CRA Bulletin

January 17, 2003

• New NSF Program on Sensors To Fund $34 Million in Research Projects

• R&D Spending Expected to Rise in 2003

• Number of Doctorates Awarded Drops to Nine-Year Low in 2001

• Researchers at PARC Working on Safeguards to DARPA's Total Information Awarenenss Project

• National Research Council Assessing Research Doctorate Programs

• CPST Announces New Database with Employment and Human Resource Data

• CRA Digital Government Fellow to Speak at NSF

• CRA-W Summer Mentoring Program Applications Due February 14

• UMBC to Hold Second R&D Funding Workshop For Women and Minorities

• Career Mentoring Workshop to be Held at SIGCSE 2003;  Travel Support Available

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New NSF Program on Sensors To Fund $34 Million in Research Projects

The National Science Foundation (NSF), through the Directorate for Engineering and the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), announced a broad interdisciplinary program in the area of advanced sensor development, including the development of sensors for toxic chemicals, explosives and biological agents, sensor networking systems in a distributed environment, the integration of sensors into engineered systems, and the interpretation and use of sensor data in decision-making processes. In addition to the CISE and Engineering Directorates, the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the Directorate for Biological Sciences, the Directorate for Geosciences, and the Office of Polar Programs will participate in the reviews, identify proposals of mutual interest, and possibly provide co-funding for some programs.

Full proposals are due March 6th, 2003.  For more information and proposal requirements, see: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03512/nsf03512.htm.

R&D Spending Expected to Rise in 2003 

According to R&D Forecast, an annual study conducted by Battelle and R&D Magazine, total R&D expenditures in the United States are expected to increase about 3.4 percent to nearly $302 billion in 2003. Unlike in previous years, little of this increase will be due to industrial spending. The report finds that:

• Federal spending on R&D is expected to be $89 billion-an increase of 10.5 percent
• Industrial spending on R&D for 2003 is expected to be virtually flat at $194 billion-an increase of less than 1 percent (0.13 percent)
• Universities and other non-profit organizations are projected to spend more than $18 billion of their own funds on R&D-an increase of about 7 percent over 2002 figures.

Repercussions from the attacks of Sept. 11, the faltering economy, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the accounting scandals involving major corporations are expected to have a large impact on R&D trends in 2003.

The January 2 Press Release for the report, which will appear in the January issue of R&D Magazine, can be found at <http://www.battelle.org/news/03/01-02-03_RDFunding.stm>

Number of Doctorates Awarded Drops to Nine-Year Low in 2001

For the first time in nine years, the number of doctoral degrees (Ph.D.s) awarded by U.S. universities dropped to below 41,000 in 2001, according to the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates.

Since 1998, when total Ph.D.s reached an all-time high, a significant decline in science and engineering (S&E) doctorates has led a rollback of total Ph.D.s to pre-1994 levels. However, analysts cite a two-year turn upward in 2000-2001 graduate enrollments in S&E that could reverse the downward trend in doctorates produced in those fields.

The 2001 survey of doctorates reveals that the numbers of non-science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded since 1995 have remained nearly constant, staying at just over 15,200 per year on average over the last six years, with small up-and-down movements each year. Meanwhile, S&E doctorates, since reaching a high point of almost 27,300 in 1998, have dropped by 7 percent since, to just over 25,500 in 2001.

The January 6 NSF Press Release can be found at <http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/pr0304.htm>

Researchers at PARC Working on Safeguards to DARPA's Total Information Awarenenss Project

A team of security specialists, led by researcher Theresa Lunt, at the Palo Alto Research Center,  have entered into a multimillion dollar contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop privacy safeguards for the agency's  planned "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) project. The TIA network would track phone calls, medical records, travel reservations and credit card purchases, searching for suspicious patterns -- all data that Adm. John Poindexter, who is in charge of the project, says is needed to hunt terrorists.  Lunt and her colleagues are trying to ensure that those records and transactions could not be traced to individuals without a court order.  

