UCR Research and Economic
Development Newsletter: April 1, 2013
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research
and Economic Development
Back Issues of Newsletter: http://or.ucr.edu/vcr/newsletters.aspx
·
Continuing
Resolution: Federal Agency Budgets for the rest of 2013
·
Interview
with Jim Leach, Chairman of the National Endowment For The Humanities
·
UC
Patent Amendment
·
JPL
Talk: April 12
·
NSF funding
for Veterans
·
Reminder:
Distinguished Lecture- Brain Activity Map: April 4
·
Submitting NIH proposals via Twitter
·
Allen’s
Hummingbird Nest
Continuing Resolution:
Federal Agency Budgets for the rest of 2013
Congress has passed a
continuing resolution bill funding many federal research agencies. A
summary of the outcome for various agencies is below. The news is not as
bad as some had feared and in some cases, better than many had anticipated. See
below for a summary.
National Science
Foundation (NSF) will be supported at
the FY 2013 requested level for all accounts except the Education and Human
Resources (EHR) account, which will receive $20 million above the FY 2013
request. The bill will provide NSF with $7.39 billion; however,
accounting for the rescission, NSF will receive $7.25 billion, which is still
more than the FY 2012 enacted level of $7.03 billion.
Social science remains under
attack as Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn introduced an amendment to cut
the Political Science Program within the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and
Economic Sciences (SBE). Following negotiations with Senator Barbara
Mikulski, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, a compromise of the
amendment was incorporated into the bill preventing NSF from supporting
political science grants unless they are deemed “as promoting national security
or the economic interests of the United States.”
Now is a good time to ask for
REU supplements. It is also a good time to ask for Early-concept Grants
for Exploratory Research (EAGER) awards. NSF sets aside approximately 5%
of its funds for EAGER awards (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf09_1/gpg_2.jsp#IID2)
which are typically at the discretion of program officers. An EAGER
proposal can be submitted if an approach is very promising but unproven or of
NSF declined a proposal that the reviewers found very exciting but
criticized because there wasn’t enough preliminary results. The EAGER
award would supply one year of funding. EAGER can also be used by NSF to
get funding to its priority areas. Due to the budget uncertainty, NSF
didn’t create full announcements for new priorities and might consider jump
starting programs with one year grants.
•
Cyber-enabled Materials, Manufacturing, and Smart Systems
• Expeditions in
Education (E2)
•
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace
(SaTC)
With EAGER awards, a PI
should consult with a NSF program officer before applying.
Department
of Education. Under the CR, most
Department of Education programs would be funded at FY 2012 level, with a
likely 5 percent cut due to the sequester. My best guess is that with
the budget uncertainty over, the Department of education will announce the
GAANN program within the next few weeks and that it will give only a month to
complete applications after the announcement..
U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) For the
Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the continuing resolution provides $1.074
billion for FY 2013, which is approximately $21 million below the FY 2012
level. For the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the
bill provides $1.205 billion for FY 2013, which is about $3 million above the
FY 2012 level. Within NIFA, the bill prioritizes competitive research
through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), providing $290
million for AFRI, which is an increase of nearly $25.5 million above FY 2012.
Department of Defense
(DOD) Compared to 2012, ONR’s
basic research increased by 5% and applied research increased by 7%. Air
Force Basic Research decreased 3% and applied research decreased 8%. Army
Basic research decreased 5% and applied research increased 5%.
NIH’s budget did not fare as well as some other agencies.
It is receiving a small increase of $67M but then is receiving a reduction of
approximately 5%. This will reduce the number of new awards NIH can make.
The president is expected to
release the 2014 budget on April 10, and there is some hope that the
restrictions on political science funding will be removed when there is time
for rational deliberation.
Interview with Jim Leach,
Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities
Jim
Leach discusses the humanities, STEM education, and jobs in an NPR audio
interview at http://cpa.ds.npr.org/knau/audio/2013/03/leach0328.mp3
UC Patent Amendment
A recent court ruling has prompted UC to amend employee’s Patent
Acknowledgment for those employees hired before November 2011. Below is
information on the patent amendment and a link to electronically sign the
agreement for those that have not already done so. If you have any
questions or objections, please contact me.
What are the changes
in the Amendment to the Patent Acknowledgment?
There are four changes in the Amendment:
1.
The
words "and do hereby assign" are added. This addition provides a
present assignment of invention and patent rights to UC, addressing the problem
created by the Supreme Court decision.
2.
The
words "within the course and scope of my University employment" are
added. This clarifies the scope of the present assignment, and is actually
slightly narrower than the original version of the Patent Acknowledgment.
3.
