figures 

bear this out: of the 157,000 new jobs added to the economy in January, more than 

22,000 were in IT fields. 2 Indeed, as the 2010 PCAST review of the NITRD program 

noted, "al/ indicators - al/ historical data, and al/ projections - argue that [Networking 

2 http://www.infoworld.com/tlit-jobs/tech-jobs-account-14-percent-of-hiring-in-january-212267 

2 
38 

and Information Technology (NIT)] is the dominant factor in America's science and 

technology employment, and that the gap between the demand for NIT talent and the 

supply of that talent is and will remain large." Bureau of Labor Statistics projections 

indicate that more than 60 percent of all new jobs in all fields of science and engineering 

in the current decade will be for computing specialists. I share PCAST's belief that 

increasing the number of graduates in IT fields at all levels should be a national priority, 

and believe that the NITRD program ought to increase its focus on computer science 

education, from kindergarten through higher education, as one way to help meet that 

goal. 

Federal Support is a Key Part of the Vibrant Ecosystem that Drives IT Innovation 

The advances in IT that have had such a profound effect on every aspect of our lives 

are driven by innovation that is the product of a vibrant research ecosystem - an 

ecosystem comprised of university research programs, industrial research labs, Federal 

research labs, industrial development organizations, and the people and ideas that flow 

between them. The National Research Council has called this "an extraordinarily 

productive interplay" and the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee 

(PIT AC) emphasized the "spectacular retum" on the Federal investment made as part of 

this ecosystem. 

The National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunication Board 

created a graphic that attempts to visualize this complex ecosystem. Known colloquially 

as the "Tire Tracks Diagram," this graphic is worth careful consideration. It was first 

created in 1995, updated in 2003, and updated again and re-conceptualized in 2012. 

(See Figure 1.) 

The diagram is really a timeline, tracking the growth of different sectors of the IT 

economy. It has three lines for each subsector of the IT industry: a red line that 

indicates when research was performed in universities (largely supported by the Federal 

government), a blue line in the middle that shows when industrial research and 

development organizations were working in the space (largely with private sector 

funding), and a dotted black line that indicates when the first product was introduced in 

that sector. Where that dotted line turns solid green indicates when that became a 

billion-dollar market sector. Where the line thickens, it notes a $10 billion+ market 

sector. The arrows on the diagram indicate the flow of people and ideas between the 

sectors. (Each arrow refers to a specific, documented flow.) Above the lines are some of 

the multi-billion-dollar companies that resulted. 

The diagram shows a number of key aspects of the path from research to major market 

sector: 

1. Research often takes a long time before it pays off. In a number of cases illustrated 

on the diagram, the earliest research takes place more than 15 years before the 

introduction of the first product. 

3 
39 

2. Research often pays off in unanticipated ways. Developments in one sector often 

enable advances in others, often serendipitously. 

3. Most importantly, every one of these multi-billion-dollar IT industry sectors has a 

clear relationship to Federal research investment. Research in universities does not 

supplant work done in industry, and vice-versa. 

This point deserves amplification. The vast majority of industry R&D is developmentthe engineering of the next version of a product. This is entirely appropriate, but such 

work is of a fundamentally different character than Federally-sponsored universitybased research. Industry-based R&D tends to be focused on product and process 

development, areas that will have more immediate impact on business profitability. 

Industry generally avoids long-term research because it entails risk in several 

unappealing ways. First, as the diagram illustrates, it is hard to predict the outcome of 

fundamental research - the value of the research may surface in unanticipated areas. 

Second, fundamental research, because it is published openly, provides broad value to 

all players in the marketplace - it is difficult for anyone company to "protect" the 

fundamental knowledge gleaned from long-term research and capitalize on it without 

everyone in the marketplace having a chance to incorporate the new knowledge into 

their thinking. Those companies that do make significant investments in fundamental 

research are few and far between, and tend to be the largest companies in the sector. 

Their dominant position in the market increases the likelihood that they benefit from any 

market-wide improvement in technology that fundamental research might bring. And 

even at these companies, the investment in fundamental research is a small fraction of 

overall R&D investment. Microsoft is among the IT companies that invest the largest 

proportion of their R&D expenditures on research looking out more than one product 

cycle. Microsoft Research is a tremendous national asset. But Microsoft's investment in 

Microsoft Research was estimated by PCAST to constitute less than 5% of the 

company's total R&D. At almost all other companies, the investment that looks out more 

than one product cycle is far less. University research does not supplant industry 

research, or vice-versa. 

4. The research ecosystem is fueled by the flow of people and ideas back and forth 

between academia and industry. This robust ecosystem has made the U.S. the 

world leader in information technology. 

Each one of the multi-billion-dollar sectors illustrated on the 'Tire Tracks Diagram" bears 

the clear stamp of Federal investments - investments that have demonstrated 

extraordinary payoff in the explosion of new technologies that have touched every 

aspect of our lives, and in the economic benefits of the creation of new industries and 

literally millions of new jobs. 

An example might be instructive here. Apple's iPad is a seemingly miraculous device. 

