Software for Real-World Systems (SRS) Program at NSF

Software for Real-World Systems (SRS) Program at NSF Alan R. Hevner NSF CISE Program Director ahevner@nsf.gov November 2007 Arizona Seminars 1 NSF Disclaimer • Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation November 2007 Arizona Seminars 2 Outline • NSF Vision and Goals • CISE Mission and Organization – – – – Computing and Communications Foundations Computer and Network Systems Information and Intelligent Systems Cross Divisional Emphasis Areas • Software for Real-World Systems (SRS) Program • CreativeIT Program • Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) Program • Expeditions in Computing • Questions November 2007 Arizona Seminars 3 National Science Foundation Vision and Goals • Advancing discovery, innovation and education beyond the frontiers of current knowledge, and empowering future generations in science and engineering – Discovery – Advancing frontiers of knowledge – Learning – World-class science and engineering workforce and scientific literacy of all citizens – Research Infrastructure – Advanced instrumentation, facilities, cyberinfrastructure, and experimental tools – Stewardship – Supporting excellence in science and engineering research and education November 2007 Arizona Seminars 4 National Science Foundation November 2007 Arizona Seminars 5 NSF Appropriations FY 1998 – FY 2008 (Requested) 7 62% Increase from 1998 – 2004 6 5 Flat 7.1% 9.4% Billions of dollars 4 3 2 1 0 November 2007 Arizona Seminars 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 6 2008 1998 1999 Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) • CISE Mission: – to enable the United States to remain competitive in computing, communications, and information science and engineering – to promote understanding of the principles and uses of advanced computing, communications, and information systems in service to society – to contribute to universal, transparent, and affordable participation in an information-based society • CISE Website: – http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=CISE November 2007 Arizona Seminars 7 CISE Organization Office of the Assistant Director Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) Crosscutting Emphasis Areas November 2007 Arizona Seminars 8 CISE Budget 2003 – 2008 Dollars in Millions 600 550 500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Fiscal Year November 2007 Arizona Seminars The requested 9% increase includes $30M for Expeditions and $20M for CDI 9 Computing and Communication Foundations Division (CCF) • Theoretical Foundations (TF) – Computer science theory; numerical computing; computational algebra and geometry; signal processing and communication • Foundations of Computing Processes and Artifacts (CPA) – Software engineering; software tools for HPC; programming languages; compilers; computer architecture; graphics and visualization; design automation • Emerging Models and Technologies for Computation (EMT) – Computational biology; quantum computing; nano-scale computing; biologically inspired computing November 2007 Arizona Seminars 10 Computer and Network Systems Division (CNS) • Computer Systems – Distributed systems; embedded and hybrid systems; nextgeneration software; parallel systems • Network Systems – Networking research broadly defined plus focus areas • Computing Research Infrastructure – Equipment and infrastructure to advance computing research • Education and Workforce – IT workforce; special projects; cross-directorate activities (e.g., REU sites, IGERT, ADVANCE) November 2007 Arizona Seminars 11 Information and Intelligent Systems Division (IIS) • Human-Centered Computing (HCC) – HCC studies the roles of and relationships between people and the computing and information technologies they develop and use, focused both on the design of computational artifacts in support of human activities and on the study of the impact these technologies have on individuals, groups, and society at large • Information Integration and Informatics (III) – III focuses on processes and technologies for creating, storing, querying, representing, organizing, integrating, updating, analyzing, preserving, protecting, and interacting with digital content at scales ranging from individuals to globally-distributed dynamic networked repository systems • Robust Intelligence (RI) – RI encompasses computational understanding and modeling of the many human and animal capabilities that demonstrate intelligence and adaptability in unstructured and uncertain environments • Cross-cutting technical areas – Integrative intelligence – Next-generation networked information November 2007 Arizona Seminars 12 CISE Cross-Cutting Emphasis Areas • Characteristics – cut across clusters and divisions (and directorates) – address scientific or national priority • FY 2008 Emphasis Areas – CreativeIT: Proposals were due Sept. 21, 2007 – Expeditions in Computing: LOI due Nov. 5, 2007 – CISE Pathways to Revitalized UG Computing Education (CPATH): Proposals due early 2008 – Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI): Proposals due early 2008 – Software for Real-World Systems (SRS): Proposals due Jan. 17, 2008 November 2007 Arizona Seminars 13 Software for Real-World Systems • SRS Program Solicitation – http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503175&org=CIS E&from=home • Software is a