Tag Archives: NSF

NSF Program Director, Office of Cyberinfrastructure Employment Opportunities

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The Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) announces a nationwide search for three senior-level researchers to serve as Program Directors. Formal consideration of interested applications will begin in December and will continue until selections are made. While disciplinary expertise will be expected for the program director, the focus of the search is to assemble a scholarly, open-minded, diverse and intellectually integrated group to join the present team in sharing the Office of Cyberinfrastructure’s responsibilities within NSF’s overall mission: to promote the progress of science, to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare, to secure the national defense.

See details at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/oci13001/oci13001.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_14

Perspectives of Working at the Intersection of Science and Policy: Dr. Michael Morgan, Director of the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences at NSF

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Dr. Michael C. Morgan, Division Director for the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences at the National Science Foundation, gave the annual U-M AOSS Nelson W. Spencer Lecture earlier this month.

Abstract: 
This lecture will provide perspectives of working at the intersection of science and policy in a Senate office as a legislative fellow and at the National Science Foundation as a division director. Recent advances in atmospheric prediction and predictability and the challenges and opportunities these advances offer will also be discussed.

Bio:
Dr. Michael Morgan is the Director of the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Morgan’s research focuses on the analysis, diagnosis, prediction, and predictability of mid-latitude and tropical weather systems. While on sabbatical leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 2007-2008 academic year, Dr. Morgan was an American Meteorological Society/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Congressional Science Fellow. During his fellowship year, he worked in the office of U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin (MD) as a senior legislative fellow. His work in Senator Cardin’s office focused on energy and environment issues. Dr. Morgan received his Ph.D. and S.B. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The lecture was recorded and is available in two formats:

NSF Realigns Office of Cyberinfrastructure

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on September 6 plans to realign four program offices in the Office of the Director to maximize research and education outcomes for science and engineering, while enhancing NSF’s operational agility. The proposed organizational changes include:

- The Office of Cyberinfrastructure would become a division within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

- The Office of Polar Programs would become a division within the Directorate for Geosciences.

- The Office of International Science and Engineering would be merged with the Office of Integrative Activities, and the combined unit would become the Office of International and Integrative Activities.

Pending fulfillment of any statutory or other obligations, the transition to the realigned organization would begin October 1, 2012.

Take a Cloud Survey From NSF + XSEDE

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NSF and XSEDE management would like to hear directly from researchers and educators on how they are using the cloud, why they are using the cloud, and the advantages the cloud provides for their research. Researchers who are not currently XSEDE users are especially welcomed to participate.

The relatively short online survey may be found at www.xsede.org/cloudsurvey. (New users will need to register for an account.)

About the Survey
This information will help XSEDE management understand users’ cloud computing experiences so that they can better plan for integrating clouds into the XSEDE architecture. The survey results will be included in an XSEDE Cloud Study report.

Background
The goal of XSEDE is to enhance research productivity. NSF through the XSEDE integrating fabric is committed to promoting a diversity of computing resources, inclusive of clouds, and, in addition, recognizes the opportunity for cloud to play a significant role in many other parts of a scientific workflow. XSEDE must embrace cloud, identify complementary areas that cloud can support, and have a clear strategy for integrating cloud into national cyberinfrastructure. To achieve this objective, a clear understanding of use cases is needed in order to define an optimal cloud interoperability architecture for XSEDE.

Researchers need to perform computations and move data to/from the cloud and to/from other XSEDE resources with ease if XSEDE is to serve as a “one-stop” resource for a range of computation. Cloud integration issues such as authentication, data movement, and accounting, therefore, need to be defined and investigated.

MSU to Hold First CI Days – Oct 25-26

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The first Michigan State University Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Days event will be held on October 25-26, 2012. The conference begins on Thursday, October 25 at 5 p.m. with a reception and poster session. A day of workshops, presentations, and a resource fair will follow on Friday, October 26.

CI Days presents an opportunity for faculty and students to understand the benefits that cyberinfrastructure can bring their scholarly pursuits, to see what others are doing with cyberinfrastructure, and to learn what resources are available on campus, across institutions, and nationally.

More importantly, this will be an opportunity for the MSU community to share information about cyberinfrastructure resources and their use in research. The event will feature:

  • Nationally renowned research leaders from multiple disciplines of study addressing how advanced technologies enable their scholarly work;
  • A panel of National Science Foundation directors discussing the future of CI-enabled discovery and learning;
  • Posters showcasing CI-enabled research at MSU; and
  • Resource fair featuring CI resources available to MSU researchers.

All events will be held on MSU’s campus in Lansing, in the Biomedical and Physical Sciences building. Register here. This event is free and open to the University of Michigan CI community.

