Transcript NSF Sustainability Initiative Krishna Kant Program Director CISE/CNS/CSR 11/7/2015 Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES)  Consolidation of several disparate efforts across NSF on sustainability.  Goal:

NSF Sustainability Initiative
Krishna Kant
Program Director
CISE/CNS/CSR
11/7/2015
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Science, Engineering and Education for
Sustainability (SEES)
 Consolidation of several disparate efforts across
NSF on sustainability.
 Goal: To generate discoveries & capabilities in climate
and energy S&E needed to inform societal actions that
lead to environmental and economic sustainability.
 Emphasis Areas
 Smart adaptation and mitigation,
 Earth-friendly and energy-efficient technologies,
 Expand research, education, and knowledge
dissemination for economic, energy & environmental
sustainability.
 Engage with global partners
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Sustainability Defined
 The National Academy of Sciences definition:
“The interactions between natural and social
systems and how those interactions affect the
challenge of sustainability:
…meeting the needs of present and future
generations while substantially reducing poverty
and conserving the planet’s life support systems”
 www.pnas.org/site/misc/sustainability.shtml
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Drivers: NSB-NSF 2009 Study on
Sustainability

Finding 1: … A comprehensive coordinated
Federal strategy is required …

Finding 2: … Private and Federal support …
of R&D is inadequate.

Finding 3: … The U.S. energy economy …
does not adequately value environment ...

Finding 4: Human capital development in
the sustainable energy sector is vital.

