Where are we, and where ought we be
going?
Craig Stewart
Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute
Associate Dean, Research Technologies,
Office of the Vice President for Information Technology
Indiana University
stewart@iu.edu
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Please cite as: Stewart, C.A. 2009. Where are we, and where ought we be
going? Presentation. 29 April, UITS Brownbag Presentation Series,
Bloomington, IN http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13943
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Outline
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Motivation: agendas being set
Where are we
Where are we going – NITRD
CASC/Educause CCI workshop recommendations
More about NITRD
And some info about the NSF
The government needs your help!
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New Agendas Being Set
• New president, new director of OSTP (Tom Kalil), new
director for OCI (Ed Seidel)
• NITRD (Networking and Information Technology
Research and Development) Reauthorization
• NITRD History
– High Performance Computing Act of 1991
– Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998
– America COMPETES Act of 2007
• NITRD reauthorization is in the long run at least as
important as the stimulus package – probably more
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What does NITRD influence?
• Provides ~ $3B to 13 federal agencies:
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Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
DOE/NNSA (Department of Energy - National Nuclear Security Agency)
DOE/SC (Department of Energy - The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing
Research)
EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)
NARA (National Archives and Records Administration)
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
NIH (National Institutes of Health)
NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
NSA (National Security Agency)
NSF (National Science Foundation)
Office of the Deputy, Under Secretary of Defense (Science and Technology)
Definition: “Networking and Information Technology” comprises the
processing and communication of data and information and the hardware,
software, and systems that perform those functions”
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Where are we
• National/International projects
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NIH Roadmap – CTSA (Clinical Translational Science Awards)
BIRN/CABig
DataNet
TeraGrid
Open Science Grid
• National networking
– Internet2
– NLR
• Significant campus resources, state and regional
networks/grids
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www.teragrid.org
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Open Science Grid
• The Open Science Grid aims
to promote discovery and
collaboration in data-intensive
research by providing a
computing facility and services
that integrate distributed,
reliable and shared resources
to support computation at all
scales.
• Application areas:
– Physics
– Biology & Medicine
– Chemistry
www.opensciencegrid.org/
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Where are we, Technically
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Multicore
Data-centric computing
Carbon sensitivity / electricity costs
“Supercomputers are too hard to program”
Really poor job, nationally, of integrating local,
state, regional, national cyberinfrastructure
(related issues: Startup packages, MRI)
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Key input re NITRD to date
• “Leadership under challenge: Information Technology
R&D in a Competitive World” PCAST Report 2007.
www.nitrd.gov/pcast/reports/PCAST-NIT-FINAL.pdf
• House Science and Technology Committee Hearing on
NITRD reauthorization 31 July 2008.
http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups
_details.aspx?NewsID=2276
• My focus will be on what’s different in new advice
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PCAST Ongoing NIT R&D (highlights)
• Recommendation: Federal agencies should rebalance
their networking and information technology R&D
funding portfolios by increasing: (1) support for important
networking and information technology problems that
require larger-scale, longer-term, multidisciplinary R&D
and using existing or new mechanisms to address those
problems and (2) emphasis on innovative and therefore
higher-risk but potentially higher-payoff explorations.
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PCAST Technical priorities for NIT R&D
(highlights) I
• Finding: NIT systems connected with the physical world
are now a national priority for Federal R&D. Improved
methods are needed for the efficient development of
these systems.
• Recommendation: The Interagency Working Group on
Digital Data, in cooperation with the NITRD
Subcommittee, should develop a national strategy and
develop and implement an associated plan to assure the
long-term preservation, stewardship, and widespread
availability of data important to science and technology.
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PCAST Technical priorities for NIT R&D
(highlights) II
• Recommendation: A key element of the Federal Plan for Advanced
Networking Research and Development should be an R&D agenda
for upgrading the Internet. To meet Federal agency needs and
support the Nation’s critical infrastructures, the Plan should include
R&D in mobile networking technologies and ways to increase
network security and reliability.