Opening Science Gateways to Future Success – See What the NSF is Doing

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In 2009, the NSF funded a study into what will make science gateways successful. Led by Katherine Lawrence of U-M, and Nancy Wilkins-Diehr of the University of California at San Diego, the study looked at:

  • the characteristics of successful gateways that warrant long-term funding, and
  • the potential for transformation in a field through new applications of gateway technologies.

Understanding the types of science and engineering problems and the types of communities that can most benefit from applied, persistent cyberinfrastructure will lead to informed investment decisions.

This 6-minute video summarizes their findings. The video was debuted at the XSEDE12 conference in Chicago, where their paper won best paper in the “Software and Software Environments” track. To read the paper, learn more about the study, and find out how you can be a part of the next steps, visit www.sciencegateways.org.

EarthCube Updates

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This is the program update for April 26, including information on funded projects, upcoming presentations, information on the roadmaps, an update on the June Charrette, and highlights from the community groups. Have questions or comments? Please get in touch with the EarthCube team at earthcube@nsf.gov.

Funding Update

As a result of the first round of Expressions of Interest, a series of awards have been made (information available here). These include community groups forming around essential components of EarthCube (Data Mining, Data Access, Data Discovery, Governance, Workflow, and Semantics). A second set of proof-of-concept awards were also made to support demonstration of possible components of EarthCube. All of the groups are open to participation by anyone with ideas to offer can be joined online if you’d like to be part of the ongoing conversations and activities. A list of scheduled phone calls and events can be found online.

To assist in the tracking of the groups, there will be a weekly posting of updates via email through the site contact list and on the EarthCube website: please see the bottom of this email for this week’s summary.

In addition, a file containing the combined set of Expressions of Interest for the final target date has been posted online. Individual submissions will be updated on this page over the next week.

EGU Presentation April 26

If you’re attending the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2012 in Vienna, Austria, EarthCube Cliff Jacobs will provide an update on EarthCube in session ESSI2.7 at 15:30 on Thursday, 26 April. In addition, on that same day, from 19:00–20:00 in Room 2, Cliff Jacobs will be giving an updated on the U.S. EarthCube efforts. More information is available here.

Roadmaps

One of the primary tasks of the funded projects is to develop roadmaps in preparation for the June 2012 Charrette. Guidance documents for preparing Community Group roadmaps and Concept Groups roadmaps have been posted (http://earthcube.ning.com/profiles/blogs/roadmap-guidance-documents). These groups are open to all participants, if you believe you can contribute to sharping the roadmaps in any or all of the points of the guidelines, please participate in the discussions by joining the groups online.

June 2012 Charrette Update

The next EarthCube community meeting will be held June 12-14. The goal of the meeting is be to create robust drafts of community-derived roadmaps for the funded community groups and to discuss and provide input into the roadmaps for the present concept award portfolio. After the meeting, all roadmap documents will be posted for public comment to allow the broadest possible input from the community and all interested parties. The final versions of the community group road maps will be made public in mid to late summer in preparation for continued funding. Roadmaps, deemed by NSF to be representative of community input and addressing guidance provided, will form the basis of additional funding in late 2012 or early 2013.

The event will begin at 9am on June 12, and will run until 4pm on June 13. The meeting will be open to all participants. Similar to the November 2011 Charrette, you will be able to participate either onsite (at a hotel in Arlington, VA, limited to approximately 140 participants) or virtually (via WebEx and other online technologies). Participants for the onsite component of the meeting will be responsible for the cost of their attendance, which will include a registration fee. Full or partial support of the attendance of early career scientists and junior faculty will be made available.

Additional information about the meeting will be posted online as details are made available.

Group Updates

To help cross-project coordination, each funded group will be posting a brief update as part of this weekly newsletter. This week we’re starting with just information from the community groups, but in following weeks these notes will include information from the concept awards as well. Enjoy.

For general information on all the current awards, including links to join the group discussions, please see this page.

