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Months ago, I mentioned that NSF might be able to fund this kind of work, if
it could be included into a proposal which fits our new "KDI" initiative.
NSF normally accepts proposals only from US institutions, but it is possible
for NSF to consider proposals which included Russian collaborators, for
example, as part of a project.
NSF has finally announced the rules for this initiative. There will be tens
of millions of dollars of new money for this area.
Attached is part of an email I recently received from the committee which
is coordinating this initiative:
The recent explosive growth in computer power and connectivity is reshaping
relationships among people and organizations, and transforming the
processes of discovery, learning, and communication. As a result of the
technological advances we have unprecedented opportunities for providing
rapid and efficient access to enormous amounts of knowledge and
information; for studying vastly more complex systems than was hitherto
possible; and for advancing in fundamental ways our understanding of
learning and intelligent behavior in living and engineered systems. NSF's
Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) theme is a Foundation-wide
effort to promote the realization of these opportunities.
Three Foci for FY 1998: KN, LIS, and NCC
To achieve the aims of KDI, proposals are solicited from individuals or
groups for research that is inherently multidisciplinary or that, while
lying within a single discipline, has clear impact on at least one other
discipline. In FY 1998, KDI will have three foci: Knowledge Networking
(KN); Learning and Intelligent Systems (LIS); and New Computational
Challenges (NCC).
Knowledge Networking (KN) Learning and Intelligent Systems (LIS), New Computational Challenges (NCC)
A KDI proposal solicitation has just been released; the full text
is posted on the KDI web page at
Letters of intent are due April 1, 1998, and the deadline for full
proposals is May 8. Awards will be made in the fall. Approximately $50
million is available for funding proposals submitted to this competition.
Proposals are solicited for any amount up to $1.0 million per year for
up to three years. We expect to make grants at a wide variety of amounts
and durations. In exceptional cases, awards for up to five years may be
considered if the justification and promise are compelling.
A second KDI competition will be held in FY 1999, subject to availability of
funds. An updated solicitation, which may include revised research emphases,
will be released in advance of this competition.
For more details please see the solicitation.
A Request for Help
The KDI working group needs your help in several ways.
First, we hope you will inform your research community about the KDI
competition. You may also want to include the email address for inquiries
regarding KDI (kdi@nsf.gov) and the URL for the KDI web page
(http://www.nsf.gov/kdi).
For further information, one place to look is the web site mentioned
above. In addition, the NSF web site (www.nsf.gov) has a local search engine
of great value. There is information specifically about "lis" up on the web
which may also be of use to some of you.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO POST THIS ELSEWHERE!
From pwerbos@nsf.govFri Feb 6 09:52:20 1998
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 15:44:09 -0500
To: Alexander Zenkin
"Prof. William Faris"
Cc: "Prof. Witold Marciszewski"
[et al. The rest of the list from the original letter is ommitted}
Hi!
EXTRACT OF EMAIL RECEIVED
(formatted by "calculemus"
Editor)
focuses on the integration of knowledge from different sources and domains
across space and time. The goal of KN research is to achieve new levels of
knowledge integration, information flow, and interactivity among people,
organizations, and communities, and to deepen our understanding of the
ethical, legal, and social implications of knowledge networking.
an ongoing program, seeks to stimulate multidisciplinary research that will
unify experimentally and theoretically derived concepts related to learning
and intelligent systems, and that will promote the use and development of
information technologies in learning and discovery across a wide variety of
fields. LIS emphasizes research that advances basic understanding of
learning and intelligence in natural and artificial systems, as well as
research that supports the development of tools and environments to test
and apply this understanding in real situations.
focuses on research and tools needed to discover, model, simulate, analyze,
display, or understand complicated phenomena, to control resources and deal
with massive volumes of data in real time, and to predict the behavior of
complex systems. These aims will require major advances in hardware and
software to handle complexity, representation, and scale, to enable
distributed collaboration, and to facilitate real-time interactions and
control.
Posted in "calculemus" Feb 08 1998