CRA Bulletin
April 19, 2001
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FY2002 Federal Budget Request for R&D is Disappointing
President Bush unveiled his FY 2002 budget proposal on April 9, 2001, and the unfavorable treatment of federal research and development programs is alarming. The Administration's plans to cut taxes, increase Medicare spending, and pay down the national debt leaves little new money for discretionary spending. Moreover, within the overall R&D budget, medical and defense research are slated for disproportionate increases, so most other federal R&D agencies face the prospect of declines in funding across their programs. The Congress has reacted strongly to the Administration's plans to reduce science budgets with a variety of letters, reports, and other actions. Legislators will have the opportunity to redress the situation during the annual appropriations process. More information can be found on the CRA Government Affairs website's Budget page <www.cra.org/govaffairs/budget/>, including analyses and funding tables for key research categories <www.cra.org/govaffairs/budget/analysis02.html>.
NSB Draft for Comment: "The Scientific Allocation of Scientific Resources"
The National Science Board (NSB) has issued a draft for comment paper entitled "The Scientific Allocation of Scientific Resources." The paper was prepared by the NSB Committee on Strategic Science and Engineering Policy Issues. It contains the preliminary recommendations from the committee's study on how priorities might best be set across fields and disciplines in the Federal budget for research. The report makes a number of recommendations regarding its findings, which are:
The allocation of funds to research is primarily a political process that should be informed by the best scientific advice and data available.
A strengthened process for research allocation decisions is needed. Such allocations are based now primarily on faith in future payoffs, which are difficult to defend against alternative claims on the budget that promise concrete, more easily measured results and are supported by large and vocal constituencies.
The pluralistic framework for Federal research is a positive aspect of the system, and increases possibilities for funding high risk, high payoff research. An improved process for budget coordination and priority setting should build on strengths of the current system and focus on those weaknesses that can be addressed by improved scientific input.
There is a need for regular evaluation of Federal investments as a portfolio for success in achieving Federal goals for research, to identify areas of weakness in national infrastructure for S&T, and to identify a limited set of the top priorities for new research investments.
Additional resources are needed to provide both Congress and the Executive branches with data, analyses and expert advice to inform their decisions on budget allocations for research.
The report can be found at www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2001/nsb0139/
William. A. Wulf Re-Elected as NAE President
The National Academy of Engineering recently announced that William A. Wulf has been re-elected President of NAE, a position he has held since 1997. He is on leave from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where he holds the AT&T Chair in Engineering and Applied Sciences. A distinguished computer scientist, Wulf has been assistant director of the National Science Foundation; chair and chief executive officer of Tartan Laboratories Inc., Pittsburgh; and professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. His six-year term will begin July 1, 2001.
Under Wulf's leadership, a number of NAE initiatives have been launched in such areas as public understanding of engineering, technological literacy, engineering education, diversity of the engineering work force, earth systems engineering, and planning for extremely large urban areas, or megacities, in developing countries or regions prone to natural disasters. In addition, the NAE awards program has been expanded to now include presentation of five awards, three of which award a $500,000 honorarium and a gold medal, to recognize extraordinary contributions to engineering and society.
More information about Wulf's re-election, as well as on the election of a new treasurer and three councilors as members of the Academy's governing council, can be found at www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/041201?OpenDocument
Healthy Increase in Federal R&D Funding for FY2001
Data analysis recently released by the AAAS shows a healthy increase in federal R&D funding this year. Total federal support for R&D exceeded $90 billion for the first time in FY2001. Essentially every major R&D funding agency received more in FY2001 than in FY2000. In fact, Congress allocated more than the President requested in most R&D funding agencies. One exception was NSF, which nevertheless received an increase of 13% over FY2000. Other increases in R&D budgets included Energy 12%, NASA 11%, Defense 7%. For the first time in two decades, defense and nondefense research budgets were near parity.
For more information, see www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/rd/ca01main.htm
Electronic and Internet Voting Reliable Enough
Two recent reports indicate that there are more than a few wrinkles to be ironed out with electronic voting systems. Reliability and data security top the list of concerns.
A team from M.I.T. and Caltech have released a revised version of their preliminary findings: "Residual Votes Attributable to Technology." (www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/index.html) They collected data on election returns and machine types from approximately two-thirds of the counties in the U.S. over the last four presidential elections. The report's central finding is that "manually counted paper ballots have the lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots, followed closely by lever machines and optically scanned ballots. Punchcard methods and systems using direct recording electronic devices [such as touch-screen computers] had significantly higher average rates of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots than any of the other systems."
The "Report of the National Workshop on Internet Voting" was prepared for the National Science Foundation by the Internet Policy Institute and the University of Maryland, who organized the workshop. According to the report, a number of serious security and reliability obstacles will need to be overcome before the shortcomings exposed by the recent elections can be addressed via remote electronic voting. NSF's Digital Government Program will help fund research in three broad areas identified in the workshop report. For further details, see www.internetpolicy.org/media/PR01-18.html
SIAM Reports on Computational Science Graduate Education
The SIAM Working Group on CSE Education has released a report on graduate education in computational science and engineering. The report attempts "to define the core areas and scope of CSE, to provide ideas, advice, and information regarding curriculum and graduate programs in CSE." Programs at Stanford, Texas-Austin, Illinois-Urbana, Purdue, ETH Zurich and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm are discussed as model programs. The committee was chaired by Professor Linda Petzold (UC Santa Barbara). A printed version can be found in SIAM Review Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 163-177. An electronic version is available at www.siam.org/journals/sirev/43-1/37974.html
A list of CSE graduate degree programs can be found at www.siam.org/world/compsci/cplsci.htm.
