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This document has been archived. For current NSF funding opportunities, see
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/browse_all_funding.jsp
Directorate
for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Division of Information and Intelligent Systems
The Division of Information and Intelligent
Systems (IIS) supports research and education that will increase the capabilities
of human beings and machines to create, discover, and reason with knowledge
by advancing the ability to represent, collect, store, organize, locate,
visualize, and communicate information. The division contributes to interdisciplinary
research on how observational data leads to discovery in the sciences and
engineering.
• Data, Inference And Understanding Cluster
1. Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
Supports research
and related education activities that are fundamental to the development
of computer systems capable of performing a broad variety of intelligent
tasks and to the development of computational models of intelligent behavior
across the spectrum of human intelligence. Examples of performance-oriented
topics include intelligent agents, planning, automated reasoning, machine
learning, case-based reasoning, knowledge representation methodologies,
and architectures for combining intelligent tasks such as perception, reasoning,
planning, learning, and action. Examples of cognitive-oriented topics include
analogical reasoning, concept formation and evolution, argumentation, integration
of knowledge from diverse sources and experience, knowledge acquisition
by human learners, manipulation and development of taxonomies and classification
systems, collaborative behavior, and adaptation and learning.
2. Computer Vision
Supports research and education activities to
develop novel ideas into projects that have the potential to lead to advanced
visual perception and intelligent systems. The emphasis is on image representation
and interpretation for systems designed to infer properties of the environment
from imaging data, and advanced vision systems providing cognitive abilities.
Research topics include recognition, classification, and identification
of objects, people, events, and activities; scene understanding, including
algorithms for the geometric and photometric description of objects from
visual data; methods for grouping, comparing, matching, indexing, and retrieving
visual data; and 2D and 3D video.
3. Human Language and Communication
Supports research and related
education activities fundamental to the development of computer systems
capable of analyzing, understanding, and generating language, speech, and
other forms of communication that humans use naturally across a wide variety
of situations. The program's ultimate objective is to transform the human-computer
communication experience so that users can address a computer at any time
and any place at least as effectively as if they were addressing another
person.
4. Information and Data Management
Supports research and education
fundamental to the design, implementation, development, management, and
use of databases, information retrieval, and knowledge-based systems. Topics
include design methodologies, data, metadata, information, knowledge and
process/event modeling, information access and interaction, knowledge discovery
and visualization, and systems architecture and implementation. Research
areas span web-based systems, novel data types, efficient data gathering
and storage/archival, information and data organization and management,
including security/privacy issues, information flow, dynamic/evolutionary
systems, change maintenance, and information life-cycle management, interoperability
in heterogeneous systems, highly scalable, data-intensive, and distributed/mobile
information systems, and performance and quality of service issues.
• Science And Engineering Informatics Cluster
The Science and Engineering Informatics cluster supports research and
education focused on advances in information technology that address problems
in specific sciences and engineering domains such as biology, geology, or
chemistry. Characteristics of the research and education activities within
the cluster include integrative, focused on tools and analysis, supportive
of the data infrastructure across all fields of science and engineering,
and focused on a significant computer science problem that is a barrier
to achieving a domain challenge.
1. Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience
Seeks to
enhance our understanding of nervous system function by providing analytical
and modeling tools that describe, traverse, and integrate different levels
of information. The most exciting and difficult challenge facing neuroscientists
is to understand the functions of complex neurobiological systems. Computational
approaches are needed in the study of neuroscience as the requirement for
comprehensive analysis and interpretation of complex data sets becomes
increasingly important. Collaborations among computer scientists, engineers,
mathematicians,
statisticians, theoreticians, and experimental neuroscientists are imperative
to advance our understanding of the nervous system and mechanisms underlying
brain disorders. Computational understanding of the nervous system may
also have a significant impact on the theory and design of engineered systems.
2. Science and Engineering Information Integration and Informatics
Focuses
information technology research on addressing problems that will enable
scientific discovery via analysis of large data sets or information resources.
This component sponsors collaboration between computer scientists and engineers
and scientists and engineers from other domains to address significant,
real requirements of an application. Topics include science and engineering
data models and systems; analysis of science databases and information resources;
analysis of scientific and engineering images; and construction of shared
resource environments. This component is among the CISE Emphases for fiscal
year 2004 (for a complete description, see CISE Emphases
for Fiscal Year 2004, elsewhere in the CISE section).
