"NSF's Investment in Converging Frontiers"
Dr. Rita R. Colwell
Director
National Science Foundation
American Chemical Society Presidential Symposium
Boston, Massachusetts
August 18, 2002
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Good morning to all. I'm very pleased to be part of
this presidential symposium to showcase multidisciplinary
research and education. This theme reflects the broad
and timely leadership perspective we expect of ACS
and of President Eli Pierce.
Chemistry is a fundamental discipline that intersects
with many other areas of science and engineering.
At the National Science Foundation, our support structure
for chemistry reflects those intersections. Our chemistry
division actually accounts for only about half of
our investment in chemistry research and education.
Other support for chemistry comes through our materials,
engineering, bioscience and geoscience areas, and
from elsewhere.
Today I plan to survey the broad context surrounding
the National Science Foundation's investments in interdisciplinary
science and engineering. These investments have taken
shape as Science and Technology Centers, Materials
Research Centers, Integrative Graduate Education Research
and Traineeships, and most recently as the priority
areas that cross a number of disciplines. All these
programs weave together research and education in
a fundamental way.
[title slide: backdrop
with recent shot of aurora australis at South Pole
Station]
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This recent wintertime image of the aurora australis,
captured at the South Pole Station, represents NSF's
strategy to go to the ends of the earth, if necessary,
to invest in the frontiers of discovery.
Like the lines of longitude converging at the poles
of the Earth, many disciplines of science and engineering
are converging in surprising ways to generate new
knowledge needed for the increasingly complex challenges
we face as a society.
[generic shot of
medieval cathedral]
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I reach back to the great cathedrals of the Middle
Ages as a metaphor for the trend toward integration
sweeping all of science and engineering, to suggest
how the individual investigator's passion becomes
part of the greater vision.
It's commonly held that the craftsmen who built the
cathedrals toiled in obscurity, content in their religious
ardor to contribute to the transcendental goal of
a monument to their faith. However, this turns out
not to have been the case.
When Istanbul's great cathedral, Hagia Sophia, was
studied in the 1930s, it was discovered that almost
every stone displayed the individual mark of its stonecutter.
The masons' individual inscriptions, and the magnificent
edifices that resulted from individual efforts, suggest
a metaphor for science today. As research reaches
out to the frontiers of complexity, it increasingly
requires collaboration across disciplines and across
national boundaries.
Pitting the traditional disciplines against the paradigm
of interdisciplinary research is a false dichotomy.
The disciplines are the very foundation for a new
and vibrant vision of interdisciplinary research.
It is also a pitfall to see investment in research
as a zero-sum-game; that is, if some areas gain, others
inevitably lose out. In fact, by choosing particularly
vibrant areas of research that are inherently interdisciplinary,
we are investing to accelerate progress across the
board.
[South Pole auroral
slide as backdrop; bullets with NSF priority areas
listed]
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In the past few years NSF has made it a deliberate
part of our strategy to demarcate areas of converging
discovery for special investment. We select these
priority areas based on their exceptional promise
to advance knowledge.
These priorities are information technology, nanotechnology,
biocomplexity, mathematics, and the study of how we
learn. Such convergent areas have been called the
"power tools" of the next economy.
Recently, NSF and the Department of Commerce issued
a report on "Converging Technologies for Improving
Human Performance," which covers the integration of
nano, bio, info and cogno.
As an interesting aside, I was reading an article on
interdisciplinary research in the Chronicle of
Higher Education recently, and I was pleased
to come across a quotation from a science policy expert
at Pennsylvania State University, Irwin Feller.
He was quoted as saying, "In some respects, the federal
agencies are ahead of the universities'" in promoting
interdisciplinary research, "and the universities
are responding."
The Federal initiative in information technology--a
joint effort among Federal agencies, which NSF leads--exemplifies
targeted investment as a rising tide that lifts all
boats. As a tool for scientific discovery, information
technology has proven as valuable as theory and experiment.
IT has transformed the very conduct of research--helping
us to handle the quantity as well as complexity of
data, enabling new ways to collaborate around the
globe, and letting us visualize in stunning new ways.
I borrow this image from Hans Moravec' book on robotics
to demonstrate the breathtaking pace of growth in
computing power. It depicts computing history, using
millions of instructions per second--compared to the
computing speed of various life-forms, from a bacterium
up to a human.
We can see that computing speed now approaches that
of a mouse. Not far off in the future, computers should
reach a monkey's capacity, and then a human being's.
[TeraGrid]
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We look beyond, to a grander scale--the TeraGrid, a
distributed facility that will let computational resources
be shared between widely separated groups.
This will be the most advanced computing facility available
for all types of research in the United States--exceptional
not just in computing power but also as an integrated
facility, offering access to researchers across the
country, merging of multiple data resources, and visualization
capability.
[nano]
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A frontier of a vastly different dimension is the nanoscale.
At one billionth of a meter, that's only slightly
larger than the average atom. Nanoscience is inherently
interdisciplinary, and its promise spans the inorganic
and living realms. Progress in many disciplines of
science and engineering converges here, the point
at which the worlds of the living and the non-living
meet.
The National Science Foundation leads the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, a "grand coalition" of
organizations from government, academe, and the private
sector.
[biocomplexity
image]
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Another priority area at NSF is biocomplexity. Information
technology, nanotechnology and genomics are all helping
us to understand the complex interactions in biological
systems, including human systems--and the give-and-take
with their physical environments.