AIP "2000 Physics Academic Workforce Report"
The American Institute of Physics has recently released a report on the physics academic workforce in the year 2000. Degree-granting physics departments in the United States employed 8375 full-time equivalent physics faculty--up 175 over six years earlier. About 60% of these faculty were employed in doctoral-granting departments. The faculty is overwhelmingly white and male--with only 1.8% black and 2.0% Hispanic. Two-thirds of African-American physics faculty are employed by Historically Black Colleges and Universities--and only 38 African-Americans and 81 Hispanics are employed by doctoral-granting physics departments. Turnover and retirement rates have increased, with the retirement rate above 3% for the first time. New hires and recruitments were also up, with 335 tenured and tenure-track faculty hired in 2000. Women were slightly more likely to be hired than men into tenured, temporary full-time, and part-time positions; but men were more likely to be hired into tenure-track positions. There were relatively few new PhDs hired into tenure-track positions in doctoral-granting physics departments. These departments typically populated their faculty ranks by hiring people who had previously served as postdocs or had worked at other universities or in nonacademic settings.
These statistics are taken from Rachel Ivie, Katie Stowe, and Roman Czujko, "2000 Physics Academic Workforce Report," American Institute of Physics. Contact stats@aip.org or see www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/awf01.pdf. Of related interest, see Kate Kirby, Roman Czujko, and Patrick Mulvey, "The Physics Job Market From Bear to Bull in a Decade," Physics Today April 2001, pp. 36-41.
Cost/Benefits of a College Education
There has been a renewed interest in the value of a college education in these days when many young people leave for IT jobs before finishing college or even high school. The Mortenson Research Seminar on Public Policy Analysis of Opportunity for Postsecondary Education has provided new statistical information demonstrating the economic value of a college education. According to their analysis, the average male with a bachelor's degree will earn $1,160,000 more over the course of a 40-year career than the average male with only a high-school diploma. The Lifetime earning difference is $600,000 for women and $1,600,000 for the family headed by a person with a bachelor's degree. For every $1 spent on higher education cost, the payback in extra lifetime earnings is $34.85 (male, public college), $13.83 (male, private college), $18.06 (female, public college), and $7.17 (female, private college). Interestingly, despite the rapid increase in college expenses, the payoff ratio has traded within a very narrow range for the past thirty years. The cost/benefit analysis for males attending a public college were virtually identical in 1969 and 1999.
For the detailed statistical analysis and other information from this study and other studies on the economic value of higher education to individuals and to society, see www.postsecondary.org. At this site, you will also find discussion of other issues such as college affordability, the gender gap in higher education, tuition tax credits, and merit-based scholarships.
American Institute of Chemical Engineers Establishes Group for Computational Science and Engineering
AIChE has established the Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum (CoMSEF) as a technical forum for the engineers and scientists who work with molecular modeling and simulations. While the Forum's membership predominately will be engineers and scientists who work with molecularly based theories, modeling and simulation in chemical, biological, and materials processes fields, the forum will encourage the exchange of ideas and innovations across disciplines and fields. Although modeling has been used by chemical engineers since the 1920s, it was the growth of powerful computers in the 1980s that have made computational molecular engineering possible.
Computers, provide an effective way to produce an estimated and controlled outcome and computer graphics allow scientists and engineers a way to visualize results. “Modeling is changing ways we attack problems. In the same way that math cuts through all disciplines, these tools open new ways of thinking and new ways of putting together proposals and concepts” says CoMSEF chair Phil Westmoreland.
One of the forum's stated goals is education. To that end, CoMSEF is using the Web to teach and share information on computational molecular modeling. Founding forum members worked with the CACHE Corporation to promote the use and distribution of molecular modeling tools. CACHE, an acronym for Computer Aids for Chemical Engineers, developed a Web site that includes a Web book and primer on molecular simulation, which is available at w3press.utk.edu. More information about the forum and molecularly-based modeling simulation is available at the CoMSEF Web site at www.comsef.aiche.org. For membership information, contact golabjt@bp.com.
IEEE Publishes "The Woman's Guide to Navigating the Ph.D. in Engineering & Science"
This guide by Barbara B. Lazarus, Lisa M. Ritter, and Susan A. Ambrose is designed to unravel some of the mystery around graduate school programs in science and engineering. There are interviews and strategies from women who have found success in academia, industry, and the public sector. Featured topics include funding requirements and standards, qualifiers; making the advising process work; writing the dissertation and defending; searching for a job; learning by critique; balancing competing needs. Dr. Barbara B. Lazarus is the associate provost for academic affairs and an adjunct professor of educational anthropology at Carnegie Mellon University. Lisa M. Ritter is a communications consultant at Carnegie Mellon University and the editor of the quarterly graduate newsletter on campus. Dr. Susan A. Ambrose is associate provost for educational development, director of the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, and a principal lecturer in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. The publication can be ordered from the publications catalog section of IEEE at shop.ieee.org/store/