Rotator position at NSF

I posted earlier about a permanent program director position at NSF in CCF/AF. There is also an opening for a rotator position. This is a great opportunity for anyone seeking a short (2-3 year) sabbatical from their academic position, and a wonderful and highly impactful way of serving the community. Please consider applying!

You can find more information at https://beta.nsf.gov/careers/openings/cise/ccf/ccf-2022-79939 for the rotator position. If you have any questions about the position, please feel free to reach out to me or to one of the current AF PDs.

NSF Program Director opening in Algorithmic Foundations

Serving as a program director at the NSF is one of the most impactful ways of serving the TCS community.  The Algorithmic Foundations Program in NSF/CISE/CCF is currently accepting applications for a permanent Program Director position.  Please consider applying!

Apply here by January 12.  Feel free and encouraged to contact the AF group (Tracy Kimbrel, Peter Brass, Funda Ergun) for information.

NSF Program Director openings in Algorithmic Foundations

One of the best ways to serve the US-based TCS community is to take up a position at the NSF. Beginning as early as 2019, NSF/CCF is seeking at least one program director for the Algorithmic Foundations core program. This is a rotator position, which is generally two or three years in duration. Please consider applying!

Besides service to the community, there are many other benefits from serving:

• It’s an opportunity to meet a lot of people in one’s own field and others, and to become more well-known in research communities. Some institutions place value on the experience. Many rotators are able to use it to enhance career options.
• A rotator can typically spend 20% (NSF-paid) time on research, including visits back to the home institution. The impact on research and advising may be considerable, but does not have to be a complete hiatus.
• There is a wealth of opportunities for cultural and educational experiences for families who relocate to the area for a few years, which some find to offset the very considerable impacts associated with such a move.

The official posting for AF won’t appear until later, but postings for similar positions can be found here: https://www.nsf.gov/careers/openings/. For further information, please reach out to Tracy Kimbrel (tkimbrel@nsf.gov) or Shuchi Chawla (shuchi@cs.wisc.edu).

New NSF Core Program: Foundations of Emerging Technologies

NSF has announced the creation of a new core program within CCF, called Foundations of Emerging Technologies (FET). The FET core program joins the existing three core programs within CCF: Algorithmic Foundations (AF), Communications and Information Foundations (CIF), and Software Hardware Foundations (SHF).

FET aims to enable radical innovations across all areas traditionally supported by CCF, including the theory, algorithms, software, hardware, and architecture of computing and communication systems, through research at the intersection of computing and biological systems, nanoscale science and engineering, quantum information science, and other nascent, yet promising, areas. Of note to theorists, research in quantum computing and computational biology, formerly considered across these three core programs, is now addressed by the FET program.

FET is accepting proposals through the CCF Core Programs solicitation NSF 18-568 this fall.

For further information, see:
Program page: here.
Solicitation page: here.

 

NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII)

From NSF program director Jeremy Epstein: The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) program is for research and teaching faculty in the first two years of their appointments.  In 2014-15, the first year of the program, there were 76 awards under this program.

There will be a webinar for potential CRII applicants on Aug 5 1pm-2pm, describing the goals and requirements of the program, and changes for the 2015-16 program.  Register by Aug 4.

Proposal submissions are due on Sept 30.

Highlights from STOC presentation

Since there wasn’t time to go through the full CATCS Report during the STOC business meeting last week, here are a few items of note.

• The URL http://www.theorymatters.org/ (listed in the presentation) is no longer active.  For now, our blog is just https://thmatters.wordpress.com/
• Tim Roughgarden will be taking over as chair of CATCS starting in August.
• Do make use of the cstheory-jobs site to advertise or look for jobs in theoretical computer science.

And many upcoming deadlines:

