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The FY 2002 Budget Request for the Information Technology
Research Subactivity is $155.48 million, level with the FY 2001
Current Plan.
(Millions of Dollars)
|
FY 2000
Actual |
FY 2001
Current Plan |
FY 2002
Request |
Change |
Amount |
Percent |
Information Technology Research |
90.39
|
155.48
|
155.48
|
0.00
|
0.0%
|
Total, ITR |
$90.39
|
$155.48
|
$155.48
|
$0.00
|
0.0%
|
NSF's ITR initiative supports activities in research,
infrastructure development and access, and education and training
to advance leading edge capabilities to enable discovering, collecting,
representing, transmitting, sharing and applying information for
testing new ideas and creating new tools. High quality, higher-risk
proposals will comprise a significant portion of the funding for
ITR.
As part of the Foundation's ITR priority area, $155.48
million is requested for FY 2002 including support for the following
areas:
Large Scale Networking;
High-end Computing;
High-end Computation and Infrastructure (including
applications);
High Confidence Software and Systems;
Human Computer Interaction and Information Management;
Software Design and Productivity; and
Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of
IT and IT Workforce Development.
Research begun in the ITR Subactivity in FY 2001
includes:
Research on the scientific and engineering basis
of scalable systems;
Developments toward a content-based information
theory;
Ubiquitous connectivity and access to enable
"anytime-anywhere-anything" access to information;
Research on the social, economic, legal, and
ethical implications of inequality of access to IT;
Design methods for systems with both hardware
and software treated together; and
New computation and physical processes, such
as molecular, DNA and quantum computing.
These research efforts will continue in 2002 and
be expanded with new emphasis areas: Cyber Infrastructure Research,
Human Augmentation and the Interface of Biology and Information
Technology.
Cyber Infrastructure Research: This area will
support research for creating a new generation of information systems
to support research and education. The information revolution to-date
has focused on computers and communications - notable achievements
are the prevalence of desktop computing, terascale supercomputers,
and the Internet. The next transformations will integrate content
sources, storage, and new modes for humans to access information.
Scientific research is moving to large, shared instruments, to wide-area
sensing and observing, and to shared data resources. These changes
are creating massive amounts of data that will require new methods
for storage, search and access, new techniques for distribution
and sharing in the scientific community, and new tools for analyzing
and presenting data and analysis. The scale and precision of data
along with expanded computing power is motivating research on new
ways to analyze and process information. Cyber Infrastructure research
will build on many CISE research efforts to catalyze the next transformation
of information systems including Grid Computing, Digital Libraries,
Virtual Reality/Telepresence, and High Performance Networking and
Middleware Applications. This research will provide the scientific
and technical foundation to build Cyber Infrastructure systems that
support research and education in all areas of science, social science
and humanities and that extend access to world-class resources to
all areas of the nation and to all citizens.
Human Augmentation: The advances of personal
computing, the Internet and the WWW have made truly impressive advances
in extending access to information to a wider range of people. We
have barely begun to make computers and information resources easy
to use and access. The challenge we face is to use the power of
computing and communication to make these systems more suited to
human abilities and needs. Specific areas for research will be focused
where progress has high potential for wide impact. Speech research
will seek to make computer systems able to interact with humans
in the most common mode of interaction that humans use. Research
on interfaces for the differently-abled will create new ways to
access and use computers and all the devices that computers can
control. This will impact both the handicapped population, which
is poorly served by current systems, and people whose abilities
are changing due to aging. The massive information found on the
WWW - as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of "hits"
that most web searches return - make finding the "information
I want" a challenge for all people. Research that develops
techniques to better understand human needs and locate desired information
will be supported. Lastly, globalization highlights the need for
research on multi-lingual systems that would serve the needs of
multi-national industry, collaborating science teams, or virtual
cultural exchanges.
The Interface of Biology and Information Technology:
This thrust in ITR will focus on four areas where biology has developed
important problems requiring research in IT: (1) Computational
biology uses data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical
modeling and computational simulation techniques for the study of
biological, behavioral and social systems; (2) Biological systems
informatics addresses genomic information analysis, annotation,
and curation; data mining; data modeling; and algorithmic and inferencing
techniques for relating genes to biological function; (3) Biomolecular
computation addresses the application of biotechnology, such
as recombinant DNA, nanotechnology assembly techniques, and solution
and surface technologies, to exploit biology as a medium and a model
for computation and data storage; and (4) Biological information
technology integrates research across disciplines to understand
computation and information flow in biological systems from the
molecular and cellular level, to the multi-cellular level and beyond.
Its goal is to develop new theories, models, and paradigms for information
processing systems based on how biology acts as an information technology.
As part of the ITR program, the Terascale Computing
Systems, requested through the Major Research Equipment (MRE) account,
will provide advanced computing capabilities for the most demanding
scientific and engineering applications. See the MRE account section
for more information.
Within ITR, IT education and workforce activities
will also be supported. IT is emerging as a delivery vehicle for
education at all levels - from traditional school settings to workforce
education - to maintain and improve skills. Research on delivery
methods as well as methods to enhance learning will be emphasized.
Education in IT itself recognizes the shortage of skilled workers
and the rapidly changing skill requirements in this IT area. In
addition to support for students in research projects, this effort
will reach broader segments through programs collaborating with
K-12 and improvement in curriculum for IT at the college level.
Under-representation of minorities and women in the IT education
and career paths will be addressed by research on the underlying
causes for this.
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