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NSF Press Release

 


NSF PR 99-50 - August 31, 1999

Media contact:

 Bill Noxon

 (703) 292-8070

 wnoxon@nsf.gov

Program contact:

 Richard Hilderbrandt

 (703) 306-1844

 rhilderb@nsf.gov

This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.

Knowledge-Centered Awards Jump Start NSF Focus on I.T. for the 21st Century

The National Science Foundation (NSF) this week awarded $50 million in grants for broad-based research in knowledge and distributed intelligence (KDI). The awards are for projects as varied as knowledge networking in biocomplexity, earthquake computer modeling and case studies in intellectual property.

The 31 grants to two dozen institutions in 20 states "clearly demonstrate the enormous impact that the explosive growth in computer technology has had across all areas of science and engineering," says Richard Hilderbrandt, NSF program manager for the multi-disciplinary awards. "These awards are a solid foundation for NSF's new initiative in information technology for the 21st Century (IT2)."

The far-reaching research awards include the University of California at Santa Barbara's Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. Researchers hope, through this network, to apply to societal issues a broadened understanding of biocomplexity and ecological systems. They will create and integrate information resources that may be drawn from many distributed, currently autonomous data repositories. The researchers believe this will also help create a new community of environmental scientists who will be able to focus attention on complex, multi-scale issues that previously were impractical, if not impossible, to study.

Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh is receiving three grants totaling almost $5 million. One project involves the development of computer simulations to model and forecast ground motion during earthquakes, focusing on the areas in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco. In a second award, researchers are developing a TalkBank data archiving system to provide social and behavioral scientists a new web-based tool for transcribed video and audio data on communicative interactions. Yet another grant will focus on the study of distance video communications and the impact on the quality of interactions among individuals using these technologies.

On another topic of great interest to scientists, the University of California at Berkeley will undertake an extensive study on intellectual property, looking at the issue from the standpoint of economic, legal, technical and rights management perspectives.

The Department of Commerce's National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) received the only grant in this group not awarded to a university. At NIST, scientists will develop a digital library of mathematical functions, a web accessible knowledge base of validated mathematical data. A key facet of this system will be the interactive features and internal/external links created that will allow for retrievals, searches and interactive visualizations among many other features.

"Most of these grants are split among at least two disciplines, with three or four disciplines often sharing in this research," Hilderbrandt said. The grants cover a three-year period.

-NSF-

Attachment: List of 1999 KDI awards.

Attachment

LIST OF 1999 KDI AWARDS

STATE

INSTITUTION

SUMMARY

AWARD

AZ

Arizona State Univ.

3D Knowledge: Acquisition, Representation and Analysis in a Distributed Environment

$2,100,000

CA

Univ. of Calif.
Berkeley

Economic, Legal, and Technical Dimensions of Rights Management

$940,000

CA

Univ. of Calif.
San Francisco

Virtual Environments to Elucidate Strategies in Complex Spatial Problem Solving

$1,000,000

CA

Univ. of Calif.
Santa Barbara

A Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity

$2,979,000

CT

Yale Univ.

Coordinated Motion of Natural and Man-Made Groups

$2,600,000

DE

Univ. of Delaware

Executing Genetic Algorithms Using DNA Genetic Materials

$900,000

FL

Univ. of Florida

Multi-scale simulation including chemical reactivity in materials

$2,200,000

IL

Univ. of Illinois
Chicago

Intelligent Computational Genomic Analysis

$1,700,000

IL

Univ. of Illinois
Urbana

Co-evolution of Knowledge Networks and 21st Century Organizational Forms

$1,500,000

IL

Univ. of Illinois
Urbana

Can Knowledge Be Distributed? The Dynamics of Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Alliances

$1,400,000

IN

Indiana Univ.
Bloomington

The Internet Learning Forum: Fostering and Sustaining Knowledge Networking

$1,473,300

MD

Johns Hopkins Univ.

Accessing Large Distributed Archives in Astronomy and Particle Physics

$2,500,000

MD

National Inst. of Standards & Tech. (NIST)

Mathematical Foundations for a Networked Scientific Knowledge Base

$1,300,000

MA

UMASS Amherst

Visualization and Spatial Reasoning: Cognitive Models, Skill Acquisition and Intelligent Tutors

$988,730

MA

UMASS Amherst

Temporal Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning

$560,000

MI

Univ. of Michigan

A Prototype Implementation of a TeraFlop- Class Predictive Space Weather Model

$2,300,000

MI

Univ. of Michigan

Creating a Corpus of Learning-Situated Design Guidelines & Software Components

$2,040,000

MN

Univ. of Minnesota

Building a Future for Software History

$488,000

MO

Washington Univ. St. Louis

An Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory

$2,200,000

NY

Cornell Univ.

Simulation and Modeling of Organic and Inorganic Non-crystalline Semiconductors

$1,700,000

NY

New York Univ.

Unsteady Flows with Dynamic Boundaries

$2,400,000

NY

Rensselaer Polytech Inst.

Automated Design and Discovery of Novel Pharmaceuticals

$1,200,000

NY

State Univ. of N.Y. (SUNY) Albany

Knowledge Networking in the Public Sector in the Public Sector

$1,000,000

NC

Duke Univ.

Brain-Machine Interfaces for Monitoring and Modeling Sensorimotor Learning in Primates

$1,600,000

OH

Wright State Univ.

Cross-Modal Analysis of Signal and Sense

$2,536,050

PA

Carnegie Mellon Univ.

Large-Scale Iversion-Based Modeling of Complex Earthquake Ground Motion

$2,131,000

PA

Carnegie Mellon Univ.

The Importance of Shared Visual Environments Environments for Collaborative Tasks

$1,500,000

PA

Carnegie Mellon Univ.

TalkBank: A Multimodal Database of Communicative Interaction

$1,442,000

RI

Brown Univ.

3D Free-Form Models for Geometric Recovery and Applications to Archaeology

$1,200,000

WA

Univ. of Washington

Amorphous and Crystalline Ice Growth

$1,200,000

WA

Univ. of Washington

A Framework for Particle Simulation from Proteins to Planetesimals

$1,000,000

-NSF-

 

 
 
     
 

 
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