critical element of real-world systems – Micro- and nano-scale embedded devices – Global-scale critical infrastructures (e.g., communications, transportation, health care, enterprise systems) – Cyber-physical systems – Networked and distributed systems – Application systems • Emerging technologies offer key challenges – Multi-core processors – Mobile and pervasive technologies • Yet, the science and engineering remain elusive and poorly understood for designing and building the software that will govern the essential behaviors and properties of real-world systems November 2007 Arizona Seminars 14 Real-World System Trends Real-World Systems will grow in size and complexity with the software layer becoming increasingly more dominant Getting the Interfaces right will become more urgent Human Layer Human-SW Interface Human Layer Human Layer Human-Platform Interface Human-SW Interface Software Layer 50% to 90% of Future Systems will be Software Software Layer SW-Platform Interface SW-Platform Interface Platform Layer Platform Layer Arizona Seminars Platform Layer 15 November 2007 SRS Research Question • How can software for real-world systems be designed, built, and analyzed in elegant and powerful new ways? – A bold rethinking of the fundamentals of software design and evolution as well as new approaches to system adaptation in uncertain human, natural, and man-made environments is needed – As software-intensive systems become increasingly ubiquitous in our lives, they also become more heterogeneous, decentralized, indeterminate, dynamic, and participatory, demanding increasingly sophisticated control mechanisms and sufficient intelligence to adapt, learn, and reason about the unstructured and uncertain environments in which they operate November 2007 Arizona Seminars 16 SRS Challenges • The Software for Real-World Systems Program calls on researchers to develop new scientific principles, engineering processes and methods, and educational pedagogy for the challenges inherent in such systems • These challenges are not independent, but have overlapping dimensions; research projects that bridge two or more of them are encouraged – Design and evolution of large-scale, real-world systems with scalable, computational methods of composition – Monitoring, orchestration, and control of real-world system behaviors and interactions in dynamic, ever-changing conditions and operational environments – Amplification of human participation in the design and use of real-world systems November 2007 Arizona Seminars 17 Design and Evolution of SRS • What scientific principles are needed to support engineering processes and methods for scalable, computational composition of human, software, and platform components in order to understand and analyze resulting behaviors and dynamic properties? – Considerations of scale, control, and modularity – Innovations in system architectures – Multi-core processing with parallel process threads and information streams • What scientific principles are needed to move the field beyond current conceptions and calculations of correctness? – Rethink current notions of correctness • How can software for data-intensive systems be designed to cope with enormous amounts of data and to transform that data into useful, actionable information and knowledge? – New roles for data, information, and knowledge in SRS November 2007 Arizona Seminars 18 Adaptation of SRS to Environment • How can real-world systems be designed to identify, understand, manage, and potentially optimize their emergent behaviors and dynamic properties during operation? – Support the autonomic performance of a real-world system in response to dynamic, ever-changing conditions and operational environment? • How can critical interactions within and among real-world systems and between systems and humans be 1) detected and limited or 2) enabled and controlled, as the situation requires? – Monitoring, assessment, and adaptation • What scientific principles and engineering methods of analysis and certification are required to achieve system architectures and mechanisms whose composite properties and behaviors are certifiably dependable? – Changing boundaries for systems software – Demands for time-critical behaviors and dynamic resource allocations November 2007 Arizona Seminars 19 Human Participation in SRS • How can software for real-world systems be designed where interactions with people are at the core of the systems design? – What knowledge and tools are needed for people to participate fully in the design, development, and use of real-world systems as end-users, programmers, and stakeholders? – Human values and societal benefits • What scientific principles and engineering processes methods are needed to support effective design collaborations among many, widely distributed contributors? – Collective intelligence – Human creativity • Can the principles and engineering methods of open source software be discovered and extended to a fuller range of participatory computing approaches? – User-centered innovations November 2007 Arizona Seminars 20 Research Innovations • SRS proposals must innovate in at least two of the following: – Scientific Principles – Engineering Processes and Methods – Educational Pedagogy • The “Project Summary” and “Project Description” sections of the proposal must explicitly articulate the expected research contributions to