• June 30, 2015: proposals for 2017 programs at the Simons Institute 
• July 21, 2015: NSF CAREER Award (for new/young faculty).  See also our repository of past CAREER proposals and other proposal-writing tips.
• Late summer: universities sent calls for nominations for Simons Investigator Awards (long-term support for individuals)
• Late summer: Simons Fellows in Math (sabbatical funding)
• Early fall: Simons Collaborations in Math & Physical Sciences. (large grants for collaborative efforts on fundamental scientific questions of major importance)
• September 10, 2015: Nominations for ACM Fellows.
• September 16, 2015: NSF Medium proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• TBD (September?): Guggenheim Fellowships
• September 24, 2015: NSF Large proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• September 30, 2015: NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII).   For new faculty, easier to get than a CAREER award (but both can be submitted at once).  See FAQ.
• October 19, 2015: NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
• TBD (late Oct): NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
• October 31, 2015: ACM Dissertation Award
• November 1, 2015: AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships
• November 18, 2015: NSF Small proposals to Algorithmic Foundations, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, and other programs.
• November 30, 2015: Many ACM Awards (e.g. Turing, Hopper, Kanellakis, Distinguished Service)
• Rolling or Dec 1: CCC Visioning Workshops (eg Theoretical Foundations of Social Computing 6/29-6/30)
• December 7, 2015: NSF CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information (sabbatical support)
• December 7, 2015: NSF Exploiting Parallelism & Scalability (XPS)
• February 8, 2015: NSF Algorithms in the Field (AitF)
• TBD: Simons Award for Graduate Students in TCS
• March 1, 2016: Nominations for IEEE Fellows.
• March 9, 2016: NSF CISE Expeditions in Computing Preliminary Proposals
• TBD (April?): Symposia at 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting
• TBD (May?): NSF BIGDATA program
• Any time: DIMACS special focus proposal

Change in NSF Deadlines

In a Dear Colleagues letter from Jim Kurose, the CISE Directorate at NSF announced its intention to change the deadlines for a number of its programs, including Algorithmic Foundations (AF) and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC).  The next deadlines are as follows:

• Medium proposals: September 16, 2015
• Large proposals: September 24, 2015
• Small proposals: November 18, 2015.

[6/7/15: edited to reflect actual deadlines rather than just months]

NSF CAREER Program Webinar

NSF CAREER Program Webinar

May 26, 2015 1:00 PM  to 3:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, New York, GMT-04:00)

The NSF CAREER Coordinating Committee is hosting a webinar to provide an overview of the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) and to answer participants’ questions about development and submission of CAREER proposals.

The webinar includes an overview presentation followed by a question-and-answer period.  For more details, see http://www.nsf.gov/events/event_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134940

NSF Brain Initiative Opportunities

As part of the Brain Initiative, there is a new NSF program on Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems  (NSF-NCS) that can provide opportunities for some CS theory research.  For “Integrative Foundations” proposals submitted direclty to the NSF-NCS program ($500k-$1m over 2-4 years), letters of intent need to be submitted by tomorrow (December 10).  But it is also possible to submit a “Core+Extensions” project as a supplement (up to $100k) to a proposal to another NSF program (such as the Algorithmic Foundations program, deadline January 14 for small proposals).

Bala Kalyanasundaram (bkalyana@nsf.gov) is a good program officer to contact with questions about submitting proposals related to CS theory.

New NSF program: Algorithms in the Field

Research Opportunity from NSF for Algorithms in the Field

Guest post from Tracy Kimbrel, NSF Program Director for Computing and Communication Foundations

The National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) recently announced a new program solicitation, Algorithms in the Field (AitF), which aims to promote collaboration between theory researchers and those in more applied areas.

The program originated from interest and excitement among the theory community and researchers in many applied fields during a well-attended workshop held in May 2011.

Bridging the gap between theory and practice in the design, analysis, implementation, and evaluation of algorithms can lead to new fields as well as broader cutting-edge applications. The premise is that by working jointly “in the field” researchers from these different communities will continually inform each other, innovate in their respective areas, and forge algorithms that are simultaneously validated by theory, systems, and applied communities.

The program synopsis reads as follows:

Algorithms in the Field encourages closer collaboration between two groups of researchers: (i) theoretical computer science researchers, who focus on the design and analysis of provably efficient and provably accurate algorithms for various computational models; and (ii) applied researchers including a combination of systems and domain experts (very broadly construed – including but not limited to researchers in computer architecture, programming languages and systems, computer networks, cyber-physical systems, cyber-human systems, machine learning, database and data analytics, etc.) who focus on the particular design constraints of applications and/or computing devices. Each proposal must have at least one co-PI interested in theoretical computer science and one interested in any of the other areas typically supported by CISE. Proposals are expected to address the dissemination of the algorithmic contributions and resulting applications, tools, languages, compilers, libraries, architectures, systems, data, etc.

I want to emphasize that lists of possible “field areas” such as those in the synopsis and other parts of the solicitation are not exhaustive and do not imply any limitation on scope.

NSF looks forward to the new research that will be supported through this endeavor.  The deadline for submissions is February 9, 2015.  Please read the full program solicitation for more information. A webinar will be held December 18, 2014 at 3 pm ET; details will be provided soon on the AitF page.