• Congress Poised to Pass NSF Increase
• President Signs New Nanotech R&D Initiative
• NRC Proposes Taxonomy for Doctoral Program Rankings
• Recent Trends in Doctorates Awarded in Computer Science
• Two New Reports Published by NCO/ITRD
• NSF Announces $30 Million Program in "Cyber Trust"
• Grand Research Challenges Conference and Panel Discussions
• CRA Academic Careers Workshop: February 23-24, 2004

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Congress Poised to Pass NSF Increase

The House has agreed on a year-ending omnibus appropriations bill that would include a modest increase for computing research at the National Science Foundation. The omnibus bill, a combination of the seven annual appropriations bills Congress failed to pass before the start of the 2004 fiscal year, would boost overall NSF funding to $5.57 billion for FY 2004, an increase of $267 million over FY 03, or 5 percent. While the budget would be the largest ever approved for the agency, it still falls well short of the 15 percent increase authorized by Congress and the President in last year's "NSF Doubling Act."

NSF's Computing and Information Science and Engineering directorate would see its budget rise to $606 million in FY 04, from $582 million in FY 03, a 4.1 percent increase. The increase includes $225 million for NSF's Information Technology Research program (ITR) and $20 million for the agency's cyberinfrastructure initiatives in FY 2004.

Though the House approved the measure, the Senate failed to reach agreement on the bill and has deferred further debate until January 20, 2004.

President Signs New Nanotech R&D Initiative

President Bush on Wednesday approved a congressional authorization for a federal initiative in nanotechnology research and development. The bill, S.189, authorizes $3.7 billion in R&D funding between FY 2005-2008 for the National Nanotechnology Initiative, a coordinated, multi-agency research program modeled after the highly-successful National Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) initiative. As with NITRD, the NSF will take the lead role in running the initiative. The program is likely to have a significant information technology research component, something the Computing Research Association noted in supporting the bill at its introduction.

Press Release by Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), sponsor of the bill: http://www.house.gov/science/press/108/108-159.htm

NRC Proposes Taxonomy for Doctoral Program Rankings

The National Research Council has embarked on an effort to assess doctoral programs at research universities. The results of the last such assessment were published in 1995 (http://bob.nap.edu/html/researchdoc/). Commonly known as the "NRC rankings," these assessments are somewhat controversial but are widely influential within and outside of higher education. For example, they are the rankings that CRA uses in the Taulbee Survey. Early in 2002, the NRC appointed a committee to ask if another assessment should be undertaken and, if so, what the methodology of such a study should be. 

Not surprisingly, the answer to the first question is "yes" and the committee has just published its proposed field taxonomy (http://books.nap.edu/books/030909058X/html/7.html#pagetop) and study methodology (http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10859.html).

Note that the computing disciplines are separated into two distinct fields in the proposed taxonomy (both fall under the major heading of Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering): Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer and Information Science. As well, Information Science is separately listed under "Emerging Fields". CRA is working to clarify the study committee's understanding of the computing disciplines and how they are structured within institutions. 

The NRC is currently raising funds to pay for the study. The study will begin with questionnaires being sent to institutions in July 2004 and questionnaires to programs to follow. If fund raising takes longer than anticipated, the schedule will slip by a year to July 2005.

More information on the committee, its charge and its process may be found at:
http://www4.nas.edu/webcr.nsf/5c50571a75df494485256a95007a091e/5e29ab640a62980285256b88006a4791?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,kuh.

Recent Trends in Doctorates Awarded in the Computer Sciences

Figures released by the National Science Foundation for doctorates received in 2002 show a continued general decline in recent years in the number of degrees granted in the computer sciences (CS). The number of CS doctorates awarded peaked at 997 in 1995. In the following seven years, that number declined nearly 19 percent, to 811 in 2002.

On a more positive note, the portion of CS doctorates awarded to women has slowly increased in the past few decades. In 2002, the 168 doctorates received by women represented nearly 21 percent of those granted. This was the first time that women had received over 20 percent of CS doctorates.

In 2002, non-U.S. citizens received 54 percent of CS doctorates in cases where the citizenship of the recipients was known. This conforms to a recent trend: non-U.S. citizens were awarded more than half of CS doctorates in seven of the ten years leading up to 2002.

