Dear Colleague Letter: Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Supplement Opportunity
02/14/2022
Dear Colleague Letter: Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Supplement Opportunity
Available Formats:
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Keep up with today’s research news from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This is a daily look at noteworthy scientific findings from researchers around the country.
Mon, 14 Feb 2022
Antarctic ice's deep past shows it could be more vulnerable to warming
Scientists document the evolution of Antarctica's ice sheets 20 million years ago
In a study published in the journal Nature, University of South Florida researcher Amelia Shevenell and her colleagues documented the evolution of Antarctica's ice sheets some 20 million years ago. The research is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
During this period, called the Early Miocene, Earth experienced both warm and cold climates. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide were like those expected ...
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Mon, 14 Feb 2022
Researchers identify coral reef 'bright spots'
'Dark spots' are likely to lose significant coral cover
Marine heatwaves are threatening coral reefs around the world. A new study led by researchers at Florida Tech has identified coral reef "bright spots" that will likely maintain relatively high coral cover through climate change, as well as "dark spots" that are likely to lose ...
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Algorithms for Modern Power Systems (AMPS)
Available Formats:
HTML: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22569/nsf22569.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_34&WT.mc_ev=click
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Document Number: nsf22569
Public Comment:
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
The Gilbert R. Mason research vessel: Honoring a civil rights hero
An NSF ocean research vessel under construction will be named R/V Gilbert R. Mason in honor of the education and civil rights legacy of the famous activist and his family. Gilbert R. Mason Sr. was a lifelong champion of the ocean and was well known for advocating for equal access to beaches in coastal Mississippi and for pioneering leadership of nonviolent civil disobedience in the Deep South.
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For more National Science Foundation Science Matters blog, visit our blog site. Contact the blog team.
Keep up with today’s research news from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This is a daily look at noteworthy scientific findings from researchers around the country.
Tue, 15 Feb 2022
Hotspots shed light on 'flash drought' causes
Work could lay the groundwork for predicting flash droughts
Two Clemson University engineers say their research is the most comprehensive analysis so far of what causes flash drought, a ...
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Tue, 15 Feb 2022
Gemini South captures remarkably clear images of two sidewinding stellar jets
Astronomers use adaptive optics system that reduces distortion
An international team of astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory, a program of the U.S. National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, has captured crystal-clear images of two wiggling stellar jets from nearby forming stars.
The images were captured by the Gemini ...
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Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure
Solicitation: NSF 22-574
Due Date: May 16, 2022
Institutional Limit: See Limit Summary
Limit Summary:
There are no restrictions or limits on Pilot or Implementation proposals. Institutions are limited to one CIP proposal per CyberTraining program competition. In the event that an institution exceeds this limit, proposals will be accepted based on earliest date and time of proposal submission, i.e., the first proposal will be accepted, and the remainder will be returned without review. No exceptions will be made.
Wed, 16 Feb 2022
Next-generation grids capture detailed brain signals
Researchers develop groundbreaking electrocorticography senso
A team of U.S. National Science Foundation engineers, surgeons and medical researchers based at the University of California San Diego has developed brain sensors that record electrical signals directly from the surface of the human brain in high resolution.
The thin, flexible devices are ...
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Wed, 16 Feb 2022
Microplastic pollution lingers in rivers for years before entering oceans
Water dynamics can trap lightweight microplastics that otherwise might float
Microplastics can deposit and linger in riverbeds for as long as seven years before washing into the ocean, a new study has found. The research was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Because rivers are in near-constant motion, researchers ...
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Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR)
Available Formats:
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Document Number: nsf22575
Public Comment:
This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information - Geosciences item.
Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining)
02/16/2022
Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining)
Available Formats:
HTML: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22574/nsf22574.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_27&WT.mc_ev=click
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Document Number: nsf22574
Public Comment:
This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information item.
EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Track-4: EPSCoR Research Fellows
02/16/2022
EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Track-4: EPSCoR Research Fellows
Available Formats:
HTML: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22573/nsf22573.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_26&WT.mc_ev=click
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Document Number: nsf22573
Public Comment:
This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information item.
Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (PEOSE)
02/16/2022
Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (PEOSE)
Available Formats:
HTML: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22572/nsf22572.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_32&WT.mc_ev=click
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Document Number: nsf22572
Public Comment:
This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information item.
Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) and HBCU Research Infrastructure for Science and Engineering (RISE)
02/17/2022
Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) and HBCU Research Infrastructure for Science and Engineering (RISE)
Solicitation: NSF 18-509
Due Date: December 02, 2022
Institutional Limit: See Limit Summary
Limit Summary:
Only one preliminary CREST Center proposal may be submitted per eligible institution. Full CREST Center proposals are to be submitted only when invited by NSF. An institution may have only one active CREST Center award, irrespective of focus area. Centers that have completed two prior, consecutive 5-year CREST Center awards may recompete in disciplinary areas that are significantly different from those of the previous award(s).
Only three (3) individuals per active CREST Center may submit a CREST-PRF application per competition. Only one individual can be awarded a CREST-PRF at an active CREST Center per year.
Only one HBCU-RISE proposal may be submitted per eligible institution. An institution may have only one active HBCU-RISE award.
For each active SBIR/STTR Phase II grant, only one SBIR/STTR collaboration with a CREST Center may be submitted. For each CREST center, only one SBIR/STTR collaboration can be active at any given time.
NSF CISE Newsletter: February 2022
02/17/2022
Fast Links and Funding Opportunities
Internet Measurement Research: Methodologies, Tools, and Infrastructure (IMR)
Deadlines:
Full proposal for Track 2 - March 8, 2022.
Full proposal for Track 3 - March 22, 2022
Dear Colleague Letter: Supplemental Funding Requests to Conduct US-India Collaborative Research
Target date:
April 25, 2022. Supplemental funding requests will still be considered beyond that date.
Research Visioning for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE): Future Research Directions for the CISE Community (CISE-RV)
Deadlines:
Letter of Intent - May 10, 2022
Full proposal - October 5, 2022
Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (PEOSE)
Deadlines:
Phase I: OSE Scoping Proposals - May 12, 2022
Phase II: OSE Development Proposals - October 21, 2022
A Message from CISE Leadership
Dear CISE community,
As always, this newsletter seeks to offer some news about recent NSF activities, as well as some updates on research funded by NSF. Please do send us your own research highlights for potential use in future communications.
On February 2, I participated in a virtual panel hosted by the Networking Channel on how to improve diversity and inclusion in the systems and networking community. These events are very important because they bring together leaders representing different parts of our scientific community to discuss how to shape our broadening participation goals and how we can best achieve them. Please check out the recording linked above and consider new ways that you can engage!
Also on February 2, the Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Request for Information on the Update of the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. I encourage you to submit ideas for impactful updates to the Plan, focusing on the goals, priorities, and metrics that Federal agencies should use to guide AI research and development investments. The deadline to submit responses is March 4, 2022.
In addition, I want to draw your attention to a new NSF program, Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (PEOSE), that is highly relevant to the CISE community. The goal of the PEOSE program is to fund new managing organizations for existing mature Open-Source Ecosystems (OSE), each responsible for the creation and maintenance of infrastructure needed for efficient and secure operation of an OSE based around a specific open-source product or class of products. Since so many CISE-funded projects open-source aspects of their research results, we hope that PEOSE offers many of you a great pathway to larger usage and impact for these open-source efforts.
I hope you enjoy our February newsletter, which highlights our Designing Accountable Software Systems program and recently funded research awards.
Best,
Margaret Martonosi
NSF Assistant Director for CISE
News & Announcements
Newcomer Conduit Leverages Frontera to Understand SARS-CoV-2 ‘Budding’
Image Credit : Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MA
Budding, the researchers explained, is how the virus’ genetic material is encapsulated in a spherical envelope—and the process is key to the virus’ ability to infect. Despite that, they say, it has hitherto been poorly understood:
The Conduit team—comprised of Logan Thrasher Collins (CTO of Conduit), Tamer Elkholy, Shafat Mubin, David Hill, Ricky Williams, Kayode Ezike and Ankush Singhal—sought to change that, applying for an allocation from the White House-led Covid-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium to model the budding process on a supercomputer.
Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty
Image Credit : Wired Magazine
Computer scientist Amit Sahai, PhD, is asked to explain the concept of zero-knowledge proofs to 5 different people; a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert. Using a variety of techniques, Amit breaks down what zero-knowledge proofs are and why it's so exciting in the world of cryptography.
Introducing the 2022 BSSw Fellows
Image Credit : Better Scientific Software
The BSSw Fellowship Program gives recognition and funding to leaders and advocates of high-quality scientific software. Each 2022 Fellow will receive up to $25,000 for an activity that promotes better scientific software, such as organizing a workshop, preparing a tutorial, or creating content to engage the scientific software community.
Protecting messaging app users while safeguarding privacy
Image Credit : Shutterstock/Michele Ursi
Thomas Ristenpart, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell, is working with a multidisciplinary team of researchers to navigate the technological, legal and social challenges to develop safer and more secure online communications for users of these messenger apps.
Project OVERCOME Prepares Communities for Federal Connectivity Funding
Image Credit : US Ignite
Project OVERCOME, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation with support from Schmidt Futures, is helping communities prepare for new broadband funding by supporting pilot network deployments and gathering insights to ensure Federal dollars are put to their most effective use. In seven areas across the country, US Ignite is working with Project OVERCOME teams to understand the technical, operational, and community engagement challenges to universal connectivity – and to institutionalize the best practices needed to overcome them.
Get more NSF New
Events
February 17, 2022
CISE IIS Office Hours: Human-Centered Computing (HCC) programs
March 3, 2022
Distinguished Lecture Series – Dr. Odest Chadwicke Jenkins
March 10 & 22, 2022
Civic Innovation Challenge Q&A Session
March 15 & 22, 2022; (Registration Deadline is March 1, 2022)
Building Collaborations: U.S. – India Workshop
March 16, 2022
Smart and Connected Communities (NSF 22-529) Program Webinar
Program Spotlight
Designing Accountable Software Systems (DASS)
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Image Credit: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Society is becoming highly dependent on software applications, systems, and platforms, as aspects of business, government, communication, and other parts of everyday life are increasingly implemented through software. These parts of life are often subject to laws and regulations, which come from multiple sources, are sometimes ambiguous, and in may areas are rapidly evolving. Complying with these regulations, then, poses a difficult challenge for software systems, requiring a solid understanding of the regulatory and social contexts they operate in and the ability to adapt to changes in them.
The DASS program aims to build teams with the expertise needed across law, social sciences, and software design to develop new knowledge at the intersection of regulation and software design. This knowledge includes better understanding of how regulation and software design might affect each other or evolve together; new understanding of the regulatory, social, behavioral, and economic forces that shape the needs of software in socially relevant domains; and rigorous and reproducible methodologies for software design and engineering that incorporate both societal goals as well as technical aspects of software development.
For more information, view the DASS solicitation here. The next DASS deadline is January 27, 2023.
SciComm Corner
Designing Accountable Artificial Intelligence Services for People with Diverse Sensory Abilities
Image Credit: Larry/stock.adobe.com, Dan Rentea/stock.adobe.com
Millions of people with accessibility needs resulting from sensory, cognitive, and motor impairments are impacted by software every day. This software is increasingly using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies that are used to personalize people’s technology experiences, make predictions about their likes, needs, and behaviors, and suggest courses of action. However, these AI services are only as good as their datasets, which can cause biases both because people with disabilities are likely to be underrepresented in a dataset relative to the population as a whole, and because the data collected may reflect social biases against those people.
Through interviewing people with disabilities, developers, and regulators of these systems, along with a thorough review of existing systems and regulations that target disabilities and accessibility issues, the project team will develop a model of the accessibility risks that can arise in developing systems with AI and ML components, along with guidelines for mitigating those risks and methods to assess them. This will in turn set up opportunities where people with disabilities play a more active role in co-designing these systems, in ways that are more likely to meet everyone’s needs.
“This work matters because although there are laws that protect people with disabilities, how those laws should be realized in software systems is a hard problem,” said NSF Program Director Dan Cosley. “Realizing them in AI and ML algorithms is an especially interesting case, because questions of fairness and bias in general are increasingly on the radar for both developers and regulators around these algorithms—but the opaqueness of both the algorithms themselves and the processes for developing them raises extra challenges for assessing compliance.”