Available for about $300, it's a sleek, thin little slab of glass and metal that sits darkly in 

a purse or a pocket, then comes to life with a button push and a swipe of a finger, 

quickly figures out where it is, and connects itself to the largest collection of humanity's 

4 
40 

knowledge ever assembled. It's a remarkable confluence of technologies - processing 

capability powerful enough to have appeared on the list of the world's fastest 

supercomputers less than 20 years ago, a sensor suite (global positioning system, 

compass, accelerometer, microphone, camera, light sensor) robust enough to allow it to 

know where it is and what it's looking at, and an interface revolutionary in its ease of 

use. These technologies have enabled some truly game-changing capabilities -

applications that allow turn-by-turn directions, or the ability to translate signs in a foreign 

language just by pointing its camera at them, or truly high-speed, ubiquitous 

connectivity to the power of the Internet, instantly and almost anywhere in the world. 

What Apple has managed to do to bring these technologies together and meld them in a 

seamless way to enable these applications has been nothing short of remarkable. But 

none of the technologies originated with Apple. Without exception, they have their roots 

in early-stage scientific research, and all bear the stamp of Federal support. 

Take, for example, the revolutionary multi-touch iPad interface - the pinch-to-shrink, 

swipe-to-scroll, twist-to-rotate gestures that make a tablet like the iPad intuitive and very 

easy to use. All were born out of university research, largely funded by the Federal 

government, conducted as early as the late 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, in 1998, 

researchers at the University of Delaware, whose work had earlier been enabled by 

research funding from the National Science Foundation, established a company called 

FingerWorks to market an early touch-screen keyboard based on their research. In 

2005, Apple bought the company and its technology, then adapted it for the first iPhone. 

A similar case can be made for the processor - the brain of the device. Microprocessors 

have their roots in the design of the original integrated circuit back in 1958, by a young 

Texas Instruments engineer named Jack Kilby. But it's a long path from that original 

design to the modern chip that powers the iPad. Industry research at TI and Fairchild, 

and later at IBM, Intel and others, was obviously important in moving development 

along, but just as important was research at U.S. universities - research on Reduced 

Instruction Set Computing (RISC) and Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline 

Stages (MIPS) technologies, as well as Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) design 

methodologies and tools, the process of creating integrated circuits by combining 

thousands of transistors into a single chip, which put computer design in the hands of 

computer system architects (and graduate students) rather than only in the hands of 

engineers and technicians in costly chip fabrication plants. Federal investment in 

research (through DARPA and increasingly NSF) and government-industrial 

partnerships like SEMATECH were crucial in catalyzing research across institutions and 

accelerating the pace of innovation; work at universities in particular helped generate 

the people and ideas that fueled industry's advancements. 

The iPad's GPS sensor can trace its history back even further - to the 1930s and work 

by the American phYSicist I. I. Rabi on magnetic resonance. His work, sponsored by the 

Navy, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1944, led to the development of Magnetic 

Resonance Imaging, which has revolutionized medicine, and to work in 1949 by 

Norman Ramsey on atomic clocks, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1989. The 

5 
41 

super-accurate clocks Ramsey developed with grants from the U.S. military, based on 

the vibrations of a Cesium atom, are accurate to within one-billionth of a second. A 

constellation of these super-accurate clocks orbiting the earth on satellites enables 

devices on earth, such as nuclear submarines or cruise missiles, to know their location 

to within one foot anywhere on the planet. They also enable an amazing array of 

location-aware services on devices like the iPad that help consumers navigate through 

strange cities, find the best burger place within walking distance, or even recover their 

iPad if it is stolen. 

It is possible to describe similar lineage for all the other key technologies in the iPad. 

This is not to diminish the accomplishment of Apple - on the contrary, what Apple has 

done has been to blend these technologies into a harmonious whole in a way that 

perhaps only Apple could do. But it highlights the crucial role of early-stage research, in 

many cases supported by the Federal government (and often only by the Federal 

government), in enabling world-changing innovation. 

Incidentally, the history of the "Tire Tracks Diagram" is also telling in terms of continuing 

payoff of these investments. The first version of the diagram developed in 1995 noted 

nine billion-dollar-plus sectors. Eight years later the diagram was updated to include ten 

additional sectors. The latest version included so many new sectors that the authors 

were forced to aggregate them for clarity. Today, the eight biggest U.S. IT companies 

alone account for nearly $700 billion in annual revenue. 3 

The history of the "Tire Tracks Diagram" also illustrates clearly that information 

technology is a field of continuous, rapid innovation and growth, often in directions that 

are difficult to predict. Many of the multi-billion-dollar sectors added in the 2003 update 

were not anticipated at all by the authors of the original 1995 report; similarly with the 

2012 update. 

There is Tremendous Potential for- and Tremendous Need for- Further 

Breakthroughs 

The history of innovation in computing is impressive, but the future potential and future 

need are even more compelling. Further advances in information technology are 

essential to our prosperity. Further advances in information technology also are 

essential for responding to our national and global challenges - challenges such as 

revolutionizing transportation, achieving personalized education and life-long learning, 

powering the smart grid, empowering the developing world, improving health care, 

enabling advanced manufacturing, increasing national and homeland security, driving 

advances in all fields of science and engineering. All these and more are compelling 

challenges that depend upon further research advances in IT. 

