Values in Design Day 4: Suzi Iacono

NSF is an independent agency within exec branch - not a political agency

"to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defence"

• advice: spend 3 months of work on a proposal
• reviewer criteria: you must have a phd
• program directors select reviewers from their panel
• you should know your program director and send them emails
• in order to keep reviewing process credible, reviewers need to have credentials
• hard to get grants as independent researcher because of 1) credibility and 2) tend to need to learn to submit successful proposal from people who have already written them
• highly competitive: must fund
• competitive: could fund if the money's there
• not competitive: don't fund

NSF's strategic plan: 2006-11 Investment priorities

• discovery: new knowledge - basic science


• learning: educating new researchers and a "workforce"


• research infrastructure: new research capacity - more important for some directorates than others


• stewardship: maintain organization

NSF organization

• largely organized to match disciplinary boundaries


• math and physics tend to get the most money


• computing and communications foundations


• computer and network systems


• information and intelligent systems - human-centered computing!


• now the only funding game in town

where do programs come from?

• CORE programs: long-lasting


• education programs: advisory panels


• interactions with the community through NSF generated activities and larger R&D community internationally

can America compete? (bizarre graph with lots of arrows)
tensions between cooperation and competition

mission + budget + community + secret sauce = core programs + new cross-cutting programs/initiatives

secret sauce
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• nterdisciplinary research and education


• potentially transformational research and education


• international research and education


• e-science, grand challenges and cyberinfrastructure

challenge of multi-disciplinary research

• computer scientists just want to design the thing - not so interested in human reactions - outcomes are assumed - tendency towards utopian expectations


• social, economic, behaviorial sciences: looking at outcomes - design and development are taken for granted and are untheorized - artifacts are black boxes


• need cross-disciplinary overlap at use


• need virtuous cycle: new versions -> new uses -> new consequences -> unintended consequences -> unintended uses -> new designs -> new versions

study of KDI outcomes (Sara Kiesler and Jonathon Cummings)

• predicting outcomes


• multidisciplinarity


• geographic dispersion


• PIs who are more active in coordinating their projects are more successful


• number of coordinating mechanisms used is correllated positively with


• knowledge outcomes


• tools outcomes


• training outcomes


• outread outcomes


• but negative outcomes happened even with coordination mechanisms in place


• reviewers may have seen projects with more institutions as more novel and more interesting - more "rich with diversity"


• but they may not have done the necessary coordination up front, so when they get the award they start at a disadvantage


• you can see when too many disciplines and institutions is too many


• production of knowledge counted through surveys of papers, patents, students graduated, outreach efforts

Basic science and Pasteur's quadrant (from Donald Stokes, Pasteur's Quadrant)

• research inspired by


• considerations of use vs quest for fundamental understanding


• from pure basic research to pure applied research


• NSF includes pure basic research and use-inspired basic research


• two fold criteria: intellectual merit and social benefit

PCAST subcommittee on NIT

• cyber physical systems - software that does not just exist in machines but that is embedded in roads, cars, etc - now there's physics involved!


• software: critical issues in design and development, esp complexity and emergent behaviors in large systems


• digital data and long-term preservation: should we save all our bits? who maintains it? who provides stewardship?


• networking: underlying science

Interagency Task Force on Advanced Networking (ITFAN)

CISE FY09 Cross-cutting programs

• network science and engineering


• trustworthy computing: usability and systems approaches


• cluster computing: massive parallel computing

Internet infrastructure

• IP hourglass model


• can it handle what we want to see in the future?


• can it provide security/privacy?


• Brad Starner's glasses


• Ruzena Bacjy: cameras allow for virtualization of characters into dance

socio-technical challenges

• people who work at different layers of the internet need to work together


• configuring interdependent technical networks, standards, and knowledge production processes


• embedding sophisticated socio-technical systems into institutions


• embedding social, economic, legal, ethical policies into artifacts


• maintaining and updating the negotiated order over time

social networking

• looking at patterns of influence and centrality


• seeing what is usually hidden


• James Fowler (UCSD): social networks on smoking


• smoking groups smaller and more isolated


• but there's a different negative: smokers pushed to periphery




• who is doing what online?

What is meant by socio-technical?
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London 1940s
outcomes of IT
layer-cake description of artifacts
co-evolution of social phenomena and technical artifacts
socio-technical interaction networks (STINs) (Rob King)

NetSE research

• Jeannette Wing's 3 drivers of CS:


• science: complexities of large-scale networks (network science and engineering researchers)


• technology: develop new architectures, exploiting new substrates (distributed systems and substrate researchers) - CS has traditionally favored how things are used, not so much why


• society: enable new applications and new economics while ensuring security and privacy (we skipped this - Helen is on this committee - keep alive awareness of political, social, ethical issues in new technological developments - contribute perspective)

imagined process: from agenda to experiments to infrastructure
creation of testbed environments
"dream up" new ideas about making applications

fundamental question:
is there a science?

current OISE areas of focus
partnerships of teams of researchers
global engagement of future scientists and engineers
planning grants/workshops
increasing engagement with developing countries

international research fellowship program - for those within 3 years after PhD, supports research for 9-24 months

east asia and pacific summer institutes for us grad students

IGERT - supplements for grad students to conduct research abroad

pondering the future

• global internet use and global values