Computing Research in the FY 2003 Budget Request 

CRA's analysis of the President's FY 2003 budget proposal indicates that federal funding for information technology (IT) research and development would increase only slightly among Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) activities. NITRD agencies, such as the NSF, coordinate research in six Program Component Areas: High End Computing; Human Computer Interaction and Information Management; Large Scale Networking; Software Design and Productivity; High Confidence Software and Systems; and Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development.

Among the highlights of the analysis:

• NITRD activities for FY 2003 would increase 2.5 percent to $1.9 billion, spread across eleven federal agencies. 
  
• The NITRD request falls $614 million beneath the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) funding recommendation for FY 2003.
  
• NSF has requested $678 million in NITRD-related funding, an increase of $2 million over FY 2002, or 0.3 percent. The bulk of IT-related funding in the NSF request is contained within the request for the CISE directorate, which would grow 2.3 percent over FY 2002 to $526.9 million.
  
• NASA would receive the largest increase under the President’s plan, both in terms of percentage (17.7 percent over FY 2002) and in dollars ($32 million over FY 2002). The Department of Defense (DOD), NOAA, AHRQ, and NNSA would all see decreases in funding compared to FY 2002.

The President's budget submission marks the start of the annual budget debate on Capitol Hill and sets into motion the year-long appropriations process. The budget now goes to Congress, where it will be considered (or not) by the various budget, authorization, and appropriations committees who will, with the President's assent, ultimately determine the final funding levels next fall.

The context for the FY 2003 IT R&D budget request and an agency-by agency analysis can be found at http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/content.php?cid=4, with an accompanying chart at http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/content.php?cid=5.

CRA's analysis of IT R&D is one part of the the American Association for the Advancement of Science's wider analysis of the FY2003 R&D budget proposal. AAAS Report XXVII, Research and Development FY 2003, can be found at http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/rd/fy03.htm 

House Science Committee Expresses Concern with the FY 2003 Budget

The House Committee on Science's comments, or "Views and Estimates," on the President's FY 2003 budget proposal call for increased federal funding for technology R&D and for greater balance in the R&D portfolio-- which it says is skewed towards the biomedical sciences.

Among the Committee's comments and recommendations:

• "The biomedical sciences, in general, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in particular, are growing out of all proportion to any other element of the R&D budget. Indeed, just the increase proposed for the NIH in FY03 is larger than the entire proposed research budget for NSF."
  
• Thirty-two percent of the proposed increase in the NSF's budget comes from the transfer of programs from other agencies. These transfers are unlikely to occur, and without them, "NSF is left with an actual proposed increase of about 3.4 percent -- or about 1 percent above inflation."
  
• "NSF needs an increase (exclusive of any transfers) of at least $420 million, or 8.8 percent, over FY02 levels." 
  
• "While [funding for development programs at] the Pentagon is slated to receive a 12 percent increase, basic and applied research in the Defense Department are flat."
  
• "Concern" about the 2.4 percent cut in funding activities under the Committee's jurisdiction at the Department of Energy, as well as for the future of the Office of Science, which funds user facilities and academic research.

A PDF of the report can be found at http://www.house.gov/science/press/107/107-192views03.pdf. The press release for it and related documents can be found on the House Committee on Science webpage at http://www.house.gov/science/welcome.htm

NRC Report Calls for Greater Coordination of Federal Funding for Biotechnology and IT Research

The National Research Council's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy report, "Capitalizing on New Needs and New Opportunities: Government-Industry Partnerships in Biotechnology and Information Technologies," is the result of a conference which "focused on the nature and implications of emerging trends in the federal research portfolio in biotechnology and information technology, particularly, unplanned shifts in the allocation across sectors of federal funding over the past decade. It further examined historical perspectives on partnerships in this sector, as well as new needs and emergent opportunities in biotechnology and information technology. Finally, it considered steps necessary to ensure that the nation maximizes its return on its investments in research. The conference deliberations are supplemented by commissioned research papers which address the most recent trends in federal funding, discuss the different impacts of the intellectual property regimes, identify emergent needs in biotechnology and IT, reveal decreases in federal support for computing and supporting disciplines, and add empirical support to the Committee recommendations."