3 Apple ($156.5B). HP ($120.3B), IBM ($104.5B). Microsoft ($73.7B). Dell ($62.1B). Amazon ($61.1 B), Intel 

($53.3B), Google ($50.1 B) 

6 
42 

Additional Investment is Needed in Many Areas of IT R&D that are Crucial to 

National Priorities and National Competitiveness 

Much of the focus of the Federal effort in computing at the time of passage of the 

original High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991 (which 

established the modern NITRO program) was rightly on the importance of High 

Performance Computing to scientific discovery and national security. Today, however, 

many other aspects of IT have risen to comparable levels of importance. Among these 

are the interactions of people with computing systems and devices; the interactions 

between IT and the physical world; large scale data capture, management and analysis; 

systems that protect personal privacy and sensitive confidential information; scalable 

systems and networking; and software creation and evolution. PCAST emphasizes, and 

I agree, that the nation's performance on benchmarks of HPC should not be the primary 

measure of our IT competitiveness. 

In its 2010 report Designing a Digital Future, PCAST focused attention on the role of 

advances in NIT in achieving America's priorities in areas including health, energy and 

transportation, national and homeland security, discovery in science and engineering, 

education, and digital democracy. PCAST identified three of these areas as "particularly 

timely and important." I support PCAST's recommendations. They called for: 

• A national, long-term, multi-agency research initiative on NIT for health that goes 

well beyond the current national efforts to adopt electronic health records. 

• A national, long-term, multi-agency, multi-faceted research initiative on NIT for 

energy and transportation. 

• A national, long-term, mUlti-agency research initiative on NIT that assures both 

the security and the robustness of cyber-infrastructure. 

PCAST then identified seven "NIT research frontiers" as being of particular importance: 

NIT and people, NIT and the physical world, large-scale data management and 

analysis, trustworthy systems and cybersecurity, scalable systems and networking, 

software creation and evolution, and high performance computing. While emphasizing 

the need for sustained investment in all of these areas, PCAST identified four as 

meriting increased investment: 

• The fundamentals of privacy protection and protected disclosure of information. 

• Human-machine and social collaboration and problem-solving. 

• Fundamental research in data collection, storage, management, and automated 

large-scale analysis. 

• Instrumenting the physical world. 

In its 2012 review, PCAST noted many areas of progress by NITRO agencies in 

addressing key research challenges: "big data," NIT-enabled interaction with the 

physical world, health IT, and cybersecurity. PCAST concluded that these areas 

"continue to be important, and while there is noticeable progress on interagency 

coordination since 2010, these areas remain as critical focal points in 2012 and beyond. 

7 
43 

Continued emphasis and even greater coordination is recommended," I concur with this 

assessment 

PCAST then highlighted several other areas in which progress has been slower, but 

which are no less important: 

• Social Computing: Collective human-NIT interactions such as social media, peer 

production, crowdsourcing and collective distributed tasks, The report 

emphasizes the need "to understand the technical effects on special areas, such 

as security, privacy, health, and scientific discovery" from these emerging social 

phenomena, 

• Privacy: Important challenges include "how to realize the benefits of collective 

personal information without compromising the privacy of individuals, how to 

achieve cybersecurity and security more broadly without unnecessary disclosure 

of individual information, how to design systems to avoid unintended personal 

disclosure, how to empower individuals to assert their identity and also make 

informed decisions about voluntary disclosure, and how to use the science of 

privacy protection to inform policy decisions," 

• Software: PCAST noted that "predictable development of software that has the 

intended functionality and is reliable, secure and efficient remains as one of the 

most important problems in NIT." 

• Educational Technology: New educational technologies, such as auto-grading 

and online social collaboration, as well as new instructional approaches, have 

enabled an explosion in new models for education, from pre-K to college-level 

Massively Online Open Courses (MOOCs) to life-long learning, But assessment 

of the use of technology for education at all levels still needs research, 

• Energy and Transportation: Work on achieving dynamic power management in 

applications from single devices to buildings to the power grid, low-power system 

and devices, and research relevant to surface and air transportation remain 

crucially important 

• Scalable Systems and Networking: Research to develop significant 

improvements in the efficiency of radio spectrum utilization, and work to promote 

the use of a nationwide infrastructure for spectrum monitoring that cuts across 

commercial, public safety, and 000 applications should remain a priority, 

• High-Performance Computing: PCAST repeated its 2010 recommendation of "a 

substantial and sustained program of long-term, fundamental research on 

architectures, algorithms, and software for future generations of HPC," 

Importantly, for technical reasons, individual processors are no longer increasing in 

performance: since 2005, the trend has been "more processors" rather than "faster 

processors," This requires entirely new approaches to software, scalable systems, and 

high performance computing, The field faces a dramatic set of research challenges if we 

are to continue to enjoy in the future the remarkable benefits that we have enjoyed in 

the past 

8 
44 

The Federal Government Needs High-level, Sustained, Expert Strategic Advice on 

IT 

Another key recommendation contained in both the 2010 and 2012 PCAST reports, with 

which I strongly concur, is the call for the establishment of a "high-level standing 

committee of academic scientists, engineers, and industry leaders dedicated to 

providing sustained strategic advice in NIT." Given the pace of innovation and change 

within the field, the challenge of its multi-disciplinary, problem-driven research, and the 

size and scope of the Federal investment, having sustained guidance from a freestanding, independent advisory committee seems crucial to NITRD's success. 

Computer Science is an Essential Component of Science, Technology, 

Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education 

As I noted above, the workforce needs of the IT fields going forward demand a 

sustained effort to increase the number of students going into computing fields. National 

security needs will require that many of those students be American citizens. In 

addition, participants in many other workforce fields will need IT knowledge and skills. 

