"NSF's Investment in Converging Frontiers"
Dr. Rita R. Colwell
Director
National Science Foundation
Lecture: University of California-Santa Cruz
June 21, 2002
(as prepared for delivery)
See also slide
presentation.
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please contact
The Office of Legislative and Public Affairs: (703)
292-8070.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, Marcy, for
a lively introduction. I would like to take this opportunity
to commend Marcy for sterling contributions to the
National Science Foundation through her service on
our National Science Board, especially for her work
on Programs and Plans and the public communication
of science.
Marcy's work in Washington at the White House Office
of Science and Technology Policy has served our nation
well. I note in particular her leadership role in
the report, Science in the National Interest.
Wherever she goes, it's Marcy's leadership style--her
ability to reach beyond her own discipline and represent
science and engineering in totality--that makes her
a very valuable resource, whether in Washington or
here in the University of California system. MRC has
more energy and stamina than I--and that's a statement-and-a-half!
Today I plan to survey the broad context surrounding
the National Science Foundation's investments in interdisciplinary
science and engineering--investments that have taken
shape as Science and Technology Centers such as the
Center for Adaptive Optics, Materials Research Centers,
and most recently as the priority areas that cross
a number of disciplines.
I'll begin by noting that our investments at the forefront
of discovery have been grabbing headlines lately--in
some unlikely quarters.
[The Onion:
headline]
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I think it's telling that news of deep interdisciplinary
laws has recently made it into the pages of the tongue-in-cheek
newspaper called The Onion. You see the article
here featuring "NSF's chairman"---I haven't met such
an entity yet.
The chairman heralds a breakthrough discovery, saying
"Science is really, really hard." He also announces
a "newly discovered 'Law of Difficulty'"; this law
"holds true for all branches of science, from astronomy
to molecular biology to everything in between." I'll
refer you to "The Onion" for further details.
[title slide:
backdrop with recent shot of aurora australis at South
Pole Station]
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This recent wintertime image of the aurora australis,
captured at the South Pole Station, represents NSF's
strategy to go to the ends of the earth, if necessary,
to invest in the frontiers of discovery.
Like the lines of longitude converging at the poles
of the Earth, many disciplines of science and engineering
are converging in surprising ways to generate new
knowledge needed for the increasingly complex challenges
we face as a society.
[generic shot
of medieval cathedral]
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I reach back to the great cathedrals of the Middle
Ages as a metaphor for the trend toward integration
sweeping all of science and engineering, to suggest
how the individual investigator's passion becomes
part of the greater vision.
It's commonly held that the craftsmen who built the
cathedrals toiled in obscurity, content in their religious
ardor to contribute to the transcendental goal of
a monument to their faith. However, this turns out
not to have been the case. According to Horace Freeland
Judson, author of the book, The Search for Solutions,
when preservationists began to study Istanbul's great
cathedral (now mosque), Hagia Sophia, in the 1930s,
"Virtually every stone was found to bear the chiseled
mark of its original mason." Judson explained why
this was done: "Masons marked their stones out of
pride and to identify the proper destinations of each--and
to make sure they got paid."
The stonemasons' practice, and the magnificent edifices
that resulted from individual efforts contributing
to the whole, suggest a metaphor for science today.
As research reaches out to the frontiers of complexity,
it increasingly requires collaboration across disciplines
and across national boundaries.
Pitting the traditional disciplines against the paradigm
of interdisciplinary research is a false dichotomy.
The contributions of individual disciplines are the
very foundation for a new and vibrant vision of interdisciplinary
research.
It is also a pitfall to see investment in research
as a zero-sum-game; that is, if some areas gain, others
inevitably lose out. In fact, by choosing particularly
vibrant areas of research that are inherently interdisciplinary,
we are investing to accelerate progress across the
board.
[adaptive optics;
blue Neptunes and cones in the eye]
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In today's research climate, advances in one field
frequently offer immediate implications for another.
New tools can serve many disciplines, and even accelerate
interdisciplinary work.
This afternoon we'll be celebrating an excellent example
of unlikely scientific convergence--adaptive optics,
a striking consilience of astronomy with vision science.
I often cite adaptive optics, in fact, as I give talks
around the country and abroad.
The technique sharpens astronomers' vision from ground-based
observatories, as we see in these before-and-after
pictures of Neptune. Also a tool for looking into
the human eye, adaptive optics produced the first
images--shown in red, green and blue--of cone arrangements
in the living eye.