Governance Community Group

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/governance
Workshops & Meetings Hosted (all are open to the public; agendas and WebEx call-in posted to the website):

  • Four formal Steering Committee (SC) Calls/Webinars
  • One SC Workshop in Denver, CO with virtual component
  • Two virtual Plenary Sessions
  • Weekly SC calls on Fridays at 10am PDT/1pm EDT
  • Current Research on Existing Governance Structures (all finished summaries are posted on the website):
  • Finished research on EarthCube White Papers and EoIs focused on governance and system-wide design
  • Finished research on Project Mohole and Weill & Ross IT Governance
  • Actively seeking suggestions from the community on other references to review

Current Focus

  • Organizing community-wide focus groups to address components of the Roadmap
  • Call for group participation is posted on the website site
  • An initial outline is available through Google Docs

Activities Planned:

  • April 27 SC Call, WebEx and Agenda will be posted on the website
  • First focus group sessions week of April 30

Other Information:

  • Coordinating an EarthCube Vimeo site in order to facilitate the recording of and viewing of virtual sessions across the EarthCube community

Semantics and Ontologies Community Group

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/semantics-and-ontologies
Hassan Babaie of the Semantics Group submitted request for session at AGU meeting this fall: Session Proposal (ID: 1398610) entitled: “Semantic Web and ontologies in Earth science”
Virtual WebEx conference was held on 24th April. Summary report being prepared by Krzysztof Janowicz (jano@geog.ucsb.edu) of UC Santa Barbara

Face to face workshop agenda, including speakers and panel members who have volunteered to lead community discussions addressing the elements of the Roadmap identified by NSF, has been finalized (April 30-May1). The workshop will have WebEx capabilities for virtual interaction with the broader community.

Workflow Community Group

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/workflow
We have set up an additional web site describing events and activities in the group, with all the documents that the group is creating as public so anyone in the community can edit and contribute.

We have posted a set of questions to the community concerning workflow technologies, as a vehicle to collect input and project what issues we are most interested in capturing in the roadmap report.

We agreed to set up weekly invited presentations from significant constituents of the geosciences community as identified in the EoIs and selected to the Governance Forum, which will address the Workflow Questionnaire prepared by the group.

Data Mining Community Group

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/data-discovery-mining-integration
Webex meeting held April 13th to discuss logistics, see use case presentation and determine best ways to obtain needs for data mining. Anne Wilson presented use case, “Towards a DDMA Reference Architecture.”
Rahul Ramachandran reviewed data mining EOIs and created a first cut at needed questions for obtaining information about data mining tools, “Data Mining Tools Review Criteria”

Webex meeting held April 20th including a discussion of the EOI review, a use case presentation, logistics and the EarthCube Roadmap for Mining. Joseph Baker presented use case, “Mining the SuperDARN Geospace Facility Database Using Spatio-Temporal Process Discovery Algorithms.”

A session proposal was submitted to the AGU Fall meeting entitled “A Community Roadmap for Discovery, Access, and Mining of Geosciences Data.”

A Google Docs site was set up as a working area to collaboratively develop needed documents for the group. A Google groups site was also set up to serve as a data repository so that DDMA Mining developed materials, background materials, meeting notes, etc. would be easy to find in one central location. The DDMA area on the ning site is being used to post notices and activities, and references documents on the Google sites as needed.

The DDMA Mining group will meet via Webex on Fridays from 2:00 – 3:00 CDT, just prior to the DDMA Access group Webex. The next several Webex sessions will include use case presentations and discussions

The DDMA Mining group is currently addressing ways to obtain information about mining tools, current capabilities, needs and challenges from the widest audience possible. One particular area of focus is encouraging effective communication and understanding between geoscientists and data mining experts.

Data Access Services Community Group

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/data-discovery-mining-integration
Webex meeting held April 13th was a kick-off meeting. Tanu Malik presented (i) goals of the workshop, (ii) broad topics on agenda, (iii) items on the roadmap document, and (iv) a tentative timeline. Members of the community identified their roles in the workshop and discussed a few use-cases to begin with.

Webex meeting held April 20th covered the state-of-the-art through two use-cases, Robert Jacob, Argonne National Laboratory on “Sharing big data with a few colleagues” and Ruth Duerr, National Snow and Ice Data Center on “User Access Issues at the National Snow and Ice Data Center” Robert demonstrated several access control issues in harnessing resources across institutions and presented a few alternatives. Ruth presented issues faced by data centers in making large amounts of data public.

Anne Wilson from University of Colorado also presented the vision for her Reference Architecture. (Anne had presented the RA in the previous Discovery group meeting) Anne will use the RA to document processes that each sub-group is using to get the necessary technical and conceptual end-user requirements.

A session proposal was submitted to the AGU Fall meeting entitled “A Community Roadmap for Discovery, Access, and Mining of Geosciences Data.”

A Google Docs site was set up as a working area to collaboratively develop needed documents for the group. A Google groups site was also set up to serve as a data repository so that DDMA Access developed materials, background materials, meeting notes, etc. would be easy to find in one central location. The DDMA area on the ning site is being used to post notices and activities, and references documents on the Google sites as needed.

The DDMA Access group will meet via Webex on Fridays from 3:00 – 4:00 CDT, just after to the DDMA Mining group Webex. The next several Webex sessions will include use case presentations and discussions.

