Information Technology Research Awards Made by NSF

The first $90 million has been awarded through NSF’s new program Information Technology Research (ITR) initiative. The goal of the program is to build US leadership in information technology (IT) through support of fundamental research and innovative applications of IT. The ITR program is designed to strengthen the nation’s IT knowledge base as well as the IT workforce.

Only 210 projects were chosen from the more than 1,400 proposals submitted. Sixty-two large projects, and averaging $1 million per year for three to five years, were funded (involving 41 institutions in 22 states). Each of the remaining 148 projects total $500,000 or less for up to three years; these went to 81 institutions in 32 states. The accompanying table presents the distribution of awards by state.

The focus areas for the program are software; scalable information infrastructure; information management; revolutionary computing; human-computer interfaces; advanced computational science; education and workforce; and social or economic implications of IT.

One of ITR’s major emphases is on “middleware,” software that enhances the interaction of operating systems and their applications. For example, a project funded at the University of Illinois will result in the design of middleware to optimize the efficiency and fault tolerance of network-based computer programs for air-traffic control, smart highways, satellites, remote surgery, and electronic commerce.

Another goal of the ITR program is bridging the digital divide. Projects focused on societal implications include a study by Michigan State University and the City University of New York to identify factors that influence the effectiveness of IT in the classrooms and homes of disadvantaged children. The University of California-Irvine will study the adoption of electronic commerce worldwide, comparing data from technologically advanced countries with newly industrialized and developing nations.

Due to the overwhelming response to the first round of competition and the number of worthy projects which could not be funded, NSF has increased its request for fiscal year 2001 to $190 million.

For a complete list of ITR awards and project abstracts, see: http://www.itr.nsf.gov  Deadlines for the upcoming round of funding also can be found at that address.