Making progress on this effort will require reversing trends not just in computing, but 

across the STEM disciplines. I am pleased that PCAST has called for the National 

Science and Technology Council's Committee on STEM Education to exercise strong 

leadership to bring aboutfundamental changes in K-12 STEM education in the U.S. 

Among these changes has to be the incorporation of computer science as an essential 

STEM component. As they note, "fluency with NIT skills, concepts and capabilities; 

facility in computational thinking; and an understanding of the basic concepts of 

computer science must be an essential part of K-12 STEM education." Groups such as 

Computing in the Core have expended a great deal of effort to get computer science 

recognized as a key part of the K-12 curriculum, but must be met with more acceptance 

if we are to meet the needs of our information-driven economy now and in the future. 

Conclusion: Federal Investment in Information Technology R&D Has Yielded, and 

Will Continue to Yield, Extraordinary Payoff 

Computing research - networking and information technology R&D - changes our 

world, drives our prosperity, and enables advances in all other fields. 

The Federal government has played an essential role in fostering these breathtaking 

advances. The Federal investment in computing research is without question one of the 

best investments our Nation has ever made. The payoff has been an explosion of new 

technologies that have touched nearly every aspect of our lives, and the creation of new 

industries and literally millions of new jobs. 

The future is bright. There is tremendous opportunity - and tremendous need - for 

further breakthroughs. The Federal government's essential role in fostering these 

advances - in supporting fundamental research in computing and other engineering 

fields - must continue. 

9 
45 

i 

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i 

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;; • 

5 

j 

il 

" 

1:; 

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11 

j 

i 

,f '" ." ~ ~ '\l :Ii J 

Figure 1 

Reproduced from the NRC Computer Science & Telecommunications Board report Continuing Innovation in 

Infonnation Technology, 2012; http://www.nap.edulcatalog.php?record id=13427 

iO 
46 

Figure 2 

Reproduced from the PCAST report Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and 

Development in Networking and Information Technology, December 2010; 

http://www . whitehouse. gov/sites/defaultlfiles/m icrosites/ostp/pcast-nitrd-report-20 1 O. pdf 

II 
47 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you. And I would like to thank all 

the witnesses for their testimony and being available for questioning. 

I want to remind Members that the Committee rules limit questioning to five minutes, and as Chair I will open and recognize myself for five minutes at this point. 

I will some response from all of you on this one. In previous 

NITRD hearings, we have heard that IT’s role in national security, 

national competitiveness, and national priorities is far broader 

than high-performance computing alone. As we continue to learn 

more about the recent National Intelligence Estimate Report regarding China’s use of cyber espionage, can you expand on how the 

IT field has influenced or continues to influence national security? 

And whomever wants to go first. Dr. Lazowska? 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. I will give it a try. 

I think what has happened in the past 20 years is that high-performance computing is as important as it ever was and of ever-increasing importance, but what has happened is a set of other aspects of the field has risen to perhaps comparable importance. All 

right? So this was called the High Performance Computing Act of 

1991 because that was clearly the dominant aspect of the field in 

importance. 

Now, where we stand in robotics, where we stand in mining vast 

amounts of data for intelligence purposes, all sorts of other aspects 

of the field are just as important to our security and to our competitiveness. So, for example, big data clearly matters in assessing 

threats. Artificial intelligence clearly matters in understanding 

communiques from other nations doing language translation, 

things like this. So in addition to information technology being important in countering all sorts of threats, it is a threat itself. All 

right? 

So there has, as you noted, been lots of attention to cyber warfare recently. This is an area where, honestly, we lag behind. That 

is, the aggressors have an advantage over the defenders and we 

have been defending for decades with what I have to say are heroic 

Band-Aid efforts. And we need to really rethink the design of our 

systems to make them more secure. And that is a research challenge. 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you. 

Anyone else have—— 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So I would just like to add to Ed’s remarks that 

20 years ago, defense was driving IT. We had big investments in 

technologies that were really directly applicable to defense, but because of the rise in industry and consumer products that use IT, 

we now have a huge influence on the capabilities of defense, driven 

by capabilities of things you also want to buy. And so, for example, 

a Smartphone is very helpful to a soldier as well as helpful to you 

when you are trying to get your kids to their hockey games. So that 

the driving of what technologies you want to use in the field, as 

well as the technologies that are useful for consumers have come 

together. And this is where the narrowing of the gap is a problem 

because you want to have better capabilities. And that requires 

being ahead of the game and being ahead of industry as well and 

ready with the new technologies. 
48 

Chairman BUCSHON. Dr. Gaither? 

Dr. GAITHER. Yes, so I would like to just address it very briefly. 

I would not look at this as an either/or problem. So I think it really 

does—I guess it goes back to my point about interdisciplinary work. 

I think you should look at it as a combination of high-performance 

computing, as a combination of the data mining. Clearly, that is 

going to play a very large role. But I would look at it as a portfolio 

of tools to solve this problem, not one versus the other. 

Chairman BUCSHON. Great. Thank you. I will now recognize Mr. 

Lipinski for five minutes. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. I will let you continue on—since you 

started talking about cybersecurity, I will jump to that question. 