The DDMA Access group is currently addressing ways to fit all the use cases into a conceptual model and find issues that lie at the interface of discovery mining, and other groups.

Data Discovery Services Community Group

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/data-discovery-mining-integration
Weekly webex for Data Discovery occurs every Wednesday, 12-1PM Pacific time. Ning site has the webex information.
Meetings have been held so far on Wed April 11th, 18th, 25th,

  • April 11th: Kickoff, discuss logistics, plan for report due in June, plan for subsequent meetings.
  • April 18th: Presentation by Steve Richards on metadata standardization and catalog federation in USGIN and NGDMS.
  • April 25th: Presentation by Amarnath Gupta on the NIH-funded Neurosciences Information Framework (NIF) project.

Decided to adopt a “reference architecture” approach for laying out the roadmap for DDMA activities. Anne Wilson will lead this effort.

A session proposal was submitted to the AGU Fall meeting entitled “A Community Roadmap for Discovery, Access, and Mining of Geosciences Data.”

A Google Docs site has been set up as a working area for sharing documents including, meeting minutes, reference docs, and the roadmap report.

The DDMA area on the ning site is being used to post notices and activities, and references documents on the Google sites as needed.

The DDMA Discovery group will continue to meet via Webex on Wednesdays from 12-1PM Pacific time (2-3PM Central; 3-4PM Eastern). The next session on May 2nd will include a presentation fromRobert Gibb, New Zealand about a cloud-based approach for discovery and access. We are also lining up presentations from some industry representatives.

Issues being addressed: Linking to the broad community of geoscientists; Developing a common roadmap for EarthCube data activities (DDMA).

Brokering Concept Award

Group website: earthcube.ning.com/group/brokering
Held a strategy meeting on 23 April where the Brokering Framework Principles were presented and the features of an example broker described.

The NSF guidelines for road map development were discussed, focusing on three topics: challenges, requirements and solutions.

The meeting was an chance for the Brokering Concept Activity to become more familiar with the needs, interests and attitudes of its partners. Excellent feedback from the partners highlighted the benefits and challenges for brokering in EarthCube.

For more information visit EarthCube’s webpage.

Learn More About the “Big Data” Initiative – $200M in New R&D Investments

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At a White House event on Thursday, March 29, an NSF Director announced a new big data solicitation, $10 million Expeditions in Computing award, and awards in cyberinfrastructure, geosciences, and training. Watch the full webcast.

National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Subra Suresh outlined efforts to build on NSF’s legacy in supporting the fundamental science and underlying infrastructure enabling the big data revolution.  Suresh joined other federal science agency leaders to discuss cross-agency big data plans and announce new areas of research funding across disciplines in this field. Read more…

Learn More

Office of Science Technology Policy (OSTP) press release

OSTP fact sheet

White House.gov blog overview from Tom Kalil from the Office of Science Technology Policy (OSTP)

Read the article in The New York Times, including a quote from Farnam Jahanian, head of the National Science Foundation’s computer and information science and engineering directorate, and U-M faculty member.

 

Open Letter from NSF and Farnam Jahanian

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

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

This afternoon at a White House event, the Administration unveiled a Big Data Research and Development Initiative, which creates enormous opportunities for extracting knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. The CISE community is well poised to become an active participant in this new initiative.

NSF Director, Dr. Subra Suresh, joined other federal science agency leaders to discuss cross-agency plans and announce new research efforts to address big data. NSF will direct its current efforts to develop new methods to derive knowledge from data; construct new infrastructure to manage, curate and serve data to communities; and forge new approaches for associated education and training.

The cornerstone of the announcements includes a joint NSF-NIH solicitation on foundational research for big data. The “Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering,” or “Big Data” program aims to advance the core scientific and technological means of managing, analyzing, visualizing and extracting information from large, diverse, distributed, and heterogeneous data sets in order to accelerate progress in science and engineering research. Specifically, it will fund research to develop and evaluate new algorithms, technologies, and tools for improved data management, data analytics, and e-science collaboration environments.

Other announcements included anticipated cross-disciplinary efforts such as an Ideas Lab to explore ways to use big data to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness, and the use of NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, or IGERT, mechanism to educate and train researchers in data enabled science and engineering.

For more information, please see the NSF press release, and the OSTP press release. We look forward to your participation.

Best,
Farnam

—
Farnam Jahanian
Assistant Director for CISE
National Science Foundation

NSF Sends Open Letter to Computer + Information Science Community

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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

—

Farnam Jahanian
Assistant Director for CISE
National Science Foundation