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Advances in Information Technology (IT) have dramatically transformed
the way in which people live, work, learn, communicate and conduct
business. To insure that these transformations serve human needs,
are productive for society, and sustainable over the long term,
the National Science Foundation instituted the Information Technology
Research (ITR) program as one of its priority areas. This program
encourages innovative, high-payoff IT research and education. Fiscal
year 2004 (ITR) is the fifth and last year that ITR will be an NSF
priority area.
The ITR program has been enormously successful in opening up opportunities
at the frontiers of IT research and education. In its first year,
Fiscal Year (FY) 2000, the ITR program stressed fundamental research
in IT. In the second year, FY 2001, the program was considerably
broadened to include applications of IT in all scientific, engineering
and educational areas. In the third year, FY 2002, the program expanded
research in areas of interdisciplinary science, focusing on research
at the interstices of information technology and other disciplines.
In its fourth year, FY 2003, the program stimulated research on
the fundamental challenges facing the continued expansion and utilization
of IT across the sciences and engineering, the creation of novel
uses of IT, the interaction of IT with society at large, and the
use of IT to enhance security and reduce society’s vulnerabilities
to catastrophic events, whether natural or man-made. In FY 2004,
the focus is “ITR for National Priorities.” Particular
emphasis will be placed on the distributed systems, grids and infrastructures
that support the attainment of these national priorities.
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