• Recommendation: The NITRD Subcommittee should develop,
implement, and maintain a strategic plan for Federal investments in
HEC R&D, infrastructure, applications, and education and training.
Based on the strategic plan, the NITRD Subcommittee should
involve experts from academia and industry to develop and maintain
a HEC R&D roadmap.
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“While the United States clearly is the global NIT leader
today, we face aggressive challenges from a growing list
of competitors. To maintain – and extend – the Nation’s
competitive advantages, we must further improve the
U.S. NIT ecosystem – the fabric made up of high-quality
research and education institutions, an entrepreneurial
culture, strong capital markets, commercialization
pathways, and a skilled NIT workforce that fuels our
technological leadership.”
– Co-Chairs John H. Marburger III and E. Floyd Kvamme in
their letter submitting the 2007 PCAST report
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CASC testimony, House Science & Technology
Committee re PCAST recommendations
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Without strong, continued, and consistent investment in networking and information
technology (NIT), the U.S. will not have the administrative and technical leadership to
support consistent and directed change. Government investment in NIT will be of
greatest value if there is consistency in levels of investment over time.
Recommendation: Increase the number of students receiving a bachelor’s degree in
a field related to NIT by funding programs that encourage students to explore NIT
majors.
Recommendation: Continue to strengthen and expand the emphasis on STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines in elementary and
secondary education, so as to increase the absolute numbers and relative
percentages of high school graduates who plan to enter college in an NIT-related
discipline.
Implement methods for sustainable support for software development critical to the
U.S. NIT agenda. This must include supporting creation of complexity-hiding
interfaces that will dramatically expand the ability of scientists and engineers
generally to leverage and effectively use HEC infrastructure.
Support the coordination of U.S. cyberinfrastructure that maximizes the total benefit
to U.S. national interests by taking best advantage of investments at the college,
university, state, and regional levels, in addition to Federal investments.
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Joint EDUCAUSE CCI and CASC Workshop
Major Themes
1. Identity Management, Authentication, and
Authorization
2. Harnessing Campus and National Resources
3. Information Life Cycle – Accessibility, Usability, and
Sustainability
4. Human Resources and Broader Impact
*This slide from Patrick Dreher, CCI Working Group
presentation, February 3, 2009
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Workshop Definition of
Cyberinfrastructure
Cyberinfrastructure consists of computational systems, data and
information management, advanced instruments, visualization
environments, and people, all linked together by software and
advanced networks to improve scholarly productivity and enable
knowledge breakthroughs and discoveries not otherwise
possible.
*This slide from Patrick Dreher, CCI Working Group
presentation, February 3, 2009
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CASC Recommendations: Identity Management,
Authentication, and Authorization
• Agencies, campuses, and national, and state
organizations should adopt a single, open, standardsbased system for identity management, authentication,
and authorization, thus improving the usability and
interoperability of CI resources throughout the nation.
• Suggested detailed implementation
– Adopt global federated system for Identity Management,
Authentication, and Authorization that is supported by the
InCommon Federation
• Initial deployment in research-oriented functions involving
research universities,
• Subsequent implementation generally within funding
agencies and other educational institutions.
*This slide from Patrick Dreher, CCI Working Group
presentation, February 3, 2009
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Harnessing Campus and
National Resources
• Support, promote, develop a coherent, comprehensive
set of computing and data facilities.
• Agencies, campuses, and national/state network
organizations must improve the aggregate national
network infrastructure toward a coherent CI
• Create comprehensive architectures to enable
researchers and other CI users to make the most
effective use of campus and national resources.
• Educate CIOs and VPRs
*This slide from Patrick Dreher, CCI Working Group
presentation, February 3, 2009
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CASC Recommendations - Information Life Cycle
Accessibility, Usability, and Sustainability
• Funding agencies and institutions must fund both operational
implementations of preservation to meet immediate needs, and also
research on data preservation and reuse to guide future activities
• Federal agencies, disciplinary communities, institutions, and data
management experts should develop, publish, and use standards for
provenance, metadata, discoverability, and openness.
