ITR COV AC Briefing
Dr. Lesia Crumption Young
ITR COV Member
ENG AdCom Member
May 11-12, 2005
ITR Program Background
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5 years as an NSF Priority Area
Consistent programmatic scope
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Interdisciplinary IT research and education
 Innovative, high-risk, high-pay-off research and education
Changing Foci
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ITR
COV
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FY00 – Fundamental IT research and education
FY01 – Application of IT to science and engineering challenges
FY02 – Multidisciplinary IT challenges
FY03 – Relationship between acquisition and utilization of
knowledge and IT tools
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FY04 – IT research for national priorities
ITR COV Overview
• ITR COV Structure:
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Chair: Dr. Janie Irwin
And 2 Co-Chairs: Dr. Larry Mayer and Dr. Shenda Baker
3 Team Leaders (one for each year) overseeing 3 teams of 10 or 11
members each
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Fiscal Years covered: 2001, 2002, 2003
3 size classes in the ITR competition each year:
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Dr. Ignacio Grossman
Dr. Jim Beach
Dr. Greg Moses
Small = Up to $500K total for 3 years
Medium = Up to $1M per year for 5 years
Large = Up to $3M per year for 5 years
Solicitation and management plan were aligned to each
year’s scientific opportunities and external demands
Demographics of 35 COV
Members
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Gender: 13 females; 22 males.
Geographic Distribution: Northeast: 3; Mid-Atlantic: 6; South: 10;
Mid-west: 6, West: 10.
Minority Representation: 4 African Americans; 2 Hispanic
Americans; 2 African American-Hispanic Americans; 1 Asian
American; (1 American Indian was invited and accepted the
invitation, and then became ill the day before the COV).
Academic Institutions: Public: 24; Private: 8
Federal Labs: 1
Businesses: 2 large
ITR awardees: 12 ITR awardees
No submission to ITR in past 5 years: 14
Not currently sitting on an NSF AC: 26
NSF ITR Funding by Directorate
BIO
FY 2000
FY 2001
FY 2002
FY 2003
FY 2004
5.19
6.08
6.80
7.50
CISE
90.00
155.48
173.51
215.17
218.07
Source: NSF Budget Thematics
ENG
GEO
MPS
SBE/
OISE
8.17
10.23
11.17
10.31
10.90
12.16
13.21
14.56
29.62
32.66
35.52
38.57
3.82
4.36
4.60
5.15
OPP
1.09
1.22
1.33
1.55
R&RA
Subtotal
$90.00
$214.27
$240.22
$287.80
$295.71
EHR MREFC
36.00
2.00
44.90
2.00
35.00
2.48
44.83
3.05
10.05
Total,
NSF
$126.00
$261.17
$277.22
$335.11
$308.80
FY01-FY03 ITR Success Rate
35%
30%
25%
20%
FY01
FY02
FY03
15%
10%
5%
0%
Large
Medium
Small
Proposal Size
Total
Funding Rate, NSF Research Grants
ITR COV Agenda
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Chunks of time devoted to:
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Learning about the ITR program from ITR Program
Directors
Learning about the funded projects and their science and
education components by talking with Program Directors in
poster sessions
Reading ITR awards and declines – small, medium and
large
Working in teams to complete the year report
Talking with the ADs about recommendations
Working across teams to synthesize and prepare
executive summary
ITR COV Recommendations
Part A: ITR Processes & Mgmt
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Recognize the problem of assembling a strong, diverse, COI-free
pool of reviewers when almost the entire community is submitting
ITR proposals
 Additional quality mail reviews would help
How to ensure that proposers, reviewers, panels, and NSF PD’s
address both merit review criteria
 Different interpretations of what is meant by broader impact
 Emphasize importance of broadening participation
How to measure (as part of the review process)
 Which are high risk, high payoff proposals ?
 Which are truly multidisciplinary proposals ?
Evaluation and continuing oversight of large and medium
projects
ITR COV Recommendations
Part B: ITR Outputs & Outcomes
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Concerns about diversity in students, leadership, and participants
Many “best of breed” ideas enabled by ITR
 New interdisciplinary NSF areas seeded and fueled by ITR
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Bioinformatics, geoinformatics, scientific computing, e-business
Encouraged community building (and reaching across institutional
boundaries) by researchers and by NSF PD’s
Many tools developed, best practices beginning to evolve
 How are their impacts evaluated and will they be maintained after
ITR ?
 Are they now – and will they be in the future – broadly accessible ?
Critical to capture lessons learned and incorporate proven
business practices to prevent future problems
ITR COV Recommendations
ITR PART Specific Questions
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Made significant research contributions to software
design and quality,scalable information
infrastructure, high-end computing, IT workforce,
and socio-economic impacts of IT
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Outstanding nuggets for entire laundry list
Ensured meaningful and effective collaboration
across disciplines of science and engineering
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Solicitations encouraged interdisciplinary research in all
years
Over the years and size classes ~33% of proposals were
co-funded across the Foundation
Management plans (always encouraged, required in large
proposals) forced PIs to think about & develop plans for
collaboration … and reviewers and panels to evaluate
these plans
ITR COV Recommendations
C: Other Topics
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Future large initiatives like ITR should have
appropriate, assigned NSF staffing levels
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Capture and transfer what PD’s learned about running
large, complex, interdisciplinary Priority Area initiatives
Integrated ITR web site of projects
Compromises between success rates and funding
levels/cuts
Capture and transfer what PIs learned about
managing and coordinating large, interdisciplinary,
multi-institutional projects
ITR COV Recommendations
C: Other Topics, con’t
•
ITR has played a key role in launching
interdisciplinary projects within NSF
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How can projects be sustained after ITR for their
productive research lifetime
 Maintenance and evolution of ITR products, infrastructures,
& virtual organizations necessary to the broader research
community (digital repositories, etc.)
Vision for NSF and how interdisciplinary research fits into it
for
 2010?
 2015?
Issues for Further Discussion
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COV process isn’t designed to gather insights
that enable “program Improvement” (ie.
reactive, not proactive in nature)
COV process doesn’t encourage “critical”
feedback from visitors
COV process revealed the lack of good
business practices for standardizing program
planning, solicitation development, etc.
throughout the agency