This convergence has also brought together young students
from astronomy and vision science, who visit each
others' laboratories and are enriching each others'
perspectives at a formative time in their careers.
Fundamental research to create a clearer view of the
universe has spawned a new technology for the study
of the human eye that could potentially benefit everyone.
That's what I'd call a great return on our
investment!
[South Pole
auroral slide as backdrop; bullets with NSF priority
areas listed]
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In the past few years NSF has made it a deliberate
part of our strategy to demarcate areas of converging
discovery for special investment. We select these
priority areas based on their exceptional promise
to advance knowledge. They also exemplify the power
of working across disciplines.
These areas are information technology, nanotechnology,
biocomplexity, mathematics, and the study of how we
learn. Such convergent areas have been called the
"power tools" of the next economy.
As an interesting aside, I was reading an article on
interdisciplinary research in the Chronicle of Higher
Education the other day, and I was pleased to come
across a quotation from a science policy expert at
Pennsylvania State University, Irwin Feller.
He was quoted as saying, "'In some respects, the federal
agencies are ahead of the universities'" in promoting
interdisciplinary research, "and the universities
are responding."
The Federal initiative in information technology--a
joint effort among Federal agencies, which NSF leads--exemplifies
targeted investment as a rising tide that lifts all
boats. As a tool for scientific discovery, information
technology has proven as valuable as theory and experiment.
IT has transformed the very conduct of research--helping
us to handle the quantity as well as complexity of
data, enabling new ways to collaborate around the
globe, and letting us visualize in stunning new ways.
I borrow this image from Hans Moravec' book on robotics
to demonstrate the breathtaking pace of growth in
computing power. It depicts computing history, using
millions of instructions per second--compared to the
computing speed of various life-forms, from a bacterium
up to a human.
We can see that computing speed now approaches that
of a mouse. Not far off in the future, computers should
reach a monkey's capacity, and then a human being's.
[TeraGrid]
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We look beyond, to a grander scale--the TeraGrid, a
distributed facility which will let computational
resources be shared between widely separated groups.
This will be the most advanced computing facility available
for all types of research in the United States--exceptional
not just in computing power but also as an integrated
facility, offering access to researchers across the
country, merging of multiple data resources, and visualization
capability.
It is a step toward the vision of a cyber-infrastructure
that will give a broad range of disciplines access
to high-performance computing.
[nano]
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A frontier of a vastly different dimension is the nanoscale.
At one billionth of a meter, that's only slightly
larger than the average atom. Nanoscience is inherently
interdisciplinary, and its promise spans the inorganic
and living realms. Progress in many disciplines of
science and engineering converges here, the point
at which the worlds of the living and the non-living
meet.
The National Science Foundation leads the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, a "grand coalition" of
organizations from government, academe, and the private
sector.
This government partnership developed a vision for
nanotechnology that has transformed the horizon of
the entire field worldwide. Nanotech is already going
commercial, employed in clothing, cosmetics, plastics
and self-cleaning windows.
[Handprint]
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Nanotech is also being harnessed for homeland security.
Chemists at the University of California-San Diego
have developed a silicon polymer "nanowire" that is
extremely sensitive to explosive residues.
We see here a paper embedded with the nanowires; when
a hand, brushed with explosive residue, touched the
paper, the explosive was detected. The method might
be used to detect land mines or in airport screening
systems.
[biocomplexity
image]
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Another priority area at NSF is biocomplexity. Information
technology, nanotechnology and genomics are all helping
us to understand the complex interactions in biological
systems, including human systems--and the give-and-take
with their physical environments.
We know that ecosystems do not respond linearly to
environmental change. Understanding demands observing
at multiple scales, from the nano to the global, and
making the connections across those scales is a formidable
challenge. With the perspective of biocomplexity,
disciplinary worlds intersect to form fuller, more
nuanced viewpoints.
[Richard Lenski:
digital and bacterial evolution]
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As an example, the synthetic perspective of biocomplexity
brings surprising insights into the process of evolution.
Richard Lenski at Michigan State has joined forces
with a computer scientist and a physicist to study
how biological complexity evolves, using two kinds
of organisms--bacterial and digital.
Lenski's E. coli cultures are the oldest of
such laboratory experiments, spanning more than 20,000
generations. Here the two foreground graphs actually
show the family tree of digital organisms--artificial
life--evolving over time.
