• HP to Buy Compaq Computer
• Bement to be Nominated Director of NIST
• Congressional Effort to Revive the Office of Technology Assessment
• "MIT Professor Michael Dertouzos Dies at 64"
• Salaries Remain High for Graduates in Computer Science and Engineering
• DOE Chooses 51 Projects for Scientific Discovery Through Advanced Computing Program
• Evaluation of NSF CAREER Program for Junior Faculty
• Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: Call for Papers 
• NSF Information Technology Research Program Solicitation
• CISE Next Generation Software Program Solicitation

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Hewlett-Packard to Buy Compaq Computer

Hewlett-Packard has announced its plan to buy Compaq Computer for $25 billion in stock. The combined technology company would have annual revenues of about $87.4 billion and 145,000 employees, second to only IBM in size.

Although the merger will have to be approved by the Justice Department, the companies believe that the deal will be completed in the first half of 2002. Hewlett-Packard's CEO, Carly Fiorina, will be chairman and CEO of the combined company, while Compaq CEO Michael Capellas will be its president. The new company will be based in Palo Alto, California, the home of Hewlett-Packard.

The combination of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq is expected to create a strong competitor to IBM, Dell, and Gateway in the personal computer business. It will also hold a strong position in the server computer market.

More information can be found in articles from the New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/technology/04DEAL.html (one-time, free registration required) and SiliconValley.com, www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svtop/hp090401.htm

Bement to be Nominated Director of NIST

President Bush has announced his intention to nominate Arden Bement, Jr. to be Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Department of Commerce. 

Professor Bement has served at Purdue University since 1993, first as a Professor of Engineering and Director of the Midwest Superconductivity Consortium and then as a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and head of Purdue's School of Nuclear Engineering. From 1980 to 1993, he was with TRW, Inc. as Vice President for Technical Resources from 1980 to 1988, and then as Vice President for Science and Technology from 1988 to 1993. A former member of the U.S. Army and Army Reserves, Professor Bement is a graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, received a Master's degree from the University of Idaho and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

To review other information about Professor Bement, see his faculty web site at www.ecn.purdue.edu/NE/FSS/Faculty/bement/

Congressional Effort to Revive the Office of Technology Assessment

The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) closed on September 29, 1995. During its 23-year history, OTA provided Congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of complex scientific and technical issues. Legislation has been introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) to re-establish the OTA by providing $20 million annually for its operations in each of the next five years. The bill, H.R. 2148, has over 30 cosponsors. In addition, Congress is currently considering providing $1 million to the General Accounting Office for a technology assessment pilot project as part of the fiscal year 2002 legislative branch appropriations bill.

For more information, visit www.house.gov/rholt/pr061301ota.htm

"MIT Professor Michael Dertouzos Dies at 64"

[Excerpted from an MIT Press Release]

"MIT Professor Michael L. Dertouzos, who had a rare gift for putting complicated technology into human terms and making it accessible to non-technical audiences, died August 27th at Massachusetts General Hospital. Born in Athens, Greece, Dertouzos was 64. 

Dertouzos spent much of the past quarter century studying and forecasting future technological shifts -- in describing, for experts and ordinary citizens alike, what could be. In 1976, he predicted the emergence of a PC in every 3-4 homes by the mid-1990s. In 1980, he first wrote about the Information Marketplace, a vision of networked computers that has transformed the world economy.

Dertouzos joined the MIT faculty in 1964 and became director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) in 1974. Under his leadership, LCS became one of the largest research labs at MIT with 400 faculty members, graduate students, and research staff. LCS dedicated itself to the invention, development and understanding of information technologies, always within the context of their human utility.

Dertouzos is the author of eight books. His latest, "The Unfinished Revolution: Human-Centered Computers and What They Can Do for Us" (HarperCollins), published this year, introduced the concept of "human centered computing." Computers, he wrote, should serve people, not the other way around. Today's machines are overloaded with excessive features, inadequately address our needs, and demand too much of our attention, he declared."

The full text of the press release is available at web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/dertouzos.html

Salaries Remain High for Graduates in Computer Science and Engineering

Despite slowing in the tech sector, new computer science graduates continued to command hefty starting salaries as a variety of employers vied for their talents, according to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). The average offer to computer science graduates rose 8.2 percent to $52,723. Computer systems design companies, consulting services firms, and computer manufacturers were in the forefront in extending offers to computer science grads, but many other types of employers wooed them as well.

Although demand for information sciences and systems grads appeared sluggish earlier in the year, their current average offer stands at $45,182, a 4.1 percent increase over July 2000 figures. Many of their offers were for computer programming, systems analysis and design, and consulting jobs.

Many graduates in the engineering disciplines also continue to command high starting salaries and saw substantial increases in their starting salary offers. For example, the average offer to computer engineering grads jumped 8.9 percent over July 2000 to $53,924.

