CATCS reports

Reports on Funding and Challenges for (T)CS

SIGACT Committee Reports 2005+ | Older Reports for TCS | Reports for all of CS

SIGACT Committee on the Advancement of TCS: 2005-present

• CATCS Report STOC 2016 by Tim Roughgarden.
• Presentation at STOC ’16 by Jack Snoeyink (Program Director at NSF)
• CATCS Report STOC 2015 by Salil Vadhan.
• CATCS Report STOC 2014 by Salil Vadhan.
• CATCS Report STOC 2013 by Salil Vadhan.
• CATCS Report FOCS 2012 by Salil Vadhan.
• Presentation at SODA ’11 by Susanne Hambrusch (Division Director of CCF).
• Presentation at STOC `10 given by Salil Vadhan on behalf of Avrim Blum.
• Visions for TCS Nuggets.
• SIGACT News Article by Sanjeev Arora (April 2009)describing new “Algorithmic Foundations” cluster and TCS funding opportunities at NSF.
• Letter from Sanjeev Arora (July 2008).
• Presentation by Sanjeev Arora at FOCS `07.
• Workshops on “CS as a Lens on the Sciences”: Princeton Workshop (Dec `06) and Caltech Workshop (March `07). The organizers’ final reportsketches many promising new areas for TCS.
• “Towards a Theory of Networked Computation”: workshops held in Princeton (Feb `06) and Berkeley (March `06) and a report on possible research directions by TCS and networking people.
• Article by Sanjeev Aroraon funding trends (Sigact News, June 2007).
• Article by Sanjeev Arora and Avi Wigderson; February 2006. It outlines things we can do to help improve funding for TCS and it also describes initiatives launched by the committee to help bring more funding to TCS.
• Article by Dick Karp; November 2005. (Based upon a presentation at FOCS; to appear in SIGACT News soon.) Describes what the committee is trying to do, and invites help of all kinds from members of the TCS community.
• Report from September 2005. Includes details of an NSF trip and news about a new NSF initiative.

Older Reports on Challenges and Funding for TCS

• A proposal for increased NSF funding for TCS and answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQs). See the guest book of supporters.

• A NSF-sponsored Committee report from 1999 that outlined the future challenges for theoretical computer science. This report called the TCS budget at the time (about $7.5M) “dangerously insufficient” and also recommendedat least doubling it.

• A followup to the above committee report that listed future challenges for TCS research.

Reports on Challenges and Funding for all of CS

• Two blogs that act as clearinghouses of information on public policy and funding issues affecting the computing community in general: the CRA blog, and the ACM Technology Policy Blog.

• We like to think of CS as a “hot” field (just like Biology). It is therefore sobering to realize that total funding for academic CS research has stayed fairly flat for quite a while now. (In fact, the graph for CS resembles the graph for psychology and social science, rather than that of a “hot” discipline like Biology.) Meanwhile, the number of academic CS researchers has grown tremendously, and CS has had great impact on society. NSF statistics on R&D expenditures of all federal agenciesalso interesting reading.

• Computing Research: A National Investment for Leadership in the 21st Centuryby CRA. Note that TCS is missing from this picture. This illustrates the need for the TCS community to be more proactive.

• 20th century vs. 21st century C&C: the SPUR manifesto and The state of funding for new initiatives in computer science and engineering. A pair of articles by ACM president Dave Patterson.

• An Endless Frontier Postponed. Science editorial by Lazowska and Patterson. Many other articles in that issue deal with computational science and distributed computing.

• Is the thrill gone?Op-ed by Arora and Chazelle (to appear in CACM August’05). It tries to explain the point that CS is a radical new way to think, rather than just a road to IT infrastructure.

• Many links appear at CRA’s website, including one on how to write to your congressperson.

• An example of how to make arguments to NSF and the government; the cyberinfrastructure proposal.

• A powerpoint presentationfrom a program examiner at the Office of Management and the Budget. It gives some insight into how people in his position think. The slides titled “Ethos and Mythos” are the most interesting.

• The latest report from PITAC, which calls Computational Science a national priority. We can probably use some of its recommendations wrt algorithms in our advocacy. Note how many times the report uses the term “infrastructure.” I wish they had also stressed the notion that CS gives a new way to think. [Sanjeev A.]

• An articleannouncing that PITAC is being disbanded.

• Slidesfrom the discussion of TCS funding at STOC in May 2005.

• Task Force on the Future of American Innovation is a group of concerned industry and academia figures who argue for more govt funding for science and computing. They have an interesting report on their website that documents the shrinking lead of the US in basic science.