Obviously, it is a big issue becoming bigger, and I think we are 

going to learn, unfortunately, maybe in a dramatic fashion how 

critical it is to us right now. 

I cosponsored a bill last Congress with Congressman McCaul 

called the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act. We are going to be introducing that again. Among other things, it would require a federal strategy for assessing cyber threats and coordinate cyber R&D 

to address these threats. Part of the 2013 PCAST report on NITRD 

recommended greater coordination among agencies on 

cybersecurity R&D. In what ways do you think—you touched on 

this little bit—what ways do you think the Federal Government 

could better coordinate research efforts in cybersecurity? Dr. 

Lazowska? 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. One comment I would make is that all of these 

studies have found that NITRD is one of the most successful coordination efforts. So I think we have to state that at the outset. 

In cybersecurity, there is a particular challenge because of classification. And I think an important issue is attempting to distill the 

essence of classified problems so that a broader range of investigators can work on them. All right? 

So most universities don’t do classified research, but many of the 

best cybersecurity researchers are in universities. I know that 

DARPA has worked on this. The National Science Foundation, of 

course, supports a large number of research programs in sort of the 

unclassified core of cybersecurity. But honestly, it is an area that 

needs a better research workforce, as well as a better practitioner 

workforce. 

I would like to mention one additional reason why this is so important, and that is every aspect of our Nation’s critical infrastructure is now controlled by computer systems. All right? So this just 

ten years ago was much less so for, let us say, the power grid, all 

right? These days, all of these are complex, interconnected systems 

subject to attack from information technology in ways that can actually damage hard-to-replace physical infrastructure. So we truly 

do need more communication and collaboration among the agencies. 

The Senior Steering Group that NITRD has created in the past 

couple of years since the 2010 report has gone a long way towards 

addressing the coordination issues. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Any other comments? I will move on. Okay, great. 

All of you are computer scientists. I actually have a background as 

an engineer but also in—with the dark side got my Ph.D. in polit-
49 

ical science. I am also a social scientist. In your testimony, you all 

discussed the need for computer scientists to collaborate with social 

scientists to address many scientific and technological challenges. 

Can you elaborate on the role of social and behavioral scientists do 

and should play in NIT R&D? And are there sufficient federal 

mechanisms to support multidisciplinary collaboration among computer scientists, engineers, and social scientists? 

Let me say that I know there is a lot of bad social science research out there, but I think, unfortunately, it is all getting lumped 

together and attempted to be thrown out. But can you talk to the 

role that social and behavioral scientists can play in NIT R&D? Dr. 

McKinley? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. Humans interact with computers, so if we don’t 

understand how humans want to interact with them, if we don’t 

understand the social sciences, if it is not a collaboration, we can’t 

make IT work for people because it is about the people. And yes, 

there is bad research in every area unfortunately, but there is 

mostly good research. And a great example is health. If you want 

to make people—or if you want to use your cell phone that you are 

carrying around to help you be healthier, we might want to remind 

you to take a walk or eat better, but we don’t want you to—we 

need to understand how those hints help you or maybe they discourage you and you get mad at your phone and you stop doing it. 

So some of these basic issues on how you use IT for health require 

both doctor collaborations, user interface, and people who understand how human beings make decisions. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Dr. Gaither? 

Dr. GAITHER. So to further that point, visualization is all about 

really verifying visualizations. We can’t really do that quantifiably 

right now. So we do them with user studies because visualization 

is about how people perceive the images that they are seeing. 

I also want to address the point about the interdisciplinary research. So I do think that there is a frightening shortage of funding 

going into interdisciplinary research. And let me say, while it may 

be a little cliche ́, the sum of putting people together from different 

backgrounds really is greater than the individual parts. And I 

think the magic happens when you put people together from very 

different backgrounds working towards a common goal. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much. I am out of time. I yield 

back. 

Chairman BUCSHON. I recognize Mr. Stockman for five minutes. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. I have kind of a concern because I am hearing 

an underlying theme about cybersecurity. And I guess I would go 

through the three of you doctors who are professionals and tell us, 

hey, how much—if we need more funding, how much more funding 

do we need for cybersecurity to defend against it? And two, are we 

doing enough work towards that? I was shocked—I was at a Chevron gas station and actually the gasoline pumps were shut down 

because of a cyber attack. And I don’t think people realize to what 

degree, how deeply we are dependent upon computers and satellites. I guess I would go through and tell us from our job—to do 

our job right, are you getting enough funding? And how much is 

enough and what do we need to do? 
50 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. I am not going to be able to answer your question 

in specific terms I am afraid. There had been numerous calls for 

greater investments in fundamental research in cybersecurity. I 

think now, we are spending enormous amounts of money in shortterm defenses, which are holding the threats at bay largely, although not entirely as you point out. We are not spending enough 

laying the groundwork for systems that are designed in a way that 

they will actually be resistant to attack. So the problem is that you 

can’t just bolt security on to a complex hardware/software system 

at the last minute after it has been designed in an insecure way. 

We have learned a huge amount in the past ten years about how 

to build reliable and secure systems. Microsoft has in fact been a 

leader in this. The quality of Microsoft’s code and its resistance to 

penetrations has improved enormously in the past decade. But we 

do need significantly greater investment in the fundamentals. 