NACE's Salary Survey is a quarterly report of starting salary offers to new college graduates in 70 disciplines at the bachelor's degree level. The NACE press release for the Summer 2001 report is available at www.naceweb.org/press/display.cfm/2001/pr071101.htm

DOE Chooses 51 Projects for Scientific Discovery Through Advanced Computing Program

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced its first awards under the new Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program. Fifty-one projects will receive a total of $57 million this fiscal year to advance fundamental research in several areas, including: climate modeling, fusion energy sciences, chemical sciences, nuclear astrophysics, high energy physics and high performance computing.

SciDAC is an integrated program that will help create a new generation of scientific simulation codes. The codes will take full advantage of the computing capabilities of terascale computers (computers capable of doing trillions of calculations per second) to address ever larger, more complex problems. The program also includes research on improved mathematical and computing systems software that will allow these codes to use modern parallel computers effectively and efficiently. Additionally, the program will develop "collaboratory" software to enable geographically separated scientists to effectively work together as a team, to control scientific instruments remotely and to share data more readily.

The projects involve collaborations among 13 DOE laboratories and more than 50 colleges, universities and companies. 

For a complete list of SciDAC awards, principal investigators and project descriptions, see the SciDAC website at www.science.doe.gov/scidac/

Evaluation of NSF CAREER Program for Junior Faculty

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released an evaluation of the first three years (FY 1995 through FY 1997) of its Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. The program helps beginning faculty members to develop academic careers that combine research and education. The CAREER awards aim to provide stable support (typically $50,000 a year for four or five years) so that faculty can establish their research programs and integrate their research and education activities.

Some findings from the report:

• 1,037 awards were made between FY 1995 and FY 1997.  
  
  
• Among NSF's seven directorates, the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) gave out the second largest number of awards, at 291.
  
  
• Approximately 73% of the CAREER awardees were male, and 90% were wither white or Asian.
  
  
• Among institutions of higher education 72% of the awardees  were housed in Research-I institutions, followed by 13% in Research-II institutions.
  
  
• The average award was $256,000. Most funds were spend on research (82%) rather than education (18%).
  
  
• The CISE directorate, on average, made much smaller awards than other directorates. CISE awards averaged $3,265 a month compared to an overall mean across all directorates of $4,204.
  
  
• On those outcomes over which they have control (e.g., course development, scholarly presentations, related work by graduate students), CAREER awardees have made more progress than those NSF-funded faculty who chose not to apply to the CAREER program. They also perceived that the award has helped them to advance at a faster pace, and at a faster pace than reported by other NSF-funded junior faculty. On outcomes involving departmental decisions (e.g., tenure and promotion) that are out of the grantee's direct control, there was no difference between the two groups.

A copy of Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program: External Evaluation Summary Report, is available at www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf01134

Information on the CAREER program can be found at www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/career/start.htm

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: Call for Papers 

Technical paper submissions are sought for the next Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing which will be held in October 2002 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The goal of the technical papers is to highlight a broad range of technical work completed substantially by women engineers and scientists in the computing field and to expose that work to GHC2002's general audience. The submission deadline for technical papers is October 1, 2001.

Technical papers need not report original research - indeed overviews of an author's technical field and Ph.D. thesis highlights are strongly encouraged. Priority for scholarships will be given to students and young investigators that are presentors at GHC2002. Information about scholarships and other opportunities are described at: www.gracehopper.org/scholarships.html

The full call for papers can be found on the GHC2002 website: www.gracehopper.org  

NSF Information Technology Research Program Solicitation

The program is expanding to enable research and education in multidisciplinary areas, focusing on emerging opportunities at the interfaces between information technology and other disciplines. In FY2002, NSF’s ITR investments will be focused in three multidisciplinary areas: software and hardware systems; augmenting individuals and transforming society; and advancement of the frontiers of science via information technology. NSF understands that proposals may span more than one of these areas and encourages submission of such proposals. This program seeks innovative projects in research and education that elucidate, expand and exploit IT. Support is available for up to five years to support long-term, multidisciplinary research and education projects.

Deadlines vary according to the size of the project:
Small: February 6-7, 2002.
Medium: November 13, 2001.
Large: November 9, 2001 for mandatory preliminary proposals; April 4, 2002, for full proposals.

The ITR Program Solicitation can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf01149

CISE Next Generation Software Program Solicitation

The Next Generation Software Program (NGS) program fosters multidisciplinary software research under two components: Technology for Performance Engineered Systems (TPES), and Complex Application Design and Support Systems (CADSS). The overall thrust of NGS is research and development for new software technologies integrated across the systems architectural layers, and supporting the design and the operation cycle of applications, computing and communications systems, and delivering quality of service (QoS). The TPES component supports research for methods and tools leading to the development of performance frameworks for modeling, measurement, analysis, evaluation and prediction of performance of complex computing and communications systems, and of the applications executing on such systems. The CADSS component supports research on novel software for the development and run-time support of complex applications executing on complex computing platforms; CADSS fostered technology breaks down traditional barriers in existing software components in the application development, support and runtime layers, and leverages TPES developed technology for delivering QoS.

The technologies developed will be validated with demonstrations on important national interest applications. Multidisciplinary teams will involve collaboration among researchers in several areas in computer sciences and application developers.

Optional Letters of Intent are due September 14, 2001.
Full Proposals are due November 2, 2001.

The NSF Program Announcement can be found at www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf01147