Science agency seeks place at 'cutting edge' of data mining

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 11:57:11 -0700
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: fwd: Science agency seeks place at 'cutting edge' of data mining

At 10:57 AM -0400 4/22/03, the American Library Association's
"Patrice  McDermott" <pmcdermott () alawash org> posted to the E-GOV
listserv:

> http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0403/041803td1.htm
>
> April 18, 2003
>
>       Science agency seeks place at 'cutting edge' of data mining
>
>       By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily
>
>       The National Science Foundation funds research "right at the
> cutting edge of discovery," Director Rita Colwell said in a recent
> interview. So it is only fitting that the foundation announced on Friday
> that it is funding eight projects that go beyond the technologies
> currently being developed to mine large amounts of data.
>
>       The projects are being supplemented by $4 million over two years
> as part of the Management of Knowledge Intensive Dynamic Systems (MKIDS)
> program, which is part of NSF's charter to support science and
> engineering research related to national security.
>
>       "The systems envisioned by the MKIDS program go beyond even
> today's leading-edge data-mining systems, which attempt to monitor vast
> streams of data and pinpoint events of interest," the agency said in a
> release.
>
>       The projects are examining ways to use technology to help
> organizations make better decisions. An MKIDS system would use tools to
> help decision-makers use the information mined from databases to
> allocate physical resources, technology services and human resources. It
> also would have controller functions to monitor the organization's
> response to those decisions and provide ways to fine-tune the process,
> NSF said.
>
>       In one project being developed at Carnegie Mellon University,
> external data sources such as e-mail, phone calls and personnel
> databases will be fed into computational models. The models will
> extrapolate an organization's structure and highlight likely "failure
> points."
>
>       "We want to develop computational tools to help managers design
> organizations the way engineers design bridges," said Ray Levitt, who is
> managing another project at Stanford University. "There is so little
> predictive ability for organizations in this area.  It's all based on
> managers' experience and intuition."
>
>       NSF uses 95 percent of its roughly $5 billion annual budget to
> fund grants and contracts. It funds research at nearly 2,000
> universities and institutions. It receives about 30,000 requests for
> funding every year and makes about 10,000 funding awards. It has long
> been involved in Internet-related issues, having brought the Internet to
> the nation's universities through the .edu domain.
>
>       NSF has put its focus in recent years on interdisciplinary
> research in new areas, Colwell said. "I would say right now, the
> interface between nano, bio, info and cognotechnology is where the
> exciting discoveries are occurring, and I would urge you to keep an eye
> on those developments in the future," she said.
>
>       NSF is the lead agency on two interagency initiatives, on
> information technology and nanotechnology. The foundation is targeting
> new software development and moving toward providing access to high-end
> computing through cyber infrastructure in the next few years, Colwell
> said. It is working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
> on developing technologies to move from data to "wisdom" by mining large
> databases, she added.
>
>       Colwell also offered a glimpse of what the future may hold thanks
> to nanotechnology. "Some of the bright information technology folks tell
> me that when we get to molecular computers," she said, "we will have
> computers a hundred-billion times faster than our current computers."
>
>                          Brought to you by GovExec.com


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