I was the co-chair of the late PITAC, President’s Information 

Technology Advisory Committee, under President Bush. We wrote 

a report on cybersecurity that called for significantly increased investment in the National Science Foundation and other agencies, 

and we didn’t get reappointed as a reward for our efforts. It is a 

serious issue. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. I don’t mean to interrupt but when you say significant, is there a number that you targeted or suggested? 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. Unfortunately, the problem is that it is a portfolio. You need an investment in the long-range work. You need to 

continue the investment in blocking threats, and you need to 

span—— 

Mr. STOCKMAN. But I mean is there a price tag that we can— 

I mean we have to—— 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. We called eight years ago for an investment of, 

I believe, another $90 million at the National Science Foundation, 

which I view as a tiny amount of money relative to the potential 

cost of insecurity. But you do have to realize that the payoff from 

that investment would be some number of years down the road. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. That is more than what they have stolen from 

some banks through—— 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. Less than they have stolen from some banks. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Yes, that is what I meant. Yes, that is what I 

am saying—— 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. It is less than what they have stolen from some 

gas stations, I am sure—— 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Yes, exactly. 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. This—it is a very serious issue, sir. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. In fact, I think in 10 seconds we probably—less 

than that, we have spent that. 

Dr. McKinley, I have a question for you. You actually worked— 

and I have got to hurry up because we are out of time—but you 

worked with the private sector or you have. You also had federal 

and state. Which in your opinion do you see the most efficiency? 

If we had appropriated money, where would you put that funding? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So different research needs to be done at different times and different places. So one of the reasons I moved 

from academia to Microsoft Research is because many of the problems that I work on, such as making your phone last longer and 
51 

runtime systems, which I won’t tell you exactly what that means, 

but that right now these areas are turning into actionable products 

and things that people want to use. And so right now is the right 

time for some of the groundwork that my research laid to move 

into industry. And it is that flow of people who come with their 

ideas and their expertise that makes the whole system work. Like 

I loved academia. I might go back someday, but this is the right 

place for me to be right now. And that ecosystem is represented by 

my career and as a grad student my first funding was National 

Science Foundation, a Science and Technology Center, which was 

a big bet on parallel computing, and that is technology we really 

need today, and I am still an expert in that area. 

Chairman BUCSHON. Gentlemen yields back. 

Ms. Esty, you are recognized for five minutes. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you very much. You have all described how important federal investments are in NITRD to this country. And as 

you know, we face a rather challenging budgetary climate right 

now. For Dr. McKinley, the questioned frequently arises, you know, 

why can’t more of this be done out of the private sector? So if you 

can talk about what you think the implications are if we continue 

to cut back on basic R&D, what is the likelihood that Microsoft or 

other private companies would fill in the gap of the research that 

now is being done on basic R&D? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So most companies aren’t making even the modest investment that Microsoft is making. A startup company takes 

some ideas that are in a university and doesn’t exist until those 

ideas exist and then they become a billion-dollar industry and a 

competitor of Microsoft’s, like Google. So those kinds of activities 

just won’t happen in big established companies, even ones that believe as strongly in research and the research ecosystem as Microsoft. 

Ms. ESTY. I would also like you—all three of you have mentioned 

the importance of education. I have a junior in college who is doing 

computer science and astrophysics. But there are not many girls in 

his class, I will tell you that, very few young women. Could you 

talk about what you see as the opportunities and what actually we 

can be doing particularly at the younger ages? What can we be 

doing in this country, if we are going to get U.S. competitiveness, 

which is this long pipeline? And as he tells me, Mom, these classes 

are really hard. I could be doing much better in economics or in my 

major, political science, but, you know, computer science and physics are really hard. So what can we—your insights, what can we 

do with MOOCs, with other things? What should we be doing as 

a country and how does R&D fit into that? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So we have to have better math and IT education. Right now, computer science is—the AP class is only taught 

in five percent of high schools across the country. If people, especially women and minorities, don’t have exposure to computer 

science as high school students, they never decide to pick it up in 

college anymore, because now, there is a dichotomy of skills and 

they feel like they are already behind because it is a hard major. 

And so I think what we need to be doing is prepping more of our 

students in high school to have the skills that at least it is a choice 
52 

for them. So more rigorous math and science classes and the preparation, the right sets of skills so that they can do them. 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. A comment that I think is important is that computer science needs to be viewed as part of STEM. In the State of 

Washington, where I am, it is part of essentially commercial education. It is in there with woodshop and metal shop and cooking 

and, you know, I took print shop when I was in high school in 

Washington, D.C., but I don’t use it a lot today. Every student 

going forward needs to understand what we call computational 

thinking. Every field, whether it is biology or sociology, is utilizing 

computational thinking. That is models and algorithmic expression 

and decomposing problems into pieces you can solve and assembling and testing those results. We do this in our daily lives. 

So I think of programming as the hands-on inquiry-based way in 

which we teach computational thinking. It can be an end in itself 

but at the K to 12 level, computational thinking as part of STEM 

embodied in AP computer science, which uses programming as an 

inquiry-based way to teach that, is critical for all students. 

Dr. GAITHER. So this is a subject I am pretty passionate about. 

And we lose a shocking number of our young girls around third or 

fourth grade and we never get them back. I have a daughter that 

is struggling right now as a junior to decide whether she wants to 

go into a STEM field or into art. It is really that far apart. I think 

we need to be a little more aggressive and get funding streams to 

connect what is going on in the undergraduate population and go 

all the way back into the educational pipeline as far back as third 

grade and get them thinking about the computational thinking but 

also give them examples. Why are we doing this? Why do we care? 

