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COMPUTER & INFORMATION
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING |
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A Message from CISE Leadership
Last month, CISE published a new Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) asking for input from members of the community who are directly engaged in, or might potentially benefit from, CISE-related research and education in semiconductor, and micro-, and nano-electronics. This request for information takes the form of a survey in which we ask for specific information about how the community’s research and educational agenda would be enabled by the availability of new or different resources in this area. Given the diverse interests in the CISE community, and the broad reach of semiconductor, and micro-, and nano-electronics, we are hoping for information from a wide variety of perspectives. Please take a few minutes and let us know how your research and educational activities intersect with these areas, and what challenges you see in this area. The deadline for posting your response is September 30, 2021, but earlier submissions are encouraged.
In addition, we provide another reminder about the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported areas who are pursuing full-time, research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. NSF actively encourages women, persons who are members of groups historically underrepresented in STEM, persons with disabilities, veterans, and undergraduate seniors to apply. Additional information on the program may be found at https://www.nsf.gov/grfp and http://www.nsfgrfp.org.
Fellowship applications must be submitted by the perspective Fellow. The deadline for students to submit GRFP applications in the CISE topic area is October 19, 2021.
We also encourage members of the CISE research community to volunteer to review GRFP applications. If you would like to serve as a GRFP reviewer, you can signal your interest by registering here: https://www.nsfgrfpreviewers.org/.
We hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter, and please feel free to share it with your colleagues and communities.
Best,
 Margaret Martonosi
NSF Assistant Director for CISE
Joydip Kundu
Deputy Assistant Director for CISE
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News & Announcements
CISE is looking to fill the following vacancies:
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Photo Credit : NSF
This recent CAREER awardees' paper introduced novel techniques that allow analysis of mass spectrometry-based proteomics data for tera-scale (and beyond) databases using large supercomputers.
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Photo Credit : Oden Institute
The aim of this project is to create an interoperable software ecosystem to model and design materials at the atomic scale using many-body field-theoretic approaches.
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Photo Credit : Wikimedia Commons
In this CISE-supported study, researchers analyzed data from almost 3 million patients to study the side effects and safety concerns of medications for high-blood pressure.
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Photo Credit : Carnegie Mellon University
In early summer 2020, an innovative and unprecedented NSF-funded AI supercomputer, Neocortex, was awarded for deployment at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC). Neocortex, which captures groundbreaking new hardware technologies, is designed to accelerate AI research in pursuit of science, discovery, and societal good.
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Photo Credit : NSF
CISE’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure recently published the fifth blueprint in a series of documents outlining NSF’s plan for an agile, integrated, robust, trustworthy, and sustainable CI ecosystem that drives new thinking and transformative discoveries in all areas of science and engineering research and education. This newest document presents a holistic and forward-looking blueprint for CI learning and workforce development that broadens participation in all relevant communities of concern including CI contributors, CI users, and CI Professionals, along with their institutions.
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Get more NSF News
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Program Spotlight
NSF INCLUDES Alliances
In 2016, NSF unveiled a set of “Big Ideas,” 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering. The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research.
Photo Credit: NSF
The NSF INCLUDES Big Idea is a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields.
The vision of NSF INCLUDES is to catalyze the STEM enterprise to work collaboratively for inclusive change, resulting in a STEM workforce that reflects the population of the Nation. More specifically, NSF INCLUDES seeks to improve collaborative efforts aimed at enhancing the preparation, increasing the participation, and ensuring the contributions of individuals from groups that have been historically underrepresented and underserved in the STEM enterprise such as African Americans, Alaska Natives, Hispanics, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Native Pacific Islanders, persons with disabilities, persons from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and women and girls. Significant advancement in the inclusion of underrepresented groups in STEM will result in a new generation of STEM talent and leadership to secure our Nation’s future and long-term economic competitiveness.
A hallmark of NSF INCLUDES is the focus on the five design elements of collaborative infrastructure to achieve systemic change. Collaborative infrastructure refers to the process by which partnering organizations come together to map out mutually reinforcing activities through: (1) shared vision, (2) partnerships, (3) goals and metrics, (4) leadership and communication, and (5) expansion, sustainability, and scale. Through these five design elements of collaborative infrastructure, the successful implementation of NSF INCLUDES will result in substantial advances toward a diverse, innovative, and well-prepared STEM workforce to support our Nation’s economy and continued U.S. leadership in the global STEM enterprise. It is anticipated that NSF’s investment will contribute to new and improved STEM career pathways, policies, opportunities to learn, and practices for equity and inclusion. The initiative is supported by the NSF INCLUDES Coordination Hub, which provides a framework for communication and networking, network assistance and reinforcement, and visibility and expansion for the NSF INCLUDES National Network.
