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Engineering Directorate Reorganization
May 24, 2006
Dear Colleague:
Effective October 1, 2006, the Engineering Directorate (ENG) of
the National Science Foundation (NSF) will put in place a new organizational
structure to further enhance agility within disciplines, broaden
multidisciplinary research, and enable discovery at the emerging
frontiers of engineering.
ENG investments in engineering research and education build and
strengthen our nation’s capacity to lead the world in innovation.
This capacity will continue to grow as ENG and NSF push the frontier
with the creation of new knowledge and disruptive technologies
that have the potential to secure our nation and enhance our quality
of life. These investments include such emerging technologies as
bioengineering, cyberinfrastructure, manufacturing innovation,
metabolic engineering, molecular electronics, nanotechnology, photonics,
and sensors and sensor systems.
The new structure – which merges many of the current divisions’ existing
disciplines under broader themes and clusters – will help
ensure that ENG continues to support cutting-edge engineering research
and education, while addressing the emerging and perennial needs
of the nation. For over a decade and a half, the current structure
for ENG has effectively met these goals by 1) serving this nation’s
community of engineers, and 2) supporting the most outstanding
proposals from all fields of engineering.
Over that time, ENG has helped to catalyze advances in emerging
fields, while a new era of international competition and global
innovation has evolved. These conditions compelled ENG to reassess
how to best position itself to respond proactively to new challenges
both domestically and abroad.
ENG’s new structure is an outgrowth of these conditions
and assessments. It was developed through thorough strategic planning,
self-examination, and community feedback. The result is a directorate
better able to support the future of research, education, and innovation.
The following outcomes are anticipated through the reorganized
directorate:
- Leadership at the frontiers of engineering discovery,
innovation, and education;
- Enhanced flexibility for change;
- Enhanced interdisciplinary
research;
- Greater opportunities for exploring new areas not yet
recognized to their full potential;
- Greater ability to integrate
research across priority areas;
- Enhanced synergy between education
and basic research; and,
- Programs that facilitate the continuum
from discovery through innovation.
Included in this vision is the ability to support broad, foundation-wide
investments in a number of areas, including NSF’s multidisciplinary
priority areas and the Administration’s interagency R&D
priorities.
The Engineering Directorate will also utilize this new structure
to further advance the frontier in the key priority areas for ENG
and NSF.
ORGANIZATIONAL ELEMENTS
The new structure will entail consolidating ENG’s five current
disciplinary divisions into three, and establishing three crosscutting
units. The specific outcomes of this reorganization are as follows:
Disciplinary Divisions:
- The divisions of Chemical and Transport Systems (CTS) and
Bioengineering and Environmental Systems (BES) will merge to
form the division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental,
and Transport Systems (CBET).
CBET will support research and education in the rapidly evolving
fields of chemical engineering, bioengineering, and environmental
engineering, and in areas that involve the transformation and/or
transport of matter and energy by chemical, thermal, or mechanical
means. CBET will also make investments contributing significantly
to the knowledge base and the development of the workforce for
major components of the U.S. economy, including chemicals, pharmaceuticals,
medical devices, forest products, metals, petroleum, food, textiles,
utilities, and microelectronics.
CBET will have two windows for unsolicited proposals: August 15,
2006 through September 15, 2006, and February 1, 2007 through March
1, 2007.
- The divisions of Civil and Mechanical Systems (CMS) and Design
and Manufacturing Innovation (DMI) will merge to form the division
of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI).
CMMI will support fundamental, frontier disciplinary and interdisciplinary
research needed to design, build, and secure the nation's critical
infrastructure, manufacturing, and service enterprise systems.
CMMI's investments also will advance the integration of education
and research, which enables the development of a diverse, adaptable,
and globally competitive engineering workforce.
CMMI will have two windows for unsolicited proposals: September
1, 2006 through October 1, 2006, and January 15, 2007 through February
15, 2007.
- The division of Electrical and Communications Systems (ECS)
will add cyber systems to its portfolio to become the division
of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS).
ECCS will address fundamental research issues underlying component
and device technologies, power, controls, networking, communications
and cybersystems technologies. The division will also support the
integration and networking of systems principles across all scales.
ECCS will also ensure the education of a diverse workforce prepared
to continue the rapid development of emerging technologies as drivers
of the global economy.