be made in two (or three) of these areas November 2007 Arizona Seminars 21 Scientific Principles • What are the scientific principles for creating and analyzing software for real-world systems? – The SRS Program seeks to uncover fundamental concepts and principles for the development of software as have been found in other sciences such as physics, biology, and chemistry – Transformative theories, models, logics, languages, and algorithms are sought – For example, the use of current software development principles of modularity and abstraction levels provide clear benefits for software understandability, reuse, and modifiability • In a world of dynamic operational environments and real-time adaptability, do we need new understandings of long-proven software development principles or do we need new principles altogether? November 2007 Arizona Seminars 22 Engineering Processes and Methods • What are the most effective engineering processes and methods for designing, building, and analyzing software for real-world systems? – The SRS Program calls for innovative methods, techniques, processes, architectures, tools, and testbeds – For example, engineering methods of incremental development and rapid prototyping have been shown to be effective for the development of many existing software systems • Will current methods still be effective in development environments that are dynamic, decentralized, and where system components are heterogeneous and under the control of other parties? • What new engineering methods of system certification are needed in such environments? November 2007 Arizona Seminars 23 Educational Pedagogy • What new educational ideas and activities are needed to support the learning and application of scientific principles and engineering methods for the design, construction, and analysis of software for real-world systems? – Regardless of their complex functionality and dynamic properties, software systems must still be easy to understand, use, maintain, and modify • An important goal of the SRS Program is to support innovative pedagogy for educating students and training the U.S. workforce on the new ideas produced by the funded research projects November 2007 Arizona Seminars 24 SRS Philosophy • Submissions to the SRS Program must have a clear focus on basic research to advance the science and engineering of software for real-world systems • Research may bridge and transcend CISE disciplines by building non-traditional collaborations – For example, pairing software foundations research with systems research to develop a new logic for reasoning about systems complexity • Considerations of emerging technologies (e.g. multi-core processes) and innovative applications (e.g. pervasive health care computing) are encouraged • Transformative research only - no place for incremental research – “Business as usual” need not apply – Non-traditional approaches welcome • Industrial partnerships with clearly stated research benefits are desirable November 2007 Arizona Seminars 25 SRS Awards • Full Proposals due January 17, 2008 • FY2008 Funding Amount = $10,000,000 (dependent on Congressional Appropriation) • An investigator may participate as a PI, co-PI, or Senior Personnel on at most two proposals, but may participate in no more than one proposal as a single investigator • SRS encourages both multiple investigator team or single investigator research projects • For team projects, up to three additional pages are required as a supplemental document titled, “Collaboration Plan.” This plan should be included in the “Special Information and Supplemental Documentation” section of the proposal November 2007 Arizona Seminars 26 SRS Awards • Selected projects will be funded for durations and at levels commensurate with the size of the team and the nature of the research • Larger projects typically will be funded for up to 3 years at levels of up to $300,000 per year • Investigators who wish to submit proposals that exceed these parameters must receive prior permission to do so from a cognizant SRS Program Officer November 2007 Arizona Seminars 27 SRS Program Officers • Alan Hevner, (703) 292-8649, ahevner@nsf.gov • Helen Gill, (703) 292-8950, hgill@nsf.gov • Sol Greenspan, (703) 292-8910, sgreensp@nsf.gov • Wayne Lutters, (703) 292-8930, wlutters@nsf.gov • Joseph Urban, (703) 292-8910, jurban@nsf.gov November 2007 Arizona Seminars 28 CreativeIT: Synergies Between Creativity and IT • Focus on research that improves our understanding of creativity while producing simultaneous advances in computer science and information technologies with digital arts, cognitive science, engineering design, and physical and life science • Goals: – Understand creativity as cognitive and computational processes – Understand information technology as a means for enhancing human creative thinking and vice versa – Understand how design (creative) thinking develops new products, methods, organizations in the context of a perceived need or problem November 2007 Arizona Seminars 29 CreativeIT Research Areas Understanding Creative Cognition and Computation. The development of new models of cognition and computation that explain or simulate creativity Creativity to Stimulate Breakthroughs in Science and Engineering. Understanding the role and performance of artists in developing new technologies, discovering new patterns in information, and in finding