Finding 5: … Limited intl engagement and
collaboration inhibits progress …

Finding 6: … Strong public consensus &
support … are needed to achieve a national
transformation …
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Drivers: NSF Environment Advisory
Committee Report
 Increase support of interdisciplinary
environmental research & coupled human/
natural systems.
 Lead in developing sensor networks that
monitor environmental variables & human
activities with environmental
consequences.
 Redouble efforts promoting environmental
education & public engagement.
 Educate policymakers on complexities of
environmental/socio-economic systems &
tipping points.
 Encourage a greater role for "citizen
scientists.”
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NSF SEES Overview
 Established in FY10
 Expected to continue thru FY15, perhaps longer
 Initially focused on the intersection of climate
and environment, including specific attention
to incorporating the human sciences
 Encouraged a systems-based approach to
understanding, predicting, and reacting to
change in the linked natural, social, and built
environment
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SEES Budget Requests ($M)
2011/12 are requests to congress: not approved budgets
Directorate/Office
FY2010 FY2011 FY2012
Biological Sciences
CISE
Engineering
Geosciences
Math & Physical sciences
Social, beh. & Economic Sciences
OCI
OISE
OPP
OIA
EHR
Total
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11021/nsf11021.pdf
121.0
17.0
108.0
196.0
87.0
20.8
5.5
2.5
65.3
26.5
11.5
661.0
126.0
29.4
120.0
231.0
111.0
28.0
5.0
8.2
69.3
26.5
12.0
766.0
146.0
46.4
162.0
282.7
160.0
57.0
5.0
17.0
83.7
26.5
12.0
998.2
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SEES in 2010
 Climate & environment focused – 5 solicitations
 Earth Systems Modeling (EaSM)
 Total $50M ($35M NSF, $2M CISE)
 Not much response from CISE community
 Others:
 Water, Sustainability, & Climate (WSC)
 Ocean Acidification (OA)
 Dimensions of Biodiversity (DB)
 Climate Change Education (CCEP)
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SEES Focus Areas
 Research at the energy-environment-society nexus
 Novel energy production, harvesting, storage,
transmission, and distribution technologies
 Adoption, socioeconomic, and policy issues related to
adaptation and mitigation strategies
 Innovative computational and engineering methods for
understanding and optimizing life-cycle energy costs
and carbon footprints of natural, social and built
systems
 Study of societal factors such as vulnerability, resilience
and sensitivity to regional environmental change
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SEES for 2012
 DCL describes SEES portfolio & lists
opportunities
 Issued January 2011 (NSF 11-022)
 Describes SEES portfolio
 Lists opportunities
 RCN, CNH, Planning workshops, Postdoctoral
research, International collaboration
 SEES opportunities
 RCN (Research Coordination Networks)
 CNH (Coupled natural, human systems)
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Research Coordination Networks
 Supports networking of existing
research efforts.
 SEES track added to RCN
 Focus on interdisciplinary SEES
themes
 Cross institutional, geographic, and
disciplinary boundaries
 Specifics
FluxNet is a global network of micro-meteorological
towers that measure exchanges of CO2, water vapor, &
energy between biosphere & atmosphere. It provides
an infrastructure to compile, archive and distribute data
to the scientific community
GLEON is a network of limnologists, ecologists,
information technology experts, & engineers with
a common goal of building a scalable, persistent
network of lake ecology observatories
 Solicitation NSF 11-531; Deadline:
May 24, 2011
 Duration: 4 – 5 yrs, max $750K
 Participation by all directorates
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SEES in 2012
 Sustainable Energy Pathways
 Sustainability Research Networks
 Partnerships for International Research
and Education (PIRE)
 Postdoctoral Fellowships in Sustainable
Solutions (CISE?)
 Earth Systems Modeling (CISE?)
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Sustainable Energy Pathways
 All aspects of clean energy production,
distribution, management & smart
consumption.
 Highly relevant to CS/CSE researchers
 Smart grid, transportation, buildings, …
 Other areas: Integration of multiple sources,
operation on variable sources, …
 Status
 Solicitation in works, expected this summer, with
deadline in fall 2011 (subject to change)
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Sustainability Research Networks
 Bigger version of RCN
 Can fund gaps & new essential elements for
comprehensive coverage of a large scale theme.
 CS/CSE role: Fill gaps in modeling techniques,
new approaches to integration, …
 Status
 Solicitation in works, expected this summer, with
deadline in fall 2011 (subject to change)
 Expected to involve pre-proposals, full-proposals
& site visits
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Partnerships for International Research and
Education (PIRE)
 PIRE Goals
 Build strong research & education partnerships with
foreign collaborators that enable research excellence,
 Provide strong well-mentored international research
experiences for U.S. students and researchers
 Will be focused on SEES for FY12
 PIRE proposals should address sustainability by making
interdisciplinary linkages across natural, social and/or
built environments.
 Dear Colleague Letter NSF 11-025
K. Kant, NSF programs and Initiatives
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RISES Workshop
 Role of Information Science & Engineering
in Sustainability
 Organized by CCC on Feb 3-4, 2011 in Washington
DC
 About 65 participants, representing many
disciplines beyond CISE
 Report to be released soon.
 Motivation
 Identify where and how CS/CSE researchers can
be plugged into sustainability efforts
 What lead roles can they play?
