U-M’s own Farnam Jahanian sends an important letter about the new NSF budget plans and the role of CISE. Note the frequent occurrence of the word “cyber.”

Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community,

Yesterday, the President delivered the Fiscal Year 2013 Budget to Congress. The Administration is requesting a total of nearly $7.4 billion dollars for NSF, which is an increase of $340 million, or almost five percent, over the FY 2012 NSF Enacted level. The Request also includes an increase of $56 million, or 8.6 percent, over the FY 2012 Current Plan for the CISE Directorate, for a total of $709.7 million. For more information on the NSF FY 2013 budget, see: http://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2013/index.jsp.

The NSF Director, Dr. Subra Suresh, in his comments yesterday at the NSF FY 2013 Budget Rollout, stated, “There is overwhelming consensus that scientific discovery and technological innovation, driven by a creative and skilled science and engineering workforce, are the engines of economic growth…. Sustained momentum in NSF’s core programs is essential for progress in science and engineering.” I couldn’t agree more and would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm CISE’s strong commitment to its core programs. We continue to cast a wide net and to let the best ideas surface. We ask members of the research community to send us their most transformative ideas, which are then peer reviewed in CISE’s three divisions – Computing and Communications Foundations (CCF), Computer and Network Systems (CNS), and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS). [Requested funding for each of these divisions is increased by approximately nine percent in FY 2013.]

The CISE FY 2013 Request is shaped by investments in its core basic research, education and infrastructure programs as well as by those included in the Foundation-wide OneNSF vision. OneNSF aligns closely with the Administration’s priorities and increases support for fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. And, as stated by Dr. Suresh, “OneNSF empowers the Foundation to respond to new challenges in a global science and engineering environment that is changing rapidly.” In particular, I want to emphasize three OneNSF investments in which CISE is significantly involved – Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), Cyber-enabled Materials, Manufacturing, and Smart Systems (CEMMSS), and Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21). To read the Director’s press release and obtain more information on OneNSF, see: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123111&org=NSF&from=news.

In partnership with the Directorates of Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), CISE provides the scientific and engineering leadership for SaTC.  This investment seeks to protect the Nation’s critical information technology infrastructure, including the Internet, from a wide range of threats that challenge its security and reliability. SaTC emphasizes the long-term investments needed across computer science, engineering, statistics, mathematics, economics, and social science to support scientific foundations for trustworthy systems, induce change, maximize research impact, and, ultimately, transition new concepts and technologies into practice. As part of this investment, CISE also continues to collaborate with EHR in support of the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarships for Service (SFS) program with the goal to increase the number of qualified students entering the fields of information assurance and cybersecurity. [CISE will contribute $69 million to SaTC, an increase of 25.5% over the FY 2012 Current Plan.]

NSF’s CEMMSS program is a path-breaking effort to develop “smart systems” that can sense, respond, and adapt to changes in the environment. This program brings together researchers and educators from the areas of advanced manufacturing, materials science, cyber-physical systems, and robotics to stimulate new directions in research. CISE’s investments include (i) the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program, which aims to deeply integrate computation, communication, and control into physical systems and to engineer complex “smart” cyberphysical systems; and (ii) the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), an interagency program with NASA, NIH, and USDA that intends to develop the next generation of collaborative robots to enhance personal safety, health, and productivity.  [CISE will contribute $91 million to CEMMSS, an increase of 82% over the FY 2012 Current Plan.]

Under OneNSF and in partnership with all NSF Directorates and Offices, CISE will invest in two broad CIF21 areas in FY 2013.  One is Advanced Computing Infrastructure (ACI), which seeks to fully exploit parallelism and concurrency through innovations in computational models and languages, mathematics and statistics, algorithms, operating and run-time systems, software tools, and advanced hardware. The other area, big data science and engineering, aims to advance the core scientific and technological means of managing, analyzing, visualizing and extracting useful information from large, diverse, distributed, and heterogeneous data sets so as to accelerate the progress of scientific discovery and innovation. [CISE will contribute $16 million to CIF21, an increase of 33% over the FY 2012 Current Plan.

In FY 2013 budget request, CISE continues its strong commitment to education and workforce development.  For example, the Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21) program seeks to increase the pool of students and teachers who develop and practice computational competencies in a variety of contexts and to increase the pool of early postsecondary students who have the background necessary to pursue degrees in computing, computation, and data-intensive fields of study.  CISE will also continue its investment in the CAREER program, which supports the integration of research and education of early-career researchers and contributes to the development of future generations of computer and information scientists and engineers.  In FY 2013, it is estimated that CISE will support approximately 16,000 people across the spectrum from undergraduate and graduate students to postdoctoral fellows and senior researchers.

CISE’s budget request also continues to support a number of cross-cutting programs developed over recent years, including Expeditions in Computing, Smart Health and Wellbeing, and Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum (EARS), as well as its investments in mid-scale computing research infrastructure.

As a field of inquiry, computer and information science and engineering has a rich intellectual agenda.  Basic research seeds new programs that keep CISE at the frontiers of knowledge and discovery. I invite you to work with us to ensure that our Nation remains at the forefront of advances in computing science and engineering research and education.

Best regards,
Farnam