The report, Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 2002, is available at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf04303/start.htm

Two New Reports Published by NCO/ITRD

The National Coordination Office for Information Technology Research and Development (NCO/ITRD) has recently published a new report, Human Computer Interaction and Information Management (HCI & IM) Research Needs. This document provides an overview of 10 U.S. Federal Agency (DARPA, EPA, DOE/SC, NOAA, NIH, NSF, NASA, NIST, GSA, AHRQ) presentations on HCI & IM research needs as presented at a government meeting in October 2001. Recommendations fall within four broad areas:

1. Information Creation, Organization, Access, and Use
2. Managing Information as an asset
3. Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Devices
4. Evaluation Methods and Metrics

The document provides a primer to aid in explaining why these problems are difficult. The primer can serve to clarify the issues behind research in these areas. Additional information includes agency points of contact.

A second publication entitled, Grand Challenges: Science, Engineering, and Societal Advances Requiring Networking and Information Technology Research and Development, November 2003, has recently been released. This document uses an illustrative set of Grand Challenge problems that require advances in IT research for solution. Included are several HCI & IM related topics that are of interest.

The direct link for the HCI & IM Research Needs Report is http://www.itrd.gov/pubs/hci-im_research_needs_final.pdf.

The direct link for the Grand Challenges Report is http://www.itrd.gov/pubs/200311_grand_challenges.pdf.

NSF Announces $30 Million Program in "Cyber Trust"

The risks of identity theft, e-mail viruses, denial-of-service attacks, system glitches and other online hazards often make the average person's reliance on computer systems more of a leap of faith than a bond of trust. To promote research into more dependable, accountable and secure computer and network systems, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a solicitation for the Cyber Trust program, which expects to fund up to $30 million in awards. The Cyber Trust program will support up to three research center-level efforts as well as single-investigator and team awards, subject to NSF's merit-review process and the availability of funds. NSF expects that Cyber Trust research centers will involve collaborations among academic, industry and other partners.

The Cyber Trust program is seeking innovative proposals in three broad areas: fundamental research, multi-disciplinary research and education and workforce development. Fundamental research is needed to advance the state of the art in knowledge and technology about trustworthy computing. This covers such areas as security and privacy models and metrics, evaluation and certification methods, denial-of-service prevention, long-lived data archiving methods, privacy protection and network and application forensics.

Multi-disciplinary research is needed to improve understanding of the social, legal, ethical and economic trade-offs that affect the design and operation of trusted information systems. Finally, the Cyber Trust program encourages proposals that encompass education and workforce development to ensure that those who produce, operate and use trusted systems can put the technological advances into practice.

Deadlines and additional information for proposals are available in the official solicitation, which can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?nsf04524

NSF Cyber Trust program: http://www.cise.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_display.cfm?pub_id=6476

Grand Research Challenges Conference and Panel Discussions

In November, the CRA hosted its second Grand Research Challenges Conference. The three-day, invitation only, non-traditional conference brought together a diverse, dedicated group of visionaries to discuss and define the technical and social challenges in information security and assurance. At the conclusion of the conference, the participants identified four challenges worthy of sustained commitments of resources and effort:

1. Eliminate epidemic-style attacks (viruses, worms, email spam) within 10 years;
2. Develop tools and principles that allow construction of large-scale systems for important societal applications -- such as medical records systems -- that are highly trustworthy despite being attractive targets;
3. Develop quantitative information-systems risk management to be at least as good as quantitative financial risk management within the next decade;
4. Give end-users security controls they can understand and privacy they can control for the dynamic, pervasive computing environments of the future.

These challenges will be detailed in a forthcoming report due in early 2004. Following the conference, five of the Conference participants served on a panel to present and discuss the challenges at the National Press Club and to policymakers on Capitol Hill. For more information about the conference and to view slides and video files from the panel discussions go to http://www.cra.org/Activities/grand.challenges/security/home.html.

CRA Academic Careers Workshop: February 23-24, 2004

CRA plans to hold another in its highly successful series of workshops for new faculty and advanced graduate students in computer science, computer engineering, computational science, and other computing-related disciplines. The workshop focuses on practical methods for having a successful and fulfilling academic career.

The workshop includes talks on NSF, DARPA, and DoD, providing overviews of the agencies' operations and funding programs. There also will be a workshop led by NSF staff on how to write a good grant proposal. It is collocated with the CRA Board of Directors' meeting and the CRA Computing Leadership Summit, the latter bringing together the presidents, executive directors, and other senior volunteers from AAAI, ACM, CACS/AIC, CRA, CSTB, IEEE Computer Society, SIAM, and USENIX. A joint reception will be held with CRA board members and Summit attendees in order to give workshop participants an opportunity to meet informally with senior leaders from the computing community.

The workshop website is at http://www.cra.org/Activities/workshops/academic.careers/2004/

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