ECCS will have two windows for unsolicited proposals: September
7, 2006 through October 7, 2006, and January 7, 2007 through February
7, 2007.
Crosscutting Units:
- The Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) will now provide
more emphasis on its role as a crosscutting division within the
directorate.
The EEC’s programs will enable the continual evolution
of the engineering education and research enterprise at U.S.
universities, provide a unifying link across all engineering
disciplines for programs that cut across all disciplines, and
provide comprehensive oversight for projects of a scale requiring
such oversight.
- The Office of Industrial Innovation (OII), which houses SBIR/STTR,
will broaden to include new partnerships, and become the division
of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP).
IIP will accelerate industrial innovation in the United States
by leveraging fundamental scientific and engineering research through
small businesses in alignment with the statutory purpose of the
Small Business Program and the NSF Vision.
- A crosscutting Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and
Innovation (EFRI) will be added and report to the Office
of the Assistant Director (OAD).
EFRI is a new component of the Directorate for Engineering. It
will serve the critical role of helping the directorate focus on
important emerging areas in a timely manner. Each year, EFRI will
recommend, prioritize, and fund interdisciplinary initiatives at
the emerging frontier of engineering research and education. These
investments will represent transformative opportunities, potentially
leading to: new research areas for NSF, ENG, and other agencies;
new industries or capabilities that result in a leadership position
for the country; and/or significant progress on a recognized national
need or grand challenge.
The EFRI process of selecting, announcing, and funding new frontier
areas will function throughout the year, ensuring continual input
and feedback from the engineering community on promising future
research opportunities. This input will come from such diverse
sources as workshops, advisory committees, technical meetings,
professional societies, proposals and awards, and NSF committees
of visitors.
From this comprehensive input, ENG will identify, evaluate,
and prioritize those frontier topics that best match the EFRI
criteria (transformative, addressing a national need or grand
challenge, going beyond one division, an area where the community
is poised to respond, and clearly demonstrating ENG’s leadership
role).
EFRI 2007
Two potential research areas have been identified for development
into a 2007 EFRI solicitation, which will go through the appropriate
NSF preparation and clearance processes.
- The first is Auto-reconfigurable Engineered Systems Enabled
by Cyberinfrastructure (ARES-CI).
The central idea of ARES-CI is to develop autonomously reconfigurable
engineered systems that remain robust in the face of unexpected
high-consequence natural or intentional failure events (e.g.
hurricanes, pandemics, or terrorist attacks) that could impact
critical infrastructures in unforeseen ways. Cyberinfrastructure
and other advances in engineering and information sciences provide
unprecedented capabilities to embed reconfigurability into systems.
Auto-reconfigurability will provide robustness to unplanned failure
events in the same way “complexity” provides
robustness to anticipated failure events. EFRI plans to fund
advances that lead to a fundamental understanding of reconfigurability
and allow the design of autonomously reconfigurable engineered
systems integrating physical, information, and knowledge domains.
These autonomously reconfigurable engineered systems will be
able to sense, self-diagnose, and reconfigure the system to function
uninterruptedly when subject to unplanned failure events.
- The second potential research area is Cellular and Biomolecular
Engineering (CBE), which will focus on the following research
thrusts:
The key idea for CBE is to establish an experimental and computational
understanding of the interactive effects of mechanical, electrical,
chemical, and biological factors that impact molecular, cellular,
and interfacial behavior in healthy, stressed, and diseased states.
This will provide the fundamental understanding of genes and other
molecules, and cells and their responses to internal and external
stimuli, and biomolecular interfaces both internal and external
to the cell. The transformative research outcomes will lead to
new biomaterials, new sensing technologies, new medical diagnostic
tools and treatment technologies, new drug delivery systems, alternative
energy sources, new cell-based manufacturing processes, new technologies
for detecting environmental pollutants and bio/chemical terrorism
agents, and new products yet to be discovered.
The preliminary plan for 2007 is to combine both research areas
into a single solicitation, which will encourage team proposals
(3 or more principal investigators from 3 or more disciplines).
EFRI awards will be up to 4 years in duration, and up to $500,000
a year. Pre-proposals will be required to better manage and focus
invited full proposals.
Additional information can be found on the NSF website, or by
contacting the Directorate for Engineering.
Sincerely,
Richard O. Buckius
Assistant Director (Acting)
Directorate for Engineering
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