This month’s SciComm Corner (see below) focuses on highlighting two of the INCLUDES Alliances most relevant to the CISE Community.
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For more information, view the NSF INCLUDES solicitation here.
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SciComm Corner: How CISE is Impacting Your Community
Source: Booker Smith/Flikr
As computing becomes more ubiquitous, it is imperative that technology creators from a diverse range of identities are in development and leadership positions to ensure that harmful technologies are avoided. Based out of Duke University, the Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education (AIICE) is one of the newest INCLUDES Alliances launched this summer. AIICE aims to increase the entry, retention, and course and degree completion rates of high-school and undergraduate students from groups that are historically underrepresented in computing through evidence-based, identity-inclusive interventions. AIICE’s collective impact approach to broadening participation convenes national leaders in K-16 computer science (CS) education to transform high-school and postsecondary CS education using innovative strategies that target the people, policies, and practices that directly impact student entry, retention, and course and degree completion.
AIICE will collectively create systemic change by blending aspects of social science with CS to 1) increase CS student and educator knowledge and use of identity and related topics, 2) support CS educators and leaders in fostering academic cultures that are more inclusive of non-dominant identities, and 3) increase K-16 policy-driven changes to CS education that infuse identity-inclusive strategies. Successful implementation of the Alliance will impact over half a million high-school and 35,000 undergraduate students nationwide.
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Source: cahsi.utep.edu
The Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) was established in 2006 as a CISE Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) alliance, which later (2018) evolved to become the NSF INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discovers in Engineering and Science) CAHSI Alliance.
The vision of this program is for Hispanics to represent at least 20 percent of the population who earn credentials in computing by 2030. Credentials are defined as degrees and certifications that lead to gainful employment and advancement in the field. CAHSI’s mission is to grow and sustain a networked community committed to recruiting, retaining, and accelerating the progress of Hispanics in computing.
In July 2019, CAHSI hosted a convening of over 40 Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) to develop a set of recommendations to support equitable distribution of resources to different types of higher education institutions. Findings from this and other convenings resulted in a report presented to the NSF Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE). In addition, these findings informed the development of the CISE-MSI Research expansion program, which aims to expand Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) faculty engagement in CISE core research and other participating programs.
Through its partnerships across the U.S., CAHSI has become a national platform with a track record of increasing the number of Hispanics who are engaged in the computing workforce and academia.
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Faces of CISE: Dr. Nicki Washington
Dr. Nicki Washington
Professor of the Practice of Computer Science
Trinity College of Arts and Sciences
Duke University
Dr. Nicki Washington is a professor of the practice of computer science at Duke University, the director of the NSF-funded Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education (AiiCE), and the author of Unapologetically Dope: Lessons for Black Women and Girls on Surviving and Thriving in the Tech Field.
Her efforts to recruit and retain students from identities that are historically marginalized span both K-16 education and industry. Her current work focuses on addressing the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in the tech industry by measuring and improving the cultural competence of students in undergraduate computing departments nationwide, including the development of the Cultural Competence in Computing (3C) Assessment. She also led the development and implementation of the 3C Fellows Program with Dr. Shani Daily (Duke) and Cecile' Sadler (MIT Media Lab), which has provided identity-focused professional development to over 200 computing faculty, staff, and graduate students from approximately 100 institutions across the world. She is also responsible for the creation and implementation of the first Googler-in-Residence program at Howard University in 2013. This project led to implementations of Googlers-in-Residence at other Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including Morehouse, Spelman, NC A&T, Fisk, and Hampton.
Dr. Washington has been a guest writer for CSforALL, USA Today College, The Root/VerySmartBrothas, Code.org, and Mama Knows It All, and her interviews have included Essence Magazine, The Atlantic, WHUR’s The Daily Drum, Association of Computing Machinery’s “People of ACM,” and Modern Figures Podcast.
Her career in higher education began at Howard University as the first Black female faculty member in the Department of Computer Science. Her professional experience also includes Winthrop University, The Aerospace Corporation, and IBM. She is a graduate of Johnson C. Smith University (B.S., ‘00) and North Carolina State University (M.S., ’02; Ph.D., ’05), becoming the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science at the university and 2019 Computer Science Hall of Fame Inductee. She is a native of Durham, North Carolina.
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Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)
OAC supports and coordinates the development, acquisition and provision of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources, tools and services essential to the advancement and transformation of Science and engineering.
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