• Funding agencies, research institutions, and communities must
collaborate to develop a combination of policy and financial
frameworks to ensure maintenance of important data over time
scales longer than the career of any individual investigators.
*This slide from Patrick Dreher, CCI Working Group
presentation, February 3, 2009
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CASC Recommendations: Human
Resources and Broader Impact
• Suggested detailed implementations
– Institutional commitment to support the development for CI
literacy.
– Develop coherent CI Curricular materials and methods
– Prepare/train next generation of computational scientists to think
across discipline boundaries.
– Share curricular materials via National organizations and/or open
source
A comment that would be probably partly
unpopular with at least some TeraGrid
awardees goes here
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Back to NIRTD
• Existing focus areas for NITRD:
– Cyber Security and Information Assurance (CSIA)
– Human Computer Interaction and Information Management
(HCI&M)
– High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS)
– High End Computing (HEC)
– Large Scale Networking (LSN)
– Software Design and Productivity (SDP)
– Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT
Workforce Development (SEW)
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NITRD Strategic Plan Development
• Co-Chairs
– Cita Furlani, NIST
– Jeanette Wing, NSF
– Chris Greer, NCS
• http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/nitrd/090225/#
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Strategic Plan Framework
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CyberCapable. Education and training to ensure
that current generations benefit fully from cyber
capabilities and to inspire a diverse, nextgeneration workforce of cyber innovators
Emergent Cognition. Harness new levels of
intelligence, intuition and awareness emerging
as greater than the sum of the parts of the union
of cyber, human, and social capabilities
Beyond Virtual. Expand the capabilities
envelope by melding virtual and physical worlds
to enhance the quality of life and extent the
frontiers of discovery and achievement
Pathways to Trust and Confidence. Ensure the
value to society of cyber systems is not limited
by a lack of trust and confident; assure that data
resources can be reliably used for their intended
purposes.
http://www.nitrd.gov/about/strategic_planning.aspx
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Recommendations
• Summary at
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdo
cs/hearings/2009/Full/1apr/Hearing_Charter.pdf
• We’re either going to be in deep trouble for a long time
or on the path toward success
– NIT/CS ecosystem
– CI ecosystem
– Carbon ecosystem
• How we respond to new solicitations from federal
funding agencies will make as much or more difference
than the legislation, in the long run.
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Acknowledgements - Funding Sources
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IU’s involvement as a TeraGrid Resource Partner is supported in part by the National Science
Foundation under Grants No. ACI-0338618l, OCI-0451237, OCI-0535258, and OCI-0504075
The IU Data Capacitor is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant
No. CNS-0521433.
This research was supported in part by the Indiana METACyt Initiative. The Indiana METACyt
Initiative of Indiana University is supported in part by Lilly Endowment, Inc.
The LEAD portal is developed under the leadership of IU Professors Dr. Dennis Gannon and
Dr. Beth Plale, and supported by NSF grant 331480.
Many of the ideas presented in this talk were developed under a Fulbright Senior Scholar’s
award to Stewart, funded by the US Department of State and the Technische Universitaet
Dresden.
Many of the ideas presented here were developed by CASC members (www.casc.org),
members of the EDUCAUSE Campus CyberInfrastructure Committee, and participants in
various workshops.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are
those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Lilly Endowment, Inc., or any other
funding agency
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Acknowledgements - People
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Malinda Lingwall for editing, graphic layout, and managing process
Maria Morris contributed to the graphics used in this talk
John Morris (www.editide.us) contributed graphics
This work would not have been possible without the dedicated and expert efforts
of the staff of the Research Technologies Division of University Information
Technology Services, the faculty and staff of the Pervasive Technology Labs, and
the staff of UITS generally.
Thanks to the faculty and staff with whom we collaborate locally at IU and globally
(via the TeraGrid, and especially at Technische Universitaet Dresden)
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Thanks!
• Questions?
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