Designing & Evaluating Software Systems to Advance Equal Opportunity
Image Credit: Kevin Harber/Flickr
School districts struggle to increase equal educational opportunities and avoid racial isolation for their students. Many districts use a school-assignment software system to further these goals. Today, more than 100 school districts across the US have adopted school-assignment software systems. Some of these systems have been subject to legal challenges, both successful and unsuccessful, to the approach the school districts used to advance equal opportunity.
This study examines how best to ensure that these software systems are designed to respond to legal and economic constraints and democratic community participation in order to ensure both legal compliance and legitimacy in the eyes of the community. Improving these software systems will impact access to education for thousands of students.
“This is timely research at the intersection of policy, education and software design that has the potential to enhance democratization and equality in school districts across the country. It demonstrates the strength of collaborative expertise in social science and computer science coming together to advance a significant societal and educational goal,” said NSF Program Director Reggie Sheehan
Agent Based Modeling at the Boundary of Law and Software
Image Credit: U.S. Department of Transportation
Software, regulation, and society interact with unpredictable and sometimes undesirable dynamic feedback effects. This project studies how agent-based models (ABMs) of social contexts can improve the design and regulation of accountable software systems to fill the gap between legal requirements and software design. The goal of this project is to help regulators, domain experts, software designers, and other stakeholders assess the potential societal implications of particular software and regulatory systems. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a social scientific research method that involves bottom-up modeling of complex systems and computationally determining their emergent properties by running simulations. The investigators use ABMs to model elements of the social and regulatory environment in which a software system operates, and to guide the crafting and enforcement of technology regulations.
NSF Program Director Nina Amla said, "this is a promising approach for improving the accountability of software deployed in social contexts like advertising software, fair housing, contact tracing, and privacy."
Principled Software Design and Accountability
Image Credit: United States Capitol Police
This research project sets out a new approach to designing software that is accountable to law, referred to as Principled Software Design and Accountability (PSDA). Legal principles will be distilled from legislation or the common law and augmented by a series of concrete questions whose answers will guide software developers through the process of designing legally compliant software systems. The research will engage diverse stakeholders including legal experts, regulators, sociologists, and software developers, and will explore the integration of PSDA into software design and analysis techniques. The interdisciplinary nature of the work, and the need to engage legal experts, psychologists, and software engineers creates a challenging research space which will be explored through focus groups, grounded theory, and design research techniques. Delivering PSDA requires weaving together a holistic, multi-disciplinary solution supported by deep learning technologies to provide full life-cycle traceability and the creation of persistent, tamperproof records of PSDA flows for creating digital reports. PSDA logs will be built upon relationship-preserving auditable flows, representing design decisions and their rationales, and capable of generating legally compliant paper documents that bind to the digital thread to provide full lineage and rationale behind PSDA decisions.
Faces of CISE: Tanya Berger-Wolf, Ph.D.
Tanya Berger-Wolf, Ph.D.
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
Ohio State University
Photo Credit: Jenny Fontaine
Tanya Berger-Wolf, Ph.D., is a professor of computer science engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and evolution, ecology, and organismal biology at The Ohio State University (OSU), where she is also the director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute. Prior to joining OSU in January 2020, Berger-Wolf spent 15 years at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Berger-Wolf is among the founders of the field of computational ecology, leading research at the unique intersection of computer science, wildlife biology, and social sciences. She creates computational AI and data science solutions to generate, collect, analyze, and derive insight from data to answer questions and make decisions in ecology, environment, and wildlife conservation. Tanya is passionate about creating a human-AI partnership to address the greatest conservation challenges of our planet. As a legitimate part of her work, she gets to hang out of an ultra-light airplane in Kenya, taking a hyper-stereo video of zebra populations and learning how to identify each one of them by the unique stripe pattern. She works with many teams of brilliant people who do cool, amazing, and impactful things.
