• CRA Files Declaration in Support of Felten
• NSF Awards $53 Million for Distributed Terascale Facility
• Microsoft to Open a Research Unit in Silicon Valley
• Legislation to Extend STTR Passed by House Committee
• Legislation Introduced to Create Digital TechCorps
• President Bush's Commitment to Technology Issues Remains Unclear
• Air Force S&T Program Significantly Underfunded
• Department of Energy Hampered by S&T Staff Shortage
• CSTB "Privacy in the Information Age" Study: Call for Nominations
• NSF Combined Research-Curriculum Development Program

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CRA Files Declaration in Support of Felten

Calling the issue fundamental to free expression and academic research, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School represented University of Washington professor Edward Lazowska and the Computing Research Association (CRA), who on Monday submitted a declaration of support for Princeton University professor Edward Felten in a lawsuit asserting the right of computing researchers to reveal the findings of their academic work.

Professor Felten and a team of researchers were threatened against disclosing their analysis of a digital music protection scheme when they submitted their findings for publication at an information security conference in April. The scheme, called the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), was promoted with the claim that it could protect digital music against Napster-like copying. Berkman Center Fellow attorney Wendy Seltzer, who assisted Lazowska and the CRA, said, “There is clearly something wrong when professors are afraid to study information systems or to publish their research.”

In June, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others took the initiative and filed a suit against the RIAA et al. on behalf of Felten and his team. Professor Lazowska’s declaration supports Felten and other researchers seeking a declaratory judgment from the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey that the DMCA violates First Amendment and other constitutional rights by preventing the team from presenting its computer science research to the world. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society supported the suit as an expression of a “core component of its mission,” according to Berkman Center executive director Eric Saltzman, “protecting openness and free expression on the Internet.”

“CRA’s members are deeply concerned that the DMCA will have a chilling effect on computing research,” said Lazowska. “Much research in computer systems is based upon analysis – the careful examination of existing systems and approaches in order to understand what works well and what works poorly. Analysis is no less important when the system being studied is used to protect copyrighted works. There is a long tradition of open research – including open research in computer security and information hiding – that has driven our field forward. This tradition is in jeopardy because of the DMCA.”

More information can be found at lazowska.cs.washington.edu/felten/

NSF Awards $53 Million for Distributed Terascale Facility

The National Science Foundation has awarded $53 million for the building of the Distributed Terascale Facility (DTF), a multi-site supercomputing system. The facility will begin operation in mid-2002, reaching peak performance of 11.6 teraflops by April 2003. It will store more than 450-trillion bytes of data, with a comprehensive infrastructure called the "TeraGrid" to link computers, visualization systems and data at four sites through a 40-billion bits-per-second optical network. DTF will support research in areas such as storm, climate and earthquake predictions; more-efficient combustion engines; chemical and molecular factors in biology; and physical, chemical and electrical properties of materials. "Nothing like the DTF has ever been attempted before. This will be the largest, most comprehensive infrastructure ever deployed for open scientific research," said Dan Reed, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and a principal investigator of the TeraGrid award.

The four participating sites are NCSA, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Argonne National Laboratory, and the California Institute of Technology. These sites will work primarily with IBM, Intel Corporation and Qwest Communications to build the facility, along with Myricom, Oracle Corporation and Sun Microsystems.

The project director will be Rick Stevens, a computer science faculty member at the University of Chicago and director of the mathematics and computer science division of Argonne.

For more information: www.npaci.edu/teragrid/index.html

Microsoft to Open a Research Unit in Silicon Valley

The New York Times reported that Microsoft is setting up a research group in Silicon Valley in order to work on the company's ".Net" internet services initiative. The unit will be headed by Roy Levin, former director of Compaq's Systems Research Center, and will employ between 10 and 15 researchers in its first year. Levin is joined by Michael Schroeder, formerly the associate director for systems research at Compaq's Silicon Valley center.

The NY Times article is available at www.nytimes.com/2001/08/08/technology/ebusiness/08COMP.html (free, one-time registration required)

Legislation to Extend STTR Passed by House Committee

The House Small Business Committee has passed legislation H.R. 1860 - to reauthorize the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR). The STTR program is a small business partnership program that provides funding for innovation research and development projects through joint venture opportunities for small business and the nation's premier nonprofit research institutions. Last year, the program was funded at nearly $70 million. H.R. 1860 reauthorizes the program through fiscal 2010. The Senate Small Business Committee is considering similar legislation. The STTR program is currently set to expire on September 30, 2001.

For more information about the STTR program, including a description of eligibility requirements for nonprofit research institutions, see the Small Business Administration web site at www.sba.gov/sbir/indexsbir-sttr.html

Legislation Introduced to Create Digital TechCorps

The Chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy Rep. Thomas Davis (R-VA) has introduced legislation intended to utilize the expertise of the private sector to improve the federal IT workforce. The legislation - H.R. 2678 establishes a "Digital TechCorps" that allows government and the private sector to exchange IT workers for up to two years. Private sector participants would enter the federal IT workforce at the GS-12 through GS-15 level, but will continue to receive pay and benefits from their private sector employer. Federal IT worker participants will work for a private sector company, but will retain their federal pay and benefits. All 26 federal agencies will be involved in the program. Rep. Davis intends for H.R. 2678 to be considered by the House of Representatives later this fall. He also expects similar legislation to be introduced in the Senate in the coming weeks.

