Workshop on: Research Opportunities in Cyberengineering/Cyberinfrastructure. To be held April 22-23, 2004 at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

Drexel University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

The Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation has established a strong focus for study concerning future investments in Cyberinfrastructure that may be made by the Foundation. Inside of the Engineering Directorate, the Cyberinfrastructure Working Group has completed a portfolio assessment of research and education awards, and is now arranging for a series of workshops that explore the opportunities for supporting the development of a national Cyberinfrastructure, and for leveraging these investments and partnering with the academic, government and industry sectors. While the first two workshops organized and held at the NSF in Arlington in June 5-6, 2003 and January 13-14, 2004 took a very broad, i.e. horizontal, look at the Cyberinfrastructure initiative to scope out the critical issues that need to be addressed during the development of Cyberinfrastructure, this third workshop is poised to follow some of the leads generated by the earlier workshops and to concentrate on the need to develop a strategy that permits and entices the involvement of the entire engineering community, by identifying key challenges in cyberengineering/cyberinfrastructre research. In order to facilitate the organization of the 3 rd Workshop, NSF has invited 7 individuals from the engineering community to serve on the organizing committee, OC. These are Dr. Massoud Amin, U. of Minnesota, Twin Cities (ECS rep.) Dr. Shirley Dyke, Washington University (CMS rep.) Dr. Jim Rawlings, University of Wisconsin (CTS rep.) Dr. Ming Lin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (DMII rep.) Dr. Ulrich Neumann, University of Southern California (EEC rep.) Dr. Michael Piasecki, Drexel University (BES rep. & proposal lead) Dr. Bill Spencer, U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (CMS rep.) Deliverables Each of the workshop breakout groups will be asked to summarize the findings of their respective task. These findings, together with the Personal Points of Views, PPVs, and the 3 page research idea submissions of the selected presenters will be compiled into a final workshop report by the OC that will be submitted to NSF. More specifically the deliverables will contain: Report of the Workshop as a reference material for the ENG community Development of material for posting on the website A set of recommendations for developing Divisional level workshops sessions A camera ready copy for the printing of the proceedings. To this end, the OC will establish a NSF Engineering Cyberinfrastructure Workshop III website (to be hosted on one of the servers in Dr. Piasecki's computer lab) that will announce the workshop, post relevant information concerning the workshop schedule and agenda including the participant list, and provide information for hotels, travel, and directions to the Drexel campus in general and the meeting venues in particular. In addition to the site hosting the final workshop report, it will also be used to post the presentations as well as position statements or personal point of views (PPVs) from each attendee that should be submitted prior to the start of the workshop. Broader Impact The broader impact of this workshop lies in its scope, i.e. the attempt to identify research opportunities in cyberengineering and cyberinfrastructure development. Recognition of the opportunity to conduct cyberengineering/cyberinfrastructure research is very much linked to the necessity to achieve a broad acceptance in the engineering communities, i.e. the willingness of these communities to embrace a concept that is open to all and not restricted to a few domain experts that have a high developed interest in making use of cross-disciplinary ideas involving computer science and engineering. This workshop is also focused on identifying idlow hanging fruitsly that can be harvested by many in the community without having to become cyberinfrastructure experts, i.e. having to crosswalk into the computer science domain. The presentation of research ideas and development drivers should provide a good overview what are the key areas of cross-cutting cyberinfrastructure that is important to the engineering communities, and what the scope of the initiative is. This must be understood as a precursor to entice the community to further educate itself and attempt to embrace these new concepts.