A
grammatical correction with the addition of the word "through" in the
following: "through any
connection with my use of gift, grant or contract research funds received
through the University."
4.
"Office
of Technology Transfer" is replaced with "University authorized licensing office" to
reflect that fact that licensing is no longer done by a central office, but is
conducted locally by campuses.
The Amendment does not alter or diminish any of your individual
rights as inventors.
Existing employees hired
prior to November 1, 2011 and who have not yet signed the 2011 Patent Amendment
are able to e-sign the patent amendment by clicking on My Patent Amendment in
the upper left box. http://atyourserviceonline.ucop.edu/ayso
Background information, including Frequently Asked Questions, is available at:
http://atyourservice.ucop.edu/employees/policies_employee_labor_relations/patent-acknowledgment/
In addition, existing employees who signed the 2011 Patent Amendment are able
to see the date and time of signature through the My Patent Amendment feature.
JPL Talk: April 12
High-Performance Spaceflight Computing:
Next Steps at NASA and AFRL
Richard J. Doyle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
April 12, 11:10am
Winston Chung Hall Room 138.
Spaceflight computing is a
key resource for NASA space missions and a core determining factor of
spacecraft capability, with ripple effects throughout the spacecraft,
end-to-end system, and the mission. This flight system resource can be
aptly viewed as a “technology multiplier” in that advances in onboard computing
will provide dramatic improvements in flight functions and capabilities across
the NASA mission classes, and will enable new flight capabilities and mission
scenarios, increasing science and exploration overall return.
Space-qualified
computing technology, however, has not advanced significantly in more than ten
years and the current state of the practice falls short in meeting the near- to
mid-term needs of NASA missions. To sharpen understanding of this gap,
a multi-center NASA team conducted a study to address the following questions:
•
What are the paradigm shifting NASA space-based applications that drive flight
computing?
•
What are the requirements imposed on flight computing by these applications?
•
Which emerging computing architecture would provide the maximum return on
investment?
•
How can NASA most effectively invest its limited resources to develop the
required technology?
I
will report on answers to these questions from the NASA study – with focus on
computational drivers due to increasing use of high data rate sensors and
instruments, vision-based processing, and model-based reasoning – and how the
study results are leading to a joint investment in multi-core flight computing
capability between NASA and the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).
Bio
Richard
J. Doyle is Manager of the Information and Data Science Program Office at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He is an Associate
Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a
member of the AIAA Intelligent Systems Technical Committee. He holds the
Ph.D. in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Dr. Doyle is past Executive Council member of
the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a
member of the Advisory Board for IEEE Intelligent Systems. He was General
Chair for the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and
Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS), held at University City, Los Angeles in 2007,
and Local Arrangements Chair for the International Joint Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09) held in Pasadena in 2009.
NSF funding for Veterans
The NSF Directorate for
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) invites its grantees to
submit requests for supplemental funding for research experiences for veterans.
Active CISE grantees interested in pursuing this opportunity are encouraged to
submit their supplemental funding requests by April 30, 2013, per the
guidelines specified below.
Proposed CISE
supplements … will specifically afford U.S. veterans an opportunity to engage
in meaningful research experiences, as recommended by the report of an NSF-funded
workshop on "Veterans' Education for Engineering and Science" published
in April 2009: "NSF and other federal science and engineering agencies
should create an education/career development program focused on getting
veterans into science and technology careers. NSF and the other federal
agencies have long experience sponsoring education research and activities. The
cost to expand and enrich such programs is a small fraction of the cost of the
post-9/11 Veterans educational benefit. Yet by expanding it, the community
could engage a significant number of veterans with the potential to pursue
careers in fields of engineering, science and technology."
In particular, such CISE
supplements will provide
students and teachers who are veterans with opportunities to participate with
active CISE grantees to conduct relevant research in order to gain a deeper
understanding of computing. The participation of veterans from
groups underrepresented in computing - underrepresented minorities, women, and
persons with disabilities - is strongly encouraged.
, CISE will
follow the guidelines of the current Research Experiences for Undergraduates
(REU) supplemental funding program [see program solicitation NSF 13-542, "Research
Experiences for Undergraduates (REU): Sites and Supplements," http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13542/nsf13542.htm.
As such, for single investigator projects, these supplemental funding requests
should typically be for no more than two students for one year. Research
teams funded through multi-investigator projects may request support for a
larger number of students, commensurate with the size and nature of their
projects.
Investigators are
encouraged to refer to the REU solicitation referenced above - and the
corresponding CISE DCL http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13068/nsf13068.jsp
- for detailed information concerning submission requirements. A grantee with
questions may also contact his/her cognizant CISE program officer.