new ways of seeing, knowing, and doing computer and information science and engineering Educational Approaches that Encourage Creativity. Approaches to teaching that encourage creativity: multi-disciplinary teaching and learning, design studio teaching, and open-ended problem-based learning Supporting Creativity with Information Technology. Develops new software and user interfaces to support users in being more creative and evaluates their performance November 2007 Arizona Seminars 30 CreativeIT Proposals • Proposals received on September 21 – 184 Projects (139 Pilots, 45 Major) • Panels will be held in Nov/Dec 2007 • Funding decisions expected in early 2008 November 2007 Arizona Seminars 31 Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) • CDI Program Solicitation – http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503163&o rg=CISE&from=home • Objective of CDI is to enhance American competitiveness by enabling innovation through the use of computational models, methods, and tools – Multi-disciplinary research relying on, and promoting advances in computational thinking – Computational thinking refers to computational… • • • • • …Concepts …Methods …Models …Algorithms …Tools November 2007 Arizona Seminars 32 Three CDI Foci • From Data to Knowledge – – Example: Transformation of biology over the past 30 years from data-poor to datarich/data-driven science Example: Computational Linguistics • Understanding Complexity in Natural, Built, and Social Systems – – – – – – – Large numbers of interacting elements Non-linear interactions Dynamism, emergent behavior • Virtual Organizations Build CDI communities Orient practitioners, faculty and students to new ways of thinking. Nurture future generations of computational thinkers and discoverers. Provide access to data and virtual facilities to enable education and discovery November 2007 Arizona Seminars 33 CDI Philosophy • Contributions to more than one area of science or engineering including computer and information sciences, by development and innovative use of computational thinking – Multidisciplinary projects stimulating advances in concepts, methods, models, algorithms, tools • “Business as usual” need not apply • No place for incremental research • Untraditional approaches and collaborations welcome November 2007 Arizona Seminars 34 CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing (CPATH) • Vision: a U.S. workforce with the computing competencies and skills imperative to the Nation’s health, security and prosperity in the 21st century. • CPATH will support four types of projects: – – – – Community Building (CB) Grants; Evaluation, Adoption, and Extension (EAE) Grants; Transformation (T) Grants; and CISE Distinguished Education Fellow (CDEF) Grants. • Proposal due date: TBD in 2008 November 2007 Arizona Seminars 35 Expeditions in Computing Created to inspire bold, transformational research that explores new scientific frontiers that promise disruptive innovations in computing • Program Goals: – Catalyze far-reaching research in the computing and information fields motivated by hard, emerging problems and/or compelling applications – Inspire current & future generations to pursue CISE careers – Stimulate significant research and education outcomes that benefit society through effective knowledge transfer • Scope: Research that cuts vertically or horizontally across CISE • Awards: 3 anticipated, w/ budgets of $2,000,000/yr for five years • Submission Requirements and Deadlines: – Letter of Intent (required) due November 5, 2007 – Preliminary Proposal (required) due December 30, 2007 – Full Proposal (by invitation only) due April 1, 2008 – http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07592/nsf07592.htm November 2007 Arizona Seminars 36 Questions and Feedback November 2007 Arizona Seminars 37 Science of Design Program Retrospective • Focus – Design of Software-Intensive Systems • Advance design research and education to meet critical software design challenges • New paradigms, concepts, approaches, models, methods, and theories to build an intellectual foundation for software design to improve the processes of constructing, evaluating, and modifying software-intensive systems • Fund original ideas on how to synthesize creative expression with scientific rigor in the design of relevant, useful software-intensive systems November 2007 Arizona Seminars 38 Science of Design Awards • Investment of $10M each cycle • FY 2005 Competition (May 2004) – Received ~ 190 proposals (~ 160 projects) – Made 16 Awards, Project success rate of ~10% • FY 2006 Competition (January 2006) – Received ~ 120 proposals (~ 90 projects) – Made 30 Awards, Project success rate of ~25% • FY 2007 Competition (February 2007) – Received ~ 94 proposals (~ 80 projects) – Made 17 Awards, Project success rate of ~21% November 2007 Arizona Seminars 39 Science of Design Research Results • Science of Design PI Workshop – March 1-2, 2007 in Arlington, VA – Research project highlights • http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~sullivan/SODPI07 November 2007 Arizona Seminars 40 Great Principles of Computing • Great Principles Website – http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/GP/GP-site/welcome.html • Seven Categories – – – – – – – Computation Communication Coordination Recollection Automation Evaluation Design Arizona Seminars 41 November 2007