She has received numerous awards for her research and mentoring, including University of Illinois Scholar, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Distinguished Researcher of the Year, NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER), Association for Women in Science Chicago Innovator, and the UIC Mentor of the Year. Berger-Wolf has given hundreds of talks about her work, including at TEDx (featured on TED.com) and UN/UNESCO AI for the Planet.
Taking research to conservation action and policy, Berger-Wolf is also a director and co-founder of the conservation software non-profit, Wild Me, home of the Wildbook project, which brings together AI, computer vision, crowdsourcing, and conservation. Wild Me enables the work of many conservation organizations and government agencies, such as the World Wildlife Fund, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kenya Wildlife Service, Grevy’s Zebra Trust, Giraffe Conservation, and many others. Wildbook has been recently chosen by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as one of the top AI 100 projects worldwide supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Most of Berger-Wolf’s research has been supported by NSF. The graduate research fellowship and the CAREER awards helped launch her career. Her collaborative interdisciplinary research in computational approaches to understanding (animal) sociality was supported by several CISE and cross-cutting awards. Her passion for engaging kids in science and for educating the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists was supported by Broadening Participation in Computing and educational grants. NSF also supported the initial stages of research that became the foundation of Wild Me which is now powering conservation worldwide.
NSF's large-scale AI and data science programs, such as Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science, National AI Research Institutes, and Harnessing the Data Revolution, are designed to foster the exploration of data science and AI, from foundations to applications. Berger-Wolf’s vision for collaborative interdisciplinary research in computational ecology and for turning images into the source of information about life on the planet has recently got a big boost from NSF. She and a team of interdisciplinary scientists have been awarded a $15-million grant to establish a new Harnessing Data Revolution Data-Intensive Research in Science and Engineering Institute, founding a new field of study: Imageomics. It will use AI and other computational approaches to extract biological information, particularly traits, from images, leading to new understanding of evolution and ecology.
Tanya Berger-Wolf is a great example of how NSF supports scientists in their early and late stages of their research careers.
CISE Units
Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
CNS invents new computing and networking technologies, while ensuring their security and privacy, and finds new ways to make use of current technologies.
Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF)
CCF advances computing and communication theory, algorithms for computer and computational sciences and architecture and the design of computers and software.
Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS)
IIS studies the interrelated roles of people, computers and information to increase the ability to understand data, as well as mimic the hallmarks of intelligence in computational systems.
Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)
OAC supports and coordinates the development, acquisition and provision of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources, tools and services essential to the advancement and transformation of Science and engineering.
What’s hot in science? Check out NSF research news for the day of Feb. 17, 2022
02/17/2022
Keep up with today’s research news from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This is a daily look at noteworthy scientific findings from researchers around the country.
Thu, 17 Feb 2022
January freeze dates becoming the norm for many northern US lakes
Climate change is driving later freeze dates and earlier thaws in lakes
When Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin, froze over a few days after New Year's Eve, it marked the beginning of ice season, a time of year when, once the ice gets thick enough, the bodies of water in this lake-rich city become host to a variety of outdoor ...
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Thu, 17 Feb 2022
Shape of melting ice depends on water temperature
Scientists discovered that ice formations are shaped by external forces
Mathematicians and physicists at New York University have discovered that ice formations are shaped by external forces, such as water temperature. The research may offer another means for gauging factors that cause ice to melt. The study is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
"The shapes and patterning of ice are sensitive indicators ...
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Dear Colleague Letter: Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Supplemental Funding in Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Available Formats:
HTML: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22049/nsf22049.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_27&WT.mc_ev=click
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Document Number: nsf22049
Public Comment:
This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information - Computer/Information Sciences item.
Dear Colleague Letter: Human-Environment & Geographical Sciences (HEGS) Research Experience for Graduates (REG) and Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements
02/18/2022
Dear Colleague Letter: Human-Environment & Geographical Sciences (HEGS) Research Experience for Graduates (REG) and Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements
Available Formats:
HTML: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22048/nsf22048.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_38&WT.mc_ev=click
PDF: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22048/nsf22048.pdf?WT.mc_id=USNSF_38&WT.mc_ev=click
Document Number: nsf22048
Public Comment:
This is an NSF Program Announcements and Information - Social/Behavioral Sciences item.
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