In brief, the report recommends:

1. Government and industry should expand support of research partnerships and other collaborative arrangements within and among sectors (government, industry, university, and nonprofit) and take other steps to facilitate multidisciplinary research leading to advances in biotechnology and information technology.
   
2. The scientific community, U.S. industry, and the federal government should explicitly examine the implications of recent shifts in the allocation of federal investment among fields, especially the decline in federal funding for non-defense fundamental research in the physical sciences and engineering, and address possible solutions.
   
3. Federal policymakers should support an infrastructure and create an environment conducive to research partnerships and other collaborative arrangements.

The report can be read online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10281.html

Continued Growth in CS&CE Graduate Programs in 2000/2001

Results from the Computing Research Association's Taulbee Survey indicate that enrollment in graduate-level computer science and computer engineering (CS&CE) programs continued to grow in 2000/2001. Also, slightly more Ph.D. degrees were granted in 2001 than in the previous year. 

The annual Taulbee Survey of Ph.D.-granting CS&CE departments in the United States and Canada is the principal source of information on the enrollment, production, and employment of Ph.D.'s in CS&CE and in providing salary and demographic data for faculty in CS&CE.

Highlights:

• 912 Ph.D. degrees were awarded in 2001 by the 173 responding departments. This is a slight (4%) improvement over last year’s 881, which was the lowest number in more than 10 years.
  
• The number who entered Ph.D. programs increased from 2,062 to 2,702 (31%). The number who passed qualifiers increased from 1,119 to 1,244 (11%), and the number who passed their thesis proposal exams increased from 788 to 917 (16%). The total Ph.D. enrollments increased from 7,857 to 8,810 (12%).
  
• Master’s degrees were awarded to 8,266 students, an increase of 26 percent. Bachelor’s degrees numbered 17,048, an increase of 15 percent.
  
• Fully 60 percent of newly-hired faculty are white, non-Hispanic, even though only 38 percent of the Ph.D. recipients are in this category. By contrast, only 17 percent of the new faculty are nonresident aliens, whereas fully 46 percent of the degree recipients are in that category.
  
• Average salaries increased by 5 percent to 7 percent for different categories of faculty, similar to last year.

Taulbee Survey results are published in each March issue of CRA's Computing Research News. They are also available online at http://www.cra.org/statistics/

Computer Science Leads Growth in S&E Graduate Enrollments

According to the National Science Foundation, enrollments in graduate-level science and engineering (S&E) fields saw an 0.8-percent increase between 1999 and 2000. The greatest gain in enrollment (12 percent) was in computer science, which had the largest increase of any S&E field in both absolute number and in percentage increase.

Despite the increases, the number of science and engineering graduate students in 2000 was still below the 1993 peak.

Students with temporary visas more than accounted for the increase in total S&E graduate enrollment. Enrollment of students with temporary visas increased 11 percent from 1999 to 2000, the fourth consecutive increase in foreign enrollment. Enrollment of U.S. citizens and permanent residents dropped 3 percent.

The NSF Data Brief can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/databrf/nsf02306/db02306.htm 

Panel Urges Innovation in Networking Research

A recent report by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board's Committee on Research Horizons in Networking explores possible ways of developing a networking research agenda. It argues that the current success of the Internet can stifle innovative research. 

In order to invigorate networking research, the report suggests a program which addresses three themes:

• Measuring-- The Internet lacks the means to perform comprehensive measurement on activity in the network. Better information on the network would provide the basis for uncovering trends, as a baseline for understanding the implications of introducing new ideas into the network, and would help drive simulations that could be used for designing new architectures and protocols.
  
• Modeling-- The community lacks an adequate theoretical basis for understanding many pressing problems such as network robustness and manageability. A more fundamental understanding of these important problems requires new theoretical foundations-- ways of reasoning about these problems-- that are rooted in realistic assumptions.
  
