Title: Knowledge-Centered Awards Jump Start NSF Focus on I.T. for the 21st Century Date: August 31, 1999 Media contact: August 31, 1999 Bill Noxon NSF PR 99-50 (703) 306-1070/wnoxon@nsf.gov Program contact: Richard Hilderbrandt (703) 306-1844/rhilderb@nsf.gov 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. -NSF- Attachment: List of 1999 KDI awards. LIST OF 1999 KDI AWARDS STATE INSTITUTION SUMMARY AWARD AZ Arizona State Univ. 3D Knowledge: Acquisition, $2,100,000 Representation and Analysis in a Distributed Environment CA Univ. of Calif. Economic, Legal, and Technical $940,000 Berkeley Dimensions of Rights Management CA Univ. of Calif. Virtual Environments to $1,000,000 San Francisco Elucidate Strategies in Complex Spatial Problem Solving CA Univ. of Calif. A Knowledge Network for $2,979,000 Santa Barbara Biocomplexity CT Yale Univ. Coordinated Motion of $2,600,000 Natural and Man-Made Groups DE Univ. of Delaware Executing Genetic Algorithms $900,000 Using DNA Genetic Materials FL Univ. of Florida Multi-scale simulation $2,200,000 including chemical reactivity in materials IL Univ. of Illinois Intelligent Computational $1,700,000 Chicago Genomic Analysis IL Univ. of Illinois Co-evolution of Knowledge $1,500,000 Urbana Networks and 21st Century Organizational Forms IL Univ. of Illinois Can Knowledge Be Distributed? $1,400,000 Urbana The Dynamics of Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Alliances IN Indiana Univ. The Internet Learning Forum: $1,473,300 Bloomington Fostering and Sustaining Knowledge Networking MD Johns Hopkins Accessing Large Distributed $2,500,000 Univ. Archives in Astronomy and Particle Physics MD National Inst. of Mathematical Foundations for $1,300,000 Standards & Tech. a Networked Scientific Knowledge Base (NIST) MA UMASS Visualization and Spatial $988,730 Amherst Reasoning: Cognitive Models, Skill Acquisition and Intelligent Tutors MA UMASS Temporal Abstraction in Reinforcement $560,000 Amherst Learning MI Univ. of Michigan A Prototype Implementation $2,300,000 of a TeraFlop- Class Predictive Space Weather Model MI Univ. of Michigan Creating a Corpus of $2,040,000 Learning-Situated Design Guidelines & Software Components MN Univ. of Minnesota Building a Future for $488,000 Software History MO Washington Univ. An Astrophysics Simulation $2,200,000 St. Louis Collaboratory NY Cornell Univ. Simulation and Modeling of $1,700,000 Organic and Inorganic Non-crystalline Semiconductors NY New York Univ. Unsteady Flows with Dynamic $2,400,000 Boundaries NY Rensselaer Polytech Inst. Automated Design and $1,200,000 Discovery of Novel Pharmaceuticals NY State Univ. of N.Y. Knowledge Networking in the $1,000,000 (SUNY) Albany Public Sector in the Public Sector NC Duke Univ. Brain-Machine Interfaces for $1,600,000 Monitoring and Modeling Sensorimotor Learning in Primates OH Wright State Univ. Cross-Modal Analysis of $2,536,050 Signal and Sense PA Carnegie Mellon Univ. Large-Scale Iversion- $2,131,000 Based Modeling of Complex Earthquake Ground Motion PA Carnegie Mellon Univ. The Importance of Shared $1,500,000 Visual Environments Environments for Collaborative Tasks PA Carnegie Mellon Univ. TalkBank: A Multimodal $1,442,000 Database of Communicative Interaction RI Brown Univ. 3D Free-Form Models for $1,200,000 Geometric Recovery and Applications to Archaeology WA Univ. of Washington Amorphous and Crystalline $1,200,000 Ice Growth WA Univ. of Washington A Framework for Particle $1,000,000 Simulation from Proteins to Planetesimals