On the left, the digital organisms all compete for
the same resource, so they do not diversify and the
family tree does not branch out. On the right, the
digital organisms compete for a number of different
resources, and diversify.
In the background are round spots--actually laboratory
populations of the bacterium E. coli, which
also diversified over time when fed different resources.
In vivo derives insight from in silico.
[Does Math Matter?
poster]
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I use this poster to represent another NSF priority
area, mathematics, truly a wellspring for all of science
and engineering. The poster announced a panel discussion
held jointly by NSF and Discover Magazine on Capitol
Hill this month.
The theme was "Does Math Matter?"; NSF is answering
with an emphatic "Yes." Mathematics is the ultimate
cross-cutting discipline, the springboard for advances
across the board.
[fractal image]
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Mathematics is both a powerful tool for insight and
a common language for science. A good example, pictured
here artistically, is the fractal, a famous illustration
of how inner principles of mathematics enable us to
model many natural structures.
[four hearts,
from BIRS talk]
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Mathematics injects new power into medicine. Mathematics
and complexity theory give insight into the human
heart.
The top pictures are computer simulations of the electrical
activity in a normal heart. Below are abnormal patterns,
or fibrillation. Mathematicians are investigating
why some patterns of electrical stimulus are better
at eliminating fibrillation.
[woman's eye]
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Mathematics is also contributing in unexpected ways
to homeland security. A technique called "inpainting,"
borrowed from classical fluid dynamics by Andrea Bertozzi
at Duke University and colleagues, can sharpen an
unclear image, such as this woman's eye. One can imagine
how it might be applied in airport security or law
enforcement.
Another example, described by mathematician Keith Devlin
on National Public Radio the other day, is the use
of Bayesian mathematics to create a software system
used to rank sites according to potential terrorist
risk.
Devlin said, "Interestingly enough, one of these systems
that was developed over the last two or three years,
when they tested in it early in the year 2000, the
system said, 'You should put more defenses into the
Pentagon, because the Pentagon is a much greater risk
than you might think it would be.' And by golly, they
were right." Mathematics' ability to help us deal
with risk is only one area ripe for investment.
[how we learn--brain
image]
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One more priority area--learning for the 21st
century. Our leadership in the global economy requires
a highly skilled and diverse workforce. Who will teach
its future members? Teachers from the post-Sputnik
era are now retiring, and while many current teachers
are well-qualified, others lack the math and science
background needed for their work.
We have created centers for comprehensive research
on how we learn. Also, our Centers for Learning and
Teaching will help encourage undergraduates to pursue
research and teaching in science and math, and to
create a new generation of teachers with fresh ideas
and talents.
[social science
collage image]
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As for the future, I'll suggest two more thematic areas--one
under discussion as a potential priority area, and
another that exemplifies the funding challenge of
collaboration across disciplines supported among several
federal agencies.
We are now discussing a priority area for the social
and behavioral sciences that will explore human dynamics
in a world of rapid change.
We are very interested in enriching the perspective
of the social sciences and integrating it with the
natural sciences.
Progress in social science, fed by discoveries in mathematics
and information technology, promises to accelerate
greatly in coming decades.
If there was any doubt, September 11 made abundantly
clear the need for new understanding from the social
and behavioral sciences. At the same time, investigations
supported by NSF go beyond the immediate to seek deeper
explanations.
- Public opinion surveys right after Sept 11 assessed
the temper of the country, an effort that needs
to be sustained.
- Our human cognition program supports work on the
as-yet-undocumented "flashbulb memory"--examining
whether memory may process traumatic events such
as September 11 in some extraordinary way.
- On quite another front, joint studies with our
engineering directorate analyze how vulnerable
systems may be to disruption, whether infrastructure--even
a building, or social networks, or the economy.
[graphic: quark/cosmos
connections]
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Areas of intersection abound even in the most fundamental
sciences. Take "the deep connections between quarks
and the cosmos," as phrased in a recent report by
the National Research Council.
As this graphic represents, questions about the universe
at the most massive and the most minute scales are
fundamentally linked.
These challenges at the junction of physics and astronomy
require both telescopes and accelerators. Such a scientific
challenge, spanning several federal agencies, asks
us to evolve new structures for investment.
[an image summary
slide]
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From this survey of key emerging interdisciplinary
areas--some well on the way to maturity and others
just in gestation--commonalities are evident.