How will it benefit society? In my experience, the young girls that 

I have worked with, once you educate them about how it is going 

to impact society, they are all on board. They are interested. 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So I just want to add the creativity part of computer science is often undervalued and that we want our young 

people to know that they can be creators of technology; it is not 

just consumers and users of it. And that it is now easy with some 

of the technologies such as robotics, Kinect, and other things to 

really help them if we provide some educational tools to go along 

with some of these technologies to help them see how to satisfy 

their needs for creativity in this field, which is very exciting. 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. I wanted to say one word about MOOCs, which 

is something that you raised and other Members have raised. The 

notion that what you learn in college lasts you for a lifetime, that 

is a notion we left behind in the 20th century. So one thing MOOCs 

do is give you the opportunity to pick up knowledge that you need 

throughout your lifetime. I think there is an enormous amount of 

work to be done in understanding exactly how people learn through 

MOOCs and figuring out how to use the large-scale data to understand how people learn and how we can teach them better. 

We just ran a workshop the past two days in Washington, D.C., 

on exactly this subject, which is what is the science that we can 

do in this online scalable world to understand how to teach and 

learn better? So I think there are enormous opportunities here, 

particularly for lifelong learning. The jury is still out on whether 

it dramatically changes the four-year college experience or K to 12. 
53 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you very much. Yeah, in the area of 

education—I will make a brief comment—there is a program in Indiana, in Indianapolis, called Project Lead the Way. I don’t know 

if anyone has ever heard of that. But they are doing exactly what 

some of you are talking about in high schools around the country, 

a lot in Indiana, especially in Evansville where I live, and focusing 

on engineering education, hands-on, and how children and young 

adults learn better. If we can show them exactly what you all have 

said, how it impacts them and not just have it on a sheet of paper, 

so that is very important. 

I will now go into a second line of questioning. We have votes 

coming up at three o’clock but I think we have time for a second 

round of questioning. So I will yield to Mr. Lipinski. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I always have to mention—I do mention I have two degrees in engineering but I always 

have to say that my wife has a degree in math, so we cover a few 

of the STEM fields there. 

I want to give Dr. Lazowska his opportunity here to do his very 

short version of walking us through the—something you had mentioned, talking about the technology that Apple pulled together to 

develop the iPad, how they originated with federal research investments. So you are going to get 4 minutes to do this. We have had 

this done—you posted a briefing before for the Committee on this, 

but can you give us a short version right now? Just show us how 

federal research wound up in this device. 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. Thank you so much. Here are just a couple of examples. The multi-touch interface, this is the sort of zoom with 

your fingers, goes back to federally supported research. And in fact, 

in the late 1990s, Apple acquired a company spun out from the 

University of Delaware with federal funding in which this multitouch gestural interface work was done. And that became the interface on the original iPhone and now on the iPad. That is one example. One of the great things about this device is the suite of sensors. There is a GPS, there is a compass, things like that, that tell 

you where you are, make driving directions work in your GPS unit 

or in your iPad or iPhone or Windows Phone I have to say. And 

these sensors go back to physics research in the 1930s, all right, 

which led to things like the atomic clocks which make the satellites 

work and eventually the GPS that we deployed in satellites. The 

miniaturization driven through the NITRD program of these components makes it possible to put it in a phone or a device like this. 

Academic and industry research—much of the academic research 

funded by the Federal Government has changed the way we design 

integrated circuits and the very architecture of the microprocessors. 

This is Dr. McKinley’s—one of her specialties. But we designed 

microprocessors, including the one in this device, in an entirely different way to an entirely different architecture than we were doing 

before the NITRD investment. I could go on and on and I appreciate the opportunity, but the important thing is the ideas in this 

device go back in some cases to basic research 80 years. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. And maybe we could do another— 

maybe come in again. I know some new Members of the Committee 

maybe come in and get the extended version of—— 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. We would welcome the opportunity. Thank you. 
54 

Mr. LIPINSKI. And since you didn’t take up all the 4 minutes, I 

wanted to throw out another question just in general about ideas 

about how can MOOCs help STEM education? How do you see 

those? Briefly, what are your thoughts on that? Dr. McKinley? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So the reason the jury is out on MOOCs is because we know that interactive activities with a great teacher who 

inspires you, with someone who sees what you are doing wrong as 

you try to work the problem, is one of the most effective ways to 

get people excited and to educate them. So my kids are seeing a 

flipped classroom right now where you have a lecture from your 

regular teacher and then in the classroom you are doing the example problems or working through a worksheet, and so then, the 

teacher is watching you. 

So I feel like that that is probably the most effective way that 

we are going to see MOOCs, so you have the best lecturer in the 

world, so people have polished this to be perfect, and then you have 

tutors or your teacher is now doing the hands-on watching how you 

understood, what kind of educational experience that you need. Because although many computer science lectures have just the professor talking at the front of the room, that is not where you really 

learn how to do computer science. 

