CISE
Dear Colleagues:
Computer graphics and visualization have experienced exciting advances and pervasive impact over
the last few decades. Technical and conceptual progress in a broad range of areas, such as simulation and
rendering of materials and lighting, motion-capture, physics-based and behavioral-based animation,
image-based rendering, light-field cameras, non-photorealistic rendering, shape capture and analysis,
geometric modeling and shape representation, physical simulation, and vector and tensor-field
visualization have had tremendous impact in areas ranging from computer games and movies to science,
engineering, and medicine. These accomplishments were made possible by numerous ideas contributed from a
broad range of areas covered by NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
(CISE).
We are sending this note to clarify how the changing landscape in this area is reflected in our
handling of proposals on these topics within CISE. For many years computer graphics was primarily
centered in CISE's Computer and Communications Foundations (CCF) division (and its predecessors),
reflecting its close ties to areas traditionally covered by CCF such as computational geometry, scientific
computing, and specialized computing hardware. In recent years, however, computer graphics has seen
increased synergies in CISE areas outside of CCF, especially in CISE's Information and Intelligent
Systems (IIS) division. Advances in such areas as computer vision and image retrieval, information
visualization and data mining, and multimodal interfaces and human-computer interaction, among others,
have led to a portfolio of NSF investments now spanning both CCF and IIS.
To reflect this changing landscape CISE is expanding and systematizing the organizational
management of proposals and projects in computer graphics and visualization to reflect the broader range
of scholarly areas that now contribute to these topics. First, within CISE we have designated a team of
program directors who are collectively responsible for managing proposals in computer graphics and
visualization. Second, to simplify our program directors’ identification of proposals in these areas, we
encourage PIs to submit proposals in computer graphics to the Human Centered Computing Program in IIS and
include "computer graphics" as one of their keywords, and to submit proposals in visualization to the
Information Integration and Informatics Program in IIS and include "visualization" as one of their
keywords. Computational geometry proposals should continue to be submitted to the Algorithmic Foundations
Program within CCF.
The program director team handling the areas of Computer Graphics and Visualization currently
includes Larry Rosenblum (lrosenbl@nsf.gov) (lead program director),
Ephraim Glinert (eglinert@nsf.gov), Steve Griffin
(sgriffin@nsf.gov), and Maria Zemankova
(mzemanko@nsf.gov); these names will change as program directors'
responsibilities change, and the list of current program directors responsible for these areas will be
maintained on the CISE website. As always, our program directors are available to help guide you with
respect to the best way to seek support for your work, so if you have any questions, please contact any of
the program directors above.
Sincerely yours,
Haym Hirsh, Division Director, Information and Intelligent Systems
Sampath Kannan, Division Director, Computer and Communications Foundations
Jeannette M. Wing, Assistant Director
Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate
National Science Foundation
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