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

2 License terms Please cite as: Stewart, C.A Where are we, and where ought we be going? Presentation. 29 April, UITS Brownbag Presentation Series, Bloomington, IN Except where otherwise noted, by inclusion of a source url or some other note, the contents of this presentation are © by the Trustees of Indiana University. This content is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license ( This license includes the following terms: You are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work and to remix – to adapt the work under the following conditions: attribution – you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

3 Outline 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!

4 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

5 What does NITRD influence? Provides ~ $3B to 13 federal agencies: –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”

6 Where are we National/International projects –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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8 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

9 Where are we, Technically 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)

10 Key input re NITRD to date “Leadership under challenge: Information Technology R&D in a Competitive World” PCAST Report House Science and Technology Committee Hearing on NITRD reauthorization 31 July _details.aspx?NewsID=2276 My focus will be on what’s different in new advice

11 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.

12 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.

13 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.

14 “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

15 CASC testimony, House Science & Technology Committee re PCAST recommendations 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.

16 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

17 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

18 CASC Recommendations: Identity Management, Authentication, and Authorization Agencies, campuses, and national, and state organizations should adopt a single, open, standards- based 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

19 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

20 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

21 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

22 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)

23 NITRD Strategic Plan Development Co-Chairs –Cita Furlani, NIST –Jeanette Wing, NSF –Chris Greer, NCS

24 Strategic Plan Framework CyberCapable. Education and training to ensure that current generations benefit fully from cyber capabilities and to inspire a diverse, next- generation 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.

25 Recommendations Summary at 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.

26 Acknowledgements - Funding Sources IU’s involvement as a TeraGrid Resource Partner is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. ACI l, OCI , OCI , and OCI The IU Data Capacitor is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS 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 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 ( 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

27 Acknowledgements - People Malinda Lingwall for editing, graphic layout, and managing process Maria Morris contributed to the graphics used in this talk John Morris ( 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)

28 Thanks! Questions?