• Making disruptive prototypes-- To encourage thinking that is unconstrained by the current Internet, "Plan B" approaches should be pursued that begin with a clean slate and only later (if warranted) consider migration from current technology.

This effort represents a new approach by CSTB to developing research agendas in key areas of information technology: a small workshop in which more than half of the attendees were researchers in other fields.

Looking Over the Fence at Networks: A Neighbor's View of Networking Research, can be found at http://www4.nationalacademies.org/cpsma/cstb.nsf/web/pub_lookingover?OpenDocument or http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10183.html 

Conference: Networking 2002, April 17-18, 2002

[From the conference website:] Major investments and technical breakthroughs have combined to make data communications the most important new medium of the past decade. The annual Networking conferences provide the premier forum for higher education information technology leaders to gather to discuss policy and practical issues associated with advancing networking technologies and usage, and to launch and report on major initiatives. The Networking 2002 conference will bring together leaders from higher education and federal, regional, and state governments to review and evaluate network policy issues, emerging network applications, and the organizational, institutional, and economic opportunities posed by federal government, public, and private sector network development efforts.

People who should attend this conference include campus chief information officers, college and university government relations professionals, campus librarians, computer science faculty members, and government policy leaders engaged in federal information technology issues.

General Session speakers include Congressman Rick Boucher (D-Va), President David Ward (American Council on Education), and Special Advisor Richard A. Clarke (Special Advisor to the President for Cyberspace Security).

The conference will be held in Washington, D.C.

For more information, visit the Networking 2002 website is at http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/

Workshop: Using History to Improve Undergraduate Computer Science Teaching, April 26-28

CRA will hold its second and final workshop on Using History to Improve Undergraduate Teaching of Computer Science in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The meeting is targeted primarily at faculty members who teach undergraduate computer science courses. The speaker list includes a number of European and American historians of computing and computer science faculty who have taken an interest in history.

There is no registration fee, but space is limited and attendees must register in advance. With support from the National Science Foundation, CRA is able to provide a very limited number scholarships. These scholarships include the cost of room and board, but not travel.

More information can be found at http://www.cra.org/Activities/workshops/history/april02.html

CRA Launches Database Project to Aid Research Mentoring Reunion

The Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) is planning a reunion for all students and mentors who have participated in its CREW and DMP research mentoring projects. The Distributed Mentoring Project and the Collaborative Research Experiences for Women projects have been running since 1994 and almost 300 students have been funded through these programs. The reunion will take place on the evening of Friday, October 11, 2002, in Vancouver, B.C., in conjunction with the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. This reunion promises to be a very special event for it will recognize the contributions of mentors and celebrate the successes of the students, some of whom are now mentors themselves!

In order to send invitations to this event and to include participants in the CRA-W database, a website has been established to collect up-to-date contact information. See: www.cra.org/craw/register. All information collected will be maintained in a database at CRA, and will be used only to contact past and current program participants about CRA-W related events.

For information about CRA-W and its projects, see http://www.cra.org/Activities/craw/projects/index.html

For information about the Grace Hopper Conference, see http://www.gracehopper.org/

CRA Executive Director Search

William Aspray, CRA's Executive Director since 1996, has decided to return to academics. In the fall he will join the recently formed School of Informatics at Indiana University in Bloomington as a professor. His last day at CRA will be July 31, 2002. CRA is currently searching for his replacement.

The CRA Executive Director is the lead staff position in the organization, reporting to the chair of the board of directors. The job involves not only managing a suite of approximately 25 programs and a staff of eight, but also working with the board to provide leadership in promoting a vigorous computing research community in North America.

The successful candidate will have many of the following attributes:

• a doctorate in a computing-related discipline
• familiarity with the policy, human resource, and other non-technical issues facing the computing research community
• knowledge of the institutions and individuals active in leadership roles in computing research
• strong analytic and writing skills, and an interest in employing them in writing studies and proposals on behalf of the organization
• previous management experience in a similar setting, such as service as a dean, department chair, industrial laboratory manager, or manager in a funding agency
• experience in membership recruitment and retention in a professional organization

Full details about the position can be found at http://www.cra.org/jobs/cra.html.