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NSF PR 99-50 - August 31, 1999
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Knowledge-Centered Awards Jump Start NSF Focus on
I.T. for the 21st Century
The National Science Foundation (NSF) this week awarded
$50 million in grants for broad-based research in
knowledge and distributed intelligence (KDI). The
awards are for projects as varied as knowledge networking
in biocomplexity, earthquake computer modeling and
case studies in intellectual property.
The 31 grants to two dozen institutions in 20 states
"clearly demonstrate the enormous impact that the
explosive growth in computer technology has had across
all areas of science and engineering," says Richard
Hilderbrandt, NSF program manager for the multi-disciplinary
awards. "These awards are a solid foundation for NSF's
new initiative in information technology for the 21st
Century (IT2)."
The far-reaching research awards include the University
of California at Santa Barbara's Knowledge Network
for Biocomplexity. Researchers hope, through this
network, to apply to societal issues a broadened understanding
of biocomplexity and ecological systems. They will
create and integrate information resources that may
be drawn from many distributed, currently autonomous
data repositories. The researchers believe this will
also help create a new community of environmental
scientists who will be able to focus attention on
complex, multi-scale issues that previously were impractical,
if not impossible, to study.
Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh is receiving
three grants totaling almost $5 million. One project
involves the development of computer simulations to
model and forecast ground motion during earthquakes,
focusing on the areas in and around Los Angeles and
San Francisco. In a second award, researchers are
developing a TalkBank data archiving system to provide
social and behavioral scientists a new web-based tool
for transcribed video and audio data on communicative
interactions. Yet another grant will focus on the
study of distance video communications and the impact
on the quality of interactions among individuals using
these technologies.
On another topic of great interest to scientists,
the University of California at Berkeley will undertake
an extensive study on intellectual property, looking
at the issue from the standpoint of economic, legal,
technical and rights management perspectives.
The Department of Commerce's National Institute for
Standards and Technology (NIST) received the only
grant in this group not awarded to a university. At
NIST, scientists will develop a digital library of
mathematical functions, a web accessible knowledge
base of validated mathematical data. A key facet of
this system will be the interactive features and internal/external
links created that will allow for retrievals, searches
and interactive visualizations among many other features.
"Most of these grants are split among at least two
disciplines, with three or four disciplines often
sharing in this research," Hilderbrandt said. The
grants cover a three-year period.
Attachment: List of 1999
KDI awards.
Attachment
LIST OF 1999 KDI AWARDS
STATE |
INSTITUTION |
SUMMARY |
AWARD |
AZ |
Arizona State Univ. |
3D Knowledge: Acquisition,
Representation and Analysis in a Distributed
Environment |
$2,100,000 |
CA |
Univ. of Calif.
Berkeley |
Economic, Legal, and Technical
Dimensions of Rights Management |
$940,000 |
CA |
Univ. of Calif.
San Francisco |
Virtual Environments to Elucidate
Strategies in Complex Spatial Problem
Solving |
$1,000,000 |
CA |
Univ. of Calif.
Santa Barbara |
A Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity |
$2,979,000 |
CT |
Yale Univ. |
Coordinated Motion of Natural
and Man-Made Groups |
$2,600,000 |
DE |
Univ. of Delaware |
Executing Genetic Algorithms
Using DNA Genetic Materials |
$900,000 |
FL |
Univ. of Florida |
Multi-scale simulation including
chemical reactivity in materials |
$2,200,000 |
IL |
Univ. of Illinois
Chicago |
Intelligent Computational
Genomic Analysis |
$1,700,000 |
IL |
Univ. of Illinois
Urbana |
Co-evolution of Knowledge
Networks and 21st Century Organizational
Forms |
$1,500,000 |
IL |
Univ. of Illinois
Urbana |
Can Knowledge Be Distributed?
The Dynamics of Knowledge in Interdisciplinary
Alliances |
$1,400,000 |
IN |
Indiana Univ.
Bloomington |
The Internet Learning Forum:
Fostering and Sustaining Knowledge Networking
|
$1,473,300 |
MD |
Johns Hopkins Univ. |
Accessing Large Distributed
Archives in Astronomy and Particle Physics |
$2,500,000 |
MD |
National Inst. of Standards
& Tech. (NIST) |
Mathematical Foundations
for a Networked Scientific Knowledge Base |
$1,300,000 |
MA |
UMASS Amherst |
Visualization and Spatial
Reasoning: Cognitive Models, Skill Acquisition
and Intelligent Tutors |
$988,730 |
MA |
UMASS Amherst |
Temporal Abstraction in Reinforcement
Learning |
$560,000 |
MI |
Univ. of Michigan |
A Prototype Implementation
of a TeraFlop- Class Predictive Space
Weather Model |
$2,300,000 |
MI |
Univ. of Michigan |
Creating a Corpus of Learning-Situated
Design Guidelines & Software Components
|
$2,040,000 |
MN |
Univ. of Minnesota |
Building a Future for Software
History |
$488,000 |
MO |
Washington Univ. St. Louis
|
An Astrophysics Simulation
Collaboratory |
$2,200,000 |
NY |
Cornell Univ. |
Simulation and Modeling of
Organic and Inorganic Non-crystalline
Semiconductors |
$1,700,000 |
NY |
New York Univ. |
Unsteady Flows with Dynamic
Boundaries |
$2,400,000 |
NY |
Rensselaer Polytech Inst. |
Automated Design and Discovery
of Novel Pharmaceuticals |
$1,200,000 |
NY |
State Univ. of N.Y. (SUNY)
Albany |
Knowledge Networking in the
Public Sector in the Public Sector |
$1,000,000 |
NC |
Duke Univ. |
Brain-Machine Interfaces for
Monitoring and Modeling Sensorimotor Learning
in Primates |
$1,600,000 |
OH |
Wright State Univ. |
Cross-Modal Analysis of Signal
and Sense |
$2,536,050 |
PA |
Carnegie Mellon Univ. |
Large-Scale Iversion-Based
Modeling of Complex Earthquake Ground
Motion |
$2,131,000 |
PA |
Carnegie Mellon Univ. |
The Importance of Shared Visual
Environments Environments for Collaborative
Tasks |
$1,500,000 |
PA |
Carnegie Mellon Univ. |
TalkBank: A Multimodal Database
of Communicative Interaction |
$1,442,000 |
RI |
Brown Univ. |
3D Free-Form Models for Geometric
Recovery and Applications to Archaeology
|
$1,200,000 |
WA |
Univ. of Washington |
Amorphous and Crystalline
Ice Growth |
$1,200,000 |
WA |
Univ. of Washington |
A Framework for Particle Simulation
from Proteins to Planetesimals |
$1,000,000 |
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