Reminder: Distinguished
Lecture- Brain Activity Map: April 4
There has been great interest
in the Brain Activity Map since President Obama proposed plans for a project
analogous to the Human Genome Project of the 1990s. The ideas
behind the proposed initiative are based in part by a paper in Neuron: A. Paul
Alivisatos, Miyoung Chun, George M. Church, Ralph J. Greenspan, Michael L.
Roukes, Rafael Yuste, The Brain Activity Map Project and the Challenge of
Functional Connectomics, Neuron, Volume 74, Issue 6, 21 June 2012, Pages
970-974, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627312005181.
One of the authors of the
paper will visit UCR on April 4 to present an overview of the brain activity
map.
The Brain Activity
Map
Ralph J. Greenspan, PhD
Associate Director
Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind
University of California San Diego
Thursday April 4, 1:10PM
Genomics Building Auditorium
While it is no mystery to any of us as to why we need a brain, it remains a major
mystery as to how our brain does what it does. We know a great deal about
the composition of individual nerve cells (neurons) that make up the brain and
how they send and receive electrical and chemical signals. We also know a
great deal about which areas of the brain participate in the various activities
we do, and we have a constantly improving picture of the contacts individual
neurons make with each other to form circuits, and how large bundles of neurons
connect major areas of the brain to each other. But when it comes to
understanding how the signals from individual nerve cells combine to produce
activities as effortless for us as walking or recognizing a melody, or as
demanding as playing the piano or understanding mathematics, there is a major
gap. The “Brain Activity Map Project” aims at allowing us to fill in this
gap.
The goal of the BAM Project is to construct a functional brain map in order to
understand complex brain processes. This map will fill the gap in our knowledge
of brain activity at a scale between single neuron and whole brain function, an
intermediate level where theories predict that complex functions emerge from
the network interactions involving millions of neurons. The BAM Project will be
a large-scale, long-term research project built upon close interactions between
scientists, engineers, and theoreticians.
Biography
Dr.
Ralph J. Greenspan has worked on the genetic basis of behavior and brain
function in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) almost since the inception
of the field, studying with one of its founders, Jeffery Hall, at Brandeis
University in Massachusetts, where he received his Ph.D. in biology in 1979.
He is currently Associate Director
of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at the University of California San
Diego. Dr. Greenspan’s research includes studies of the consequences of
mutations and localized genetic alterations in the nervous, molecular
identification of genes causing naturally occurring variation in behavior, and
the genetic analysis of fruit fly sleep and attention. His current
research addresses large-scale network questions pertaining to the action of
genes and neurons. In addition to research papers, he has authored:
Fly Pushing: The Theory and Practice of Drosophila Genetics, , An
Introduction to Nervous Systems, and How Genes Influence Behaviour (with
Jonathan Flint and Ken Kendler).
Submitting NIH
proposals via Twitter
NIH has announced that starting April 1, in collaboration with
Twitter, it will begin accepting proposals by text message. To submit a
proposal, faculty should
1. Create an account on http://www.twitter.com
2. Tweet your proposal including a hash tag for UC Riverside #ucr
and the institute, e.g., #nigms.
Proposals are limited to 140 characters including budget and
CV. While all health related topics are covered by this announcement,
special consideration will be given to proposals that address conditions that
affect the mobile web generation such as iPhone finger, blackberry thumb, and
Google glass myopia.
Proposals will be reviewed by the general public on
Facebook. Funding decisions will be announced within 48 hours of
submission. NIH spokesperson Dr. April Fulesjoak said that NIH
anticipates the pay line to be at 95 “likes.” Funds will be distributed by
PayPal eliminating the need for university accounting systems. In lieu of
effort reporting, the Office of the Inspector General has approved a pilot
program for UCR in which the whereabouts of awardees will be tracked 24/7 by
the location of their mobile devices.
Allen’s Hummingbird Nest
(click to enlarge)
An Allen’s hummingbird made a nest in our backyard. Above is
a photo of her putting the finishing touches on the nest. A thirty second
video showing the hummingbird returning to nest with nesting material is on the
web at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pazzani/8579741831/in/photostream?likes_hd=1.
I started this newsletter on
Friday and when I finished Sunday, we had two baby hummingbirds.
(click to enlarge)
A video of the
feeding is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNKXdN-FkxU. By the way, videos
were taken with a remote webcam to avoid disturbing the nest.
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research
and Economic Development
Professor, Computer
Science & Engineering
University of California,
Riverside
200 University Office
Building
Riverside, CA 92521
Assistant: Gloria
Gallego
951-827-4800