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Sustainability Research in CISE
 Workshops
 Science of Power Management in 2009
 Lots of interest: 90 participants
 Wanted specific funding program & large scale
infrastructure
 SustainIT at FAST 2010 (non-NSF)
 CSR funding
 Steady increase in data center power/thermal
management proposals.
 Still thin on more general sustainability issues
 Some proposals on life-cycle mgmt, smart grid,
renewable energy based IT operation, etc.
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Call For Action – 1
 Opportunity is here
 Sustainability is an extremely rich & challenging field
 Overwhelming complexity of problems needs skills of
CS/CSE researchers
 New algorithms and abstractions, multi-level modeling,
working w/ partial/uncertain data, new networking &
data collection, storage, and analytics methods, …
 Time is now
 Sustainability problems not going away
 Support for sustainability research expected to
continue and expand
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Call to Action – 2
 But we have challenges
 Majority of CSE research is intra-disciplinary
 Collaboration across fields is hard
 Productivity loss , how to train students, where to
publish, recognition for work in the community, …
 Will need actions from funding agencies,
universities, and most important from CSE
community itself.
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Back Up
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Expeditions
in
Computing
(CISE)
Computational
Sustainability
Lead PI: Carla Gomes, Cornell
University
Constraint
Reasoning
&
Optimization
Goal for Sustainability
• Establish computational
sustainability as a new field
• Bring new insights to
sustainability challenges
Dynamical
• Prepare a new generation to
Models
grapple with long-term
sustainability
Resource
Economics,
Environmental
Sciences & Engr.
Balancing
Environmental &
Socioeconomic
Needs
Transformative
Synthesis
Data
& Machine
Learning
http://www.cis.cornell.edu/ics/projects/IRPs.php
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Understanding Climate Change
Expeditions
in
Computing
(CISE)
 PI: Vipin Kumar, U/Minn
 Goal: To significantly advance the
science of climate change by using
data-driven methods
 Will use variety of climate & ecosystem
data from satellite/ground-based
sensors, and observational record for
atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial
processes
 Physics-based climate model
simulations.
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SEES Implementation Group
 Teutonico, Rita A., SBE -- Chair
 Carlo, Nikoosh – OPP
 Cavanaugh, Margaret A. – Geo/OAD
 DeSena, Alphonse – EHR/DRL
 Firth, Penelope L. – Bio/DEB
 Hamilton, Bruce K.– ENG/OAD
 Kant, Krishna – CISE/CNS
 Kuyuk, Kristin E – SBE/BCS, Science Assistant
 O'Neil, Pamela G. – OIA
 Qualters, Irene M. – OCI
 Robin, Jessica H – OISE
 Rohlfing, Celeste M – MPS
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SEES in 2010
 Emphasis on climate and
environment, including
human sciences
 Regional and Decadal
Earth System Modeling
(EaSM)
 CISE Participation
 Others:
 Water, Sustainability, and
Climate (WSC)
 Ocean Acidification (OA)
 Dimensions of Biodiversity
(DB)
 Climate Change Education
(CCEP)
 Expected future
competitions
• FY12 - WSC, OA, DB, CCEP
• FY 13 - EaSM
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Coupled Natural-Human Systems
Interdisciplinary standing NSF program
(GEO, BIO and SBE)
 May be of interest to CISE researchers, but no CISE
money here.
 SEES focus encouraged in 2011
Quantitative, interdisciplinary analyses of
human and natural system processes and
complex interactions at diverse scales
Adds support for exploratory/new team
awards & RCNs
NSF 10-612: Review panels March 2011
Next deadline: November 15, 2011
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SEES in 2012
 Sustainable Energy Pathways (CISE/Kant)
 Sustainability Research Networks (CISE/Kant)
 SEES Whitehouse Summit (CISE/Louri)
 Partnerships for International Research and
Education (PIRE) (CISE/Maslov)
 Postdoctoral Fellowships in Sustainable
Solutions (No CISE / Drineas)
 Earth Systems Modeling (CISE?)
 Integrated Research, including CNH
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Sustainable Energy Pathways
 All aspects of clean energy production,
distribution, management & smart
consumption.
 Status
 In preliminary stages of formulating a solicitation
 Solicitation out in June, proposals due Sept.
 Other details TBD
 Amount:
 $14M to $99M
 Multiple tracks possible, if significant amount
available.
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Sustainability Research Networks
 Bigger version of RCN
 Can fund gaps & new essential elements for
comprehensive coverage of a large scale theme.
 Status
 Writing solicitation – ready for PIMS shortly
 Solicitation out in June, preproposals due Sept
 Full proposals: early 2012, site visits: mid 2012,
Funding by end of 2012
 Amount
 $15M to $50M, up to $5M per grant
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SEES SUMMIT
 High level, high visibility
gathering of national and
international experts,
distinguished speakers, and
recent awardees on SEES projects
 Highlight NSF’s unique role and
partnerships with other agencies
 Crosses many sectors,
institutions, disciplines, regions,
etc.
 Fall 2011 event in planning stage
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Partnerships for International Research and
Education (PIRE)
 PIRE Goals
 Build strong research & education partnerships with
foreign collaborators that enable research excellence,
 Provide strong well-mentored international research
experiences for U.S. students and researchers
 Will be focused on SEES for FY12
 PIRE proposals should address sustainability by making
interdisciplinary linkages across natural, social and/or
built environments.
 Dear Colleague Letter NSF 11-025
K. Kant, NSF programs and Initiatives
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