So it has to be a mix of these different learning styles and 

MOOCs, I think, are going to have a role perhaps mostly in lifelong 

learning with very motivated people who already learned their 

learning style. But I think in terms of MOOCs having a huge effect 

on my 11-year-old, I don’t think that is going to motivate him to 

do his math homework. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. I think there is a lot more to say here but just for 

my colleagues I think may have some questions, I am going to yield 

back right now, and hopefully, we could come back to this another 

time. 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you. I yield to Mr. Stockman. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. I just have a quick question. This to me is really 

phenomenal about computer security and everything. And as you 

can tell from the line of questioning, I think it weighs on a lot of 

our minds. And the Administration and Congress got $800 billion 

or some people say 1 trillion in stimulus money. Did any of you receive any of that or request any of that funding for computer security? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. I got some of that money. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. How much did you get? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. I got $500,000 and I employed four graduate students over the three courses of the year, and those people are 

working at Intel, Facebook, and Google. And one of them is a professor. So that helped create jobs because I was able to hire graduate students and they are highly trained and—— 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Was—excuse me. I apologize. We are running 

short, close to vote, but was it specifically for computer security? 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So this research spanned computer security and 

computer systems, which I think is this intersection of these two 

areas. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Well, I am wondering because in terms of money, in terms of government, you mentioned $90 million. That seems 

nominal for such an important critical—I mean our infrastructure 
55 

is so dependent upon it, it is kind of, I don’t know, bizarre that we 

don’t spend more money defending the life system of this nation. 

Dr. MCKINLEY. The issue with cybersecurity is that it is not just 

something, as Ed pointed out, that you can Band-Aid on—— 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Right, full-time—— 

Dr. MCKINLEY. —it has to be—you have to have it as part of the 

whole system that you are building. And so it is not going to be 

solved just by the people who are only experts in security working 

on it. It has to be partnership between people who work on runtime 

systems and power efficiency and designing architectures. These 

people have to work together and design from the get-go. And so 

it is not enough to just say, oh, we are going to explode the amount 

of money in computer security, because the way you make these 

partnerships is much more complicated and it requires a richer 

risk portfolio that has a lot of investments in different areas to get 

people to partner with them. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. But Dr. McKinley, what I am saying from our 

standpoint, it would be helpful if we had some guidance because I 

think this is very critical to our infrastructure. And I appreciate 

you coming out today and I look forward to more guidance and how 

we can help you secure our Nation’s lifeblood. I really appreciate 

all your help. 

Dr. MCKINLEY. So then these large multidisciplinary projects 

where you are saying let us make some software systems more secure, let us make architectures more secure, so it is a partnering 

of people who are experts on cybersecurity and people who are experts on that topic area that you are trying to make more secure. 

I think those broad, multidisciplinary, big-bet kind of investments 

that NSF has done very well in several instances, including under 

my graduate career are the ways to make that happen. And that 

is much more complicated than just saying we are going to throw 

a ton of money at cybersecurity and good luck. And we don’t care 

if you partner with anyone. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Well, I don’t know about saying good luck. But 

I was actually following up on—— 

Dr. MCKINLEY. No, no—— 

Mr. STOCKMAN. —his comments that it was $90 million. And I 

thought in terms of our goals and our objectives, I think $90 million would have been very wisely spent if we gave it to you. 

Chairman BUCSHON. Thank you. And I—unless you want to comment on that. 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. All I can say is that I agree with Dr. McKinley 

and with you. There are some areas of critical importance where 

we need greater investment, and it is important to realize that the 

federal investment in fundamental research is multiplied so many 

times over in its impact over the long term. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. And I agree with you. I just wish we allocated 

billions instead of millions. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman BUCSHON. Gentleman yields back. 

Ms. Esty? 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you. Yes, I would like to follow that up a little 

bit because it seems to be part of this is the inherent tension between what we do, which tends to be dealing with the urgent; and 

the important, which is the long-term R&D. And so how we get the 
56 

marriage of those two so that we address these important problems, Dr. Lazowska, you talked about the importance of patience 

in basic R&D. 

And we are facing—Representative Stockman and I sat in on the 

same briefing by General Alexander, which was completely terrifying to us about how incredibly vulnerable we are at every level 

and we haven’t even really talked about the energy grid, which is 

truly stupefyingly terrible because we know they don’t even have 

systems that are 20 years old. They are older than that right now. 

So that is a different order of challenge because they aren’t even 

operating the way they ought to be, much less are they secure. 

So if any of you have thoughts on how we balance this need for 

problem-solving about these urgent, immediate needs and yet also 

fund basic research that we can’t exactly say where is it going to 

lead but we do know it is going to lead to these important innovations down the road. 

Dr. LAZOWSKA. I am afraid this is why we vote for you. These 

are very difficult challenges. 

I will say that shortly after September 11, 2001, I was on a National Academies panel that looked at IT R&D relative to national 

security, and what we concluded was precisely that investments in 

protecting our vast infrastructure that relies on computing are 

much more important than my inability to buy from Amazon one 

afternoon because the Internet is down. All right? So every element 

of our critical national infrastructure relies now inherently on information systems. And we have to recognize that does represent 

a huge vulnerability. 

Chairman BUCSHON. All right. I would like to thank the witnesses for their valuable and very interesting testimony. And I 

have one of those new Xboxes by the way. My kids love it. It is just 

awesome. Got it for Christmas. 

There are Members of the Committee who may have additional 

questions for you and we will ask that you respond to those in writing. The record will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and written questions from the Members. The witnesses are 

excused and the hearing is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 3:02 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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