We know that ecosystems do not respond linearly to
environmental change. Understanding demands observing
at multiple scales, from the nano to the global, and
making the connections across those scales is a formidable
challenge. With the perspective of biocomplexity,
disciplinary worlds intersect to form fuller, more
nuanced viewpoints.
[Richard Lenski:
digital and bacterial evolution]
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As an example, the synthetic perspective of biocomplexity
brings surprising insights into the process of evolution.
Richard Lenski at Michigan State has joined forces
with a computer scientist and a physicist to study
how biological complexity evolves, using two kinds
of organisms--bacterial and digital.
In the graph at left, the digital organisms all compete
for the same resource, so they do not diversify and
the family tree does not branch out. On the right,
the digital organisms compete for a number of different
resources, and diversify.
In the background are laboratory populations of an
actual bacterium, E. coli. In vivo
derives insight from in silico.
[Does Math Matter?
poster]
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This poster suggests another NSF priority area, mathematics--truly
a wellspring for all of science and engineering. The
poster announced a public outreach event called "Does
Math Matter?"; NSF's answer is an emphatic "Yes."
Mathematics is the ultimate cross-cutting discipline,
the springboard for advances across the board.
[fractal image]
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Mathematics is both a powerful tool for insight and
a common language for science. A good example, pictured
here artistically, is the fractal, a famous illustration
of how inner principles of mathematics enable us to
model many natural structures.
[woman's eye]
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Mathematics is also contributing in unexpected ways
to homeland security. A technique called "inpainting,"
borrowed from classical fluid dynamics by Andrea Bertozzi
at Duke University and colleagues, can sharpen an
unclear image, such as this woman's eye. One can imagine
how it might be applied in airport security or law
enforcement.
[how we learn--brain
image]
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One more priority area--learning for the 21st
century. Our leadership in the global economy requires
a highly skilled and diverse workforce. Who will teach
its future members? Teachers from the post-Sputnik
era are now retiring, and while many current teachers
are well-qualified, others lack the math and science
background needed for their work.
We have created centers for comprehensive research
on how we learn. Also, our Centers for Learning and
Teaching will help encourage undergraduates to pursue
research and teaching in science and math, and to
create a new generation of teachers with fresh ideas
and talents.
[graphic: quark/cosmos
connections]
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Areas of intersection emerge even in the most fundamental
sciences. As this graphic represents, questions about
the universe at the most massive and the most minute
scales are fundamentally linked. There are "deep connections
between quarks and the cosmos," as phrased in a recent
report by the National Research Council.
These challenges at the junction of physics and astronomy
require both telescopes and accelerators. The science
spans several federal agencies, and calls for evolving
new, coordinated structures for investment.
[an image summary
slide]
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From this survey of key emerging interdisciplinary
areas--some well on the way to maturity and others
just in gestation--commonalities are evident.
In each case, the health of the contributing disciplines
is essential to nourishing cross-disciplinary work,
yet the emerging area becomes more than the sum of
its parts. Also, many of these problems are global
in scale, and require resources from many nations.
As interdisciplinarity burgeons, it poses strong implications
for how universities educate students. After all,
we're training the scientists for the ever-more cross-disciplinary
world of 10 or 15 years from now.
We need to experiment with how best to conduct graduate
education in such an environment. NSF's program for
Integrative Graduate Education Research and Traineeships,
begun in 1998, is one such attempt.
The aim is to train graduate students to do interdisciplinary
research as partners with faculty. In an institutional
sense, we're also interested in how the expansion
of interdisciplinary research will affect how universities
are structured.
At one IGERT site, Arizona State University, students
from different disciplines gather in a common space
furnished with computers and coffee and completely
surrounded with whiteboards on the walls, which the
students cover with writing and ideas.
At another IGERT site, UCLA, students doing both brain
research and electrical engineering teach one another,
in some cases doing this better than faculty do.
At the University of Washington IGERT site for astrobiology,
students requested that all teachers of an
interdisciplinary class attend every class--not just
the ones in which they lecture. Now they participate
in the discussion and learning as fully as the students.
Today we face the challenge of taking interdisciplinarity
beyond being just a buzzword in science. How do we
measure its success, how does it work, and how can
we encourage it, in a world divided among disciplines?
NSF recently awarded a $235,000 grant for an intensive
study of how interdisciplinary research is conducted.
It will focus on eight environmental research centers.
As one of the principal investigators, Diana Rhoten,
says, "People may come together in interdisciplinary
centers but not actually be working together. We want
to see what we can learn about how interdisciplinary
work actually happens."
Thus far, standards by which disciplinary work is measured
do not transfer well to the interdisciplinary realm.
For example, Rhoten reports that many interdisciplinary
researchers hope to contribute to solving societal
problems. Many disciplinary researchers, by contrast,
want to "do science for the sake of science."
"How do you measure the influence of interdisciplinary
work on public policy?" Rhoten asks. "It's not a direct
path." Furthermore, researchers are often not rewarded
for "straying" beyond their own disciplines. Such
work is often ambiguous, requires longer time-frames,
and confronts significant cultural and linguistic
barriers across disciplines.
[South Pole aurora
background; words-Conventional boundaries are dissolving...]
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NSF considers it critical to re-think old categories
and traditional perspectives. Conventional boundaries
are dissolving, whether among disciplines, between
science and engineering, or between fundamental research
and its applications.
Where research meets the unknown, the ideas and technologies
of life science, physical science and information
science are merging. We're entering a new and challenging
stage. We have been imagining and discussing interdisciplinary
research and education long enough. Now it's time
to get down to the hard work of changing institutional
structures--at NSF and in the universities--to encourage
the convergence of discovery.
Thank you.
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