• Systems In Context Cluster
1. Digital Government
Government, on a large scale, is a collector
and provider of data and information; a provider of information-based services;
and a user of information technologies. The Digital Government Program
has two goals that reflect the importance of information technology on the
conduct
and services of government: (1) projects will support computer and information
science research on the application of information/computer technologies
to government missions, in partnership with government agencies; and (2)
projects will support multidisciplinary research on the design and use
of information technologies in democratic processes; the impact of information
technologies on government institutions; and the interaction between citizens
and government. Digital government research and education may be conducted
in government contexts, such as environmental management; electronic rule
making; long-term archiving of digital objects; urban and land-use planning;
social services; criminal justice and law enforcement; crisis management
and emergency response; public transportation; public records and libraries;
and the collection, maintenance, and confidentiality of government statistics.
2. Digital Society and Technologies
The future and well being of
the nation depend on the effective integration of information technologies
(IT) into its various enterprises and social fabric. ITs are designed,
used, and have consequences in a number of social, economic, legal, ethical,
and
cultural contexts. With the rise of unprecedented new technologies (ex.,
smart homes, shop-bots, pedagogical agents, wearable computers, personal
robots, multi-agent systems, sensors, grids, knowledge environments) and
their increasing ubiquity in our social and economic lives, large-scale
social, economic, and scientific transformations are predicted. In order
to make progress and advance science, scientists and scholars need to work
across disciplinary boundaries to develop new interdisciplinary knowledge
at the interstices of computer and information sciences and the social,
behavioral and economic sciences. Areas of interest include but are not
limited to, universal participation in a digital society; collaborative
intelligence; management of knowledge intensive enterprises; knowledge
environments for science and engineering; and enterprise transformation.
3. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Supports research and education
fundamental to the design of systems that mediate between computers and
humans, and that lead to the creation of tomorrow's exciting new user interface
software and technology. The program's ultimate objective is to transform
the human-computer interaction experience so the computer is no longer
a distracting focus of attention, but instead is an invisible tool that
empowers
the individual user and facilitates natural and productive human-human
collaboration. HCI research topics include but are not limited to, development
and formal
experimental evaluation of foundational models and theories; augmented
cognition and novel uses of computer technologies in education; multi-media
and multi-modal
interfaces in which combinations of text, graphics, gesture, movement,
touch, sound, etc. are used by people and machines to communicate with one
another;
intelligent interfaces; information visualization; virtual and augmented
reality; immersive environments; wearable, mobile, and ubiquitous computing;
and new I/O devices.
4. Robotics
Provides opportunities to develop novel ideas into projects
that have the potential to lead to advanced, intelligent robotic systems.
The Robotics Program supports fundamental research and related education
activities in robotics (ex., machines with sensing, intelligence, mobility).
The emphasis is on systems operating in unstructured environments with
a high level of uncertainty; interaction and cooperation of humans and robots;
and advanced robotic sensory systems. Topics include but are not limited
to, theoretical, algorithmic, experimental, and hardware issues in robotics;
robotics for unstructured environments; personal robots with an emphasis
on human-centered end use; novel and advanced approaches to sensing, perception,
and actuation; representation, reasoning, and planning for complex physical
tasks; robots to extend human capabilities into unknown and hazardous environments;
communication and task sharing between humans and machines, and among machines;
and intelligent control architecture for robotic systems.
5. Universal Access (UA)
Supports fundamental research and related
education activities in computer science that advance computer systems
technology so that all people can possess the skills needed to fully harness
the power
of computing. The program's mission is to empower people with disabilities,
young children, seniors, and members of other underrepresented
groups, so that they are able to participate fully in
the new information society. UA research topics derive from all aspects
of human-computer interaction, but topics of special interest include development
of new models, architectures, and programming languages that emphasize
interface speed and usability by all; definition of semantic structures
for multimedia
information to support cross-modal I/O; development of specific solutions
to address the special needs of communities such as those enumerated above;
and experimental studies to evaluate the success of attempts to provide
access in all its varied forms.
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