The statement on H.R. 2678 can be found at www.house.gov/reform/tapps/press/7-31release.htm

President Bush's Commitment to Technology Issues Remains Unclear

An article by Doug Brown in ZDNet, "Does the President Care About Technology?", reviews both the treatment of technology issues by President Bush and the key technology figures in the administration. Responsibility for technology policy is spread among a team of individuals at the White House and so far lacks the focus or level of support given to it under President Clinton. It appears that Bush's approach to technology is through the broader issues of tax relief, energy, education and free trade. 

Floyd Kvamme, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), admitted that while he has been active in discussing issues with the administration and industry, PCAST has taken a passive role as it awaits the confirmation of co-chair John Marburger as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Brown notes that overall, the Bush administration's less active role in technology issues is causing concern within the technology industry.

The article is available at www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2797653,00.html

Air Force S&T Program Significantly Underfunded

A report from the National Research Council concluded that the Air Force's current spending on scientific research is "too low to meet the challenges being presented by new and emerging threats" and that the Air Force has insufficient authoritative science advocates among its senior leadership "to help make informed trade-offs and budget decisions." The report recommended that Air Force spending on science and technology should be increased to one-and-a-half to two times its current level.

According to the report, investment in science and technology by the Army, Navy, and defense research agencies has risen between 17 and 47 percent in real terms since 1989. By contrast, the Air Force's investment is down by 46 percent. As a percentage of its total budget, Air Force spending for science and technology dropped from 2.2 percent to about 1.7 percent.

The report also expressed concern about the reduction of Air Force scientists. Between 1996 and 2000, the percentage of reduction in employees at the Air Force Research Laboratory was twice as large as for the Air Force as a whole.

The report comes just as Congress is about to take up the President's fiscal year 2002 defense budget request which cuts Air Force science and technology spending 5 percent below the level Congress appropriated last year.

A summary and a prepublication copy of the report are available at www.house.gov/tonyhall/pr233.html

Department of Energy Hampered by S&T Staff Shortage

The Energy Department has significant recruitment and retention problems, and needs to fill nearly 600 scientific and technical positions immediately or risk not being able to meet its missions, according to a new report from the agency’s inspector general.

“Given historical rates of hiring and attrition, the department may face a shortage of over 1,800 scientific and technical specialists in less than five years’ time,” said the report. Energy has about 9,900 permanent employees, including 4,600 scientific and technical personnel. 

Despite a 1998 department-wide initiative to address workforce needs, Energy has failed to effectively use existing tools, including bonuses and “excepted service” authority, to recruit and retain employees. Excepted service positions are excluded from competitive civil service procedures and are designed to give agencies more flexibility in hiring skilled employees. Energy has a total of 700 excepted service positions, but as of last month, only 140 excepted service employees were actually working at the department, according to the report.

The inspector general’s report recommended that the Energy Department develop and put in place a comprehensive workforce planning program that includes quantifiable recruitment and retention performance measures.

A copy of the report, "Recruitment and Retention of Scientific and Technical Personnel" is available at www.ig.doe.gov/pdf/ig-0512.pdf

CSTB "Privacy in the Information Age" Study: Call for Nominations

The  Computer Science and Telecommunications Board has issued a call for nominations for participants in its "Privacy in the Information Age" study. Participants are needed to staff the committee, participate in workshops, brief the committee, provide written inputs, and review draft material.

"Privacy in the Information Age" will assess risks to personal information associated with information technology and their interaction with non-technology-based risks, incidence of actual problems relative to the potential, trends in technology and practice that will influence impacts on privacy, and so on. It will evaluate the context for those causes of concern -- why personal information is at risk, how and why that information is shared, and trends in its storage, communication, combination with other information, and various uses. It will examine the tradeoffs (e.g., between more personalized marketing and more monitoring of personal buying patterns) involved in the collection and use of personal information, including the incidence of benefits and costs, and it will examine alternative approaches to collection and use and alternative incidence of benefits and costs. Finally, it will evaluate tools and strategies for responding to privacy concerns. It will culminate in a comprehensive report, which will document the assessment and the range of relevant points of view, illuminate areas for research, and present a set of annotated options and recommendations for private and public sector actions. Options and recommendations might involve technical measures, practice and procedure, law, regulation, or special agreements.

While nominations may be submitted at any time, those received after September 7, 2001, may not be fully considered. Self-nominations will be accepted.

For more information on the project and the nominations procedure: www4.nationalacademies.org/cpsma/cstb.nsf/web/project_privacy?OpenDocument

NSF Combined Research-Curriculum Development Program

The Combined Research-Curriculum Development (CRCD) Program, a joint initiative of the Directorate for Engineering (ENG) and the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), supports multidisciplinary projects that integrate new, state-of-the-art research advances in emerging technology areas into upper level undergraduate and introductory graduate engineering and computer and information science curricula. Projects address a need for innovative curricula, courses, textbooks, instructional modules and instructional laboratories by integrating the research and education interests of faculty through involvement in curriculum change. The CRCD program seeks to closely engage faculty researchers, with support of academic administration and industry, in curriculum innovation in the context that education and research are of equal value and complementary parts of an integrative engineering and science education enterprise.

Letters of intent (optional) are due August 31, 2001, while the deadline for full proposals is October 31, 2001.

For more information: www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf01139