|
MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES $181,870,000
The FY 2003 Budget Request for the Mathematical Sciences
(DMS) Subactivity is $181.87 million, an increase of $30.39 million, or
20.1 percent, over the FY 2002 Current Plan of $151.48 million.
(Millions of Dollars)
|
FY 2001
Actual
|
FY 2002
Current Plan
|
FY 2003
Request
|
Change
|
Amount
|
Percent
|
Mathematical Sciences
|
121.44
|
151.48
|
81.87
|
30.39
|
20.1%
|
Total, DMS
|
$121.44
|
$151.48
|
$181.87
|
$30.39
|
20.1%
|
Advances in science and engineering, driven in part by increasingly
sophisticated and readily available computing environments, have lifted
the mathematical sciences to the forefront of science and engineering,
reshaping modern discovery through quantitative predictions, instrumentation
development, modeling, visualization, computational algorithms, and optimization
methods. Science and engineering are becoming more mathematical and statistical,
not only in the physical, engineering and informational sciences, but
also the biological, geophysical, environmental, social, behavioral, and
economic sciences.
NSF has a crucial role in the support of academic research
in the mathematical sciences, providing nearly 70 percent of all federal
academic support. NSF-supported research involves a broader range of infrastructure,
fundamental research, and multidisciplinary research topics than that
sponsored by other federal agencies that support academic mathematical
sciences research. Especially important is the critical function of the
mathematical sciences in the education and training of the nation's scientific
and engineering workforce.
Mathematical Sciences includes areas such as analysis, geometry,
topology, foundations, algebra, number theory, combinatorics, applied
mathematics, statistics, probability, biomathematics, and computational
mathematics. Awards in these areas support a variety of research projects,
multidisciplinary projects, and Focused Research Groups, with some grants
including funding for graduate and postdoctoral students as well as for
workshops, computing equipment and other research and education needs.
In addition, this Subactivity supports infrastructure efforts across the
mathematical sciences, including national research institutes, postdoctoral
research fellowships, graduate education, broadened career experiences
for researchers, research conferences and workshops, shared scientific
computing research equipment, and undergraduate investments such as Research
Experiences for Undergraduates (sites and supplements).
The pervasive nature of the mathematical sciences in underpinning
and enabling much of today's scientific, engineering, commercial, and
defense-related activities is illustrated by the following examples:
- Describing the theory of how insects manipulate the flow of air around
them, a researcher at Cornell University determined how the rotating
motion of insect wings during flapping creates non-linear vortices that
permit the insect to hover. These vortex dynamics explained the role
of the phase relation between the wing translation and the rotation
in generating lift.
- Researchers on a Focused Research Group Award to several institutions
have developed a highly competitive, nonlinear-based approach to optical
fiber transmission of light. The mathematical theory produces precise
pulse shapes with maximal fiber lifetimes. Effective computational techniques
have been added that address the randomness in optical fiber links that
has historically limited performance of high-speed optical fiber communications.
- In an award jointly supported by the Biological Sciences Activity
and the Mathematical Sciences Subactivity, researchers at Rockefeller
University and the Universidad de Buenos Aires identified improved control
tactics for a vexing public health problem in Latin America. Mathematical
models, calibrated to detailed household data in northwest Argentina
showed that simple and inexpensive methods could prevent Chagas disease
- a disease that is often fatal and spread by a blood-feeding bug.
- Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a
discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method for the two-dimensional,
depth-integrated shallow-water equations. The resulting computational
methods have been used in the development of a complex shallow-water
simulator, called UTBEST (University of Texas Bay and Estuary Simulator).
The simulator can model and predict spread of a contamination event
in the Houston Ship Channel with the domain being all of Galveston Bay.
The FY 2003 Budget Request of $181.87 million will enhance
interdisciplinary research groups and other collaborative mechanisms that
integrate the strength of the mathematical sciences with chemistry, materials
research, physics, astronomy and other sciences and engineering.
Of special importance in FY 2003 is the Mathematical Sciences
priority area investment of $47.39 million, an increase of $17.39 million
over the FY 2002 investment in interdisciplinary mathematics. This investment
reflects the importance of mathematical and statistical sciences in the
kinds of crosscutting science and engineering research areas described
above.
The FY 2003 increases will support:
- Research in dynamical systems, structure and geometry
of the physical world, and other mathematical and statistical fundamental
research necessary to support advances in interdisciplinary research.
- Focused mathematical sciences research teams, interdisciplinary
training groups, and other collaborative mechanisms related to advancing
science and engineering. For example, the Division of Mathematical Sciences
and the Geosciences Directorate plan a GEO-Math partnership to advance
the understanding of problems arising from differences in scales, both
time scales and distance scales, in geophysical problems. It is anticipated
that the FY 2002 interagency partnerships with DARPA and NIH will be
continued.
- New and continuing national institutes in the mathematical
sciences that will address the growing interface between the mathematical
sciences and other disciplines and the mathematical and statistical
problems whose solutions will contribute to both fundamental knowledge
and national needs.
- An increase of $10.0 million, to approximately $26.0
million, for the Grants for Vertical Integration of Research and Education
in the Mathematical Sciences (VIGRE). This program supports undergraduate,
graduate and postdoctoral education and training activities and curriculum
development designed to improve and reform the research and training
opportunities in the mathematical sciences.
|