To read more about these seemingly conflicting DARPA projects, see: http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E1865%257E1092244,00.html#

National Research Council Assessing Research Doctorate Programs

The National Research Council has created a web site for its project on assessment of research doctorate programs in the US. According to the AAU, the current project is beginning with a series of pilot studies on methodology and program taxonomy.  

The web site contains information on committee membership, project staff and program taxonomy and can be accessed at  http://www7.nationalacademies.org/resdoc/index.html.

CPST Announces New Database with Employment and Human Resource Data

The Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) has released a dataset including over 1100 tables and articles concerning the education and employment of scientists and engineers. The database contains information from CPST's publications including: Salaries of Scientists, Engineers and Technicians; Professional Women and Minorities; and Comments.  The database, with free access for members, will be continually updated and users will be able to search for documents by keyword, title, content and category.  Documents are available as tables (in Excel or PDF format) or articles (in Word format). 

To find out more information about the Science, Engineering and Technology Human Resources Database, see http://www.cpst.org/HRDATA/Pages/default2.cfm.  For information on CPST membership and non-member access to the database, see http://www.cpst.org/HRDATA/Pages/NonMemLogin.cfm.

CRA Digital Government Fellow to Speak at NSF

Dr. Amy Bruckman, a Computing Research Association Digital Government Fellow, will speak to a joint meeting of CISE and EHR Directorate staffs at the National Science Foundation on Wednesday, January 29, 2003.  Dr. Bruckman, is an Assistant Professor at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, and a member of the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability (GVU) Center. She received her Ph.D. from the Epistemology and Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab in 1997, and holds a BA in physics from Harvard University. Dr. Bruckman's area of research is in online communities and education, and she is the founder of the Electronic Learning Communities (ELC) research group at Georgia Tech. 

Information from Dr. Bruckman's talk will be available on the CRA website after January 29.  Information from previous DG Fellows talks is available at  http://www.cra.org/Activities/fellows/dgf.html.

CRA-W Summer Mentoring Program Applications Due February 14

The Computing Research Association's Distributed Mentor Project (DMP) for undergraduate women works to increase the number of women entering graduate school in Computer Science and Computer Engineering (CS&E). The project matches outstanding female undergraduates with female mentors for a summer of research at the mentor's institution. This research experience provides students with a window on research and graduate life, and gives them a close mentoring relationship with a faculty researcher. Students receive a stipend of $600 per week.  Mentors will receive stipends of $2500 for mentoring one student or $4000 for mentoring two students.  The DMP is a project of  CRA's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W). 

Students and Mentors may apply on-line at http://parasol.tamu.edu/dmp/.  For more information about CRA-W and its programs, see http://www.cra.org/Activities/craw/index.html

UMBC to Hold Second R&D Funding Workshop For Women and Minorities

Women and minority science and technology entrepreneurs seeking funding from federal agencies such as NSF, DOD, DOE, NIST, etc. are encouraged to attend a funding workshop sponsored by The Center for Women and Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) workshop will be held Monday, February 10, 2003 on the campus of UMBC.   A previous workshop was held September, 2002 and attracted enough interest to schedule a second workshop.

For more information contact Morgan Allyn, mallyn@marylandtedco.org. 

Career Mentoring Workshop to be Held at SIGCSE 2003;  Travel Support Available

The Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (CRA-W) is again offering a career/mentoring workshop for faculty women in undergraduate teaching and research. The daylong workshop will feature presentations and panel sessions with formal and informal group activities and provide critical information and tools for building a successful academic careers.  Through a grant from the National Science Foundation, CRA-W can offer limited funding for registration, travel and hotel accommodation to participants who need assistance to attend.  The workshop is scheduled for Wednesday, February 19, 2003, 8:30a.m. 5:00p.m. in Reno NV prior to the start of the SIGCSE conference..

For more information and to apply for funding, see http://www.cra.org/Activities/craw/projects/mentoring/mentorWrkshp/sigcse_2003.html. For information about  SIGCSE 2003, see:  http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/sigcse2003/

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