In each case, the health of the contributing disciplines
is essential to nourishing cross-disciplinary work,
yet the emerging area becomes more than the sum of
its parts. All of these areas forge new ground in
terms of complexity or scale. Some give birth to new
scientific fields.
Then there is the need for international support--many
of these problems are global in scale, and require
resources from many nations.
Interdisciplinary research also has strong implications
for how universities educate students. NSF's program
for Integrative Graduate Education Research and Traineeships,
begun in 1998, is one such experiment.
The aim is to train graduate students to do interdisciplinary
research as partners with faculty. In an institutional
sense, we're also interested in how the expansion
of interdisciplinary research will affect how universities
are structured.
Today we face the challenge of making interdisciplinarity
more than a buzzword in science. How do we measure
its success, how does it work, and how can we encourage
it, in a world divided among disciplines?
NSF recently awarded a $235,000 grant for an intensive
study of how interdisciplinary research is conducted.
It will focus on eight environmental research centers.
As one of the principle investigators, Diana Rhoten,
says, "People may come together in interdisciplinary
centers but not actually be working together. We want
to see what we can learn about how interdisciplinary
work actually happens."
Thus far, standards by which disciplinary work is measured
do not transfer well to the interdisciplinary realm.
For example, Rhoten reports that many interdisciplinary
researchers hope to contribute to solving societal
problems. Many disciplinary researchers, by contrast,
want to "do science for the sake of science."
"How do you measure the influence of interdisciplinary
work on public policy?" Rhoten asks. "It's not a direct
path." Furthermore, researchers are often not rewarded
for "straying" beyond their own disciplines. Such
work is often ambiguous, requires longer time-frames,
and confronts significant cultural and linguistic
barriers across disciplines.
[South Pole
aurora background; words--Crossing the boundary between
science and society...]
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Perhaps the boundary-crossing that presents the greatest
challenge is the science-society divide. I'll comment
just briefly on how I view the responsibility of scientists
and engineers to advocate science and engineering
in the broader realm of society.
Whether we look at the need for a scientific and technical
workforce, or compare the performance of our K-12
students internationally, we see the opportunity for
scientists and engineers to get involved in solving
these problems that are a key part of our national
security.
As the global economy creates opportunities for foreign
students elsewhere, how will we fill the need for
technical capability in our own economy?
On the Third International Mathematics and Science
Study, U.S. 17-year-olds tended to score below the
international average. Even the most advanced students
performed poorly compared to those from other nations.
A recent survey showed that about two-thirds of college
professors rated the basic math skills of freshmen
and sophomores as only fair or poor. Employers made
similar statements about recent job applicants.
Recalling the old saying, "All politics is local,"
I suggest that scientists and engineers--often invisible
in their own communities--can become involved most
effectively not on Capitol Hill but at the grassroots,
on the school-boards and in the communities where
the decisions are made about science and math education.
The 15,000 school boards across the United States exert
a powerful influence on the local scene. They can
determine what is taught and which textbooks or methods
can be used. A scientist on a school board can advocate
critical thinking, analytical skills, and the importance
of challenging received wisdom.
I've already talked about the proportion of our teachers
who are not certified to teach the science and math
courses they have been asked to take on. While deserving
respect for the tough jobs they perform, they could
use a helping hand with ideas and with general understanding
of subject matter.
Another opportunity is to help students who struggle
with math or science, or to assist especially gifted
students. A small corps of scientists in the community
could become a tutoring resource for their local school.
I know that the Center for Adaptive Optics is reaching
out to science teachers, students, and the local community
in Maui, Hawaii, by sponsoring workshops on the science
of learning, technical training for native Hawaiians
and working with the local community college.
Industry is interested in participating in these partnerships,
which will train our future workforce. Even now, graduate
students from this Center teach summer courses for
young children from groups underrepresented in science
and engineering, using astronomy and vision science
to spark their imaginations.
Whether communicating beyond the borders of science
and engineering or surmounting our own disciplinary
borders, NSF considers it critical to re-think old
categories and traditional perspectives.
Conventional boundaries are dissolving, whether among
disciplines, between science and engineering, or between
fundamental research and its applications.
Where research meets the unknown, the ideas and technologies
of life science, physical science and information
science are merging. We need the most promising and
ingenious insights from all of you who are on the
frontiers of research and education. I'm very much
looking forward to hearing some of those ideas and
comments now.
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