On March 29, the Obama Administration announced a "Big Data Research and Development Initiative”[1]. The Big Data initiative aims to develop new tools and techniques to manage vast and complex data sets to help address societal challenges in areas such as environmental and biomedical research, education, and national security.

The initiative involves six Federal departments and agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DOD), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department of Energy (DOE), and the US Geological Survey (USGS). The agencies will invest more than $200 million to improve how large data sets are accessed, organized and interpreted through a number of ongoing and new activities. According to the White House press release, the initiative aims to:

• Advance state-of-the-art core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share huge quantities of data.
• Harness these technologies to accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching and learning.
• Expand the workforce needed to develop and use Big Data technologies.

As part of the initiative, several new competitions were announced at NSF, NIH, and DARPA. Below is information on selected individual opportunities.

 

National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes for Health (NIH) – Joint Solicitation: Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering

This solicitation will advance science and technology to manage, analyze, visualize, and extract information from large data sets. According to the solicitation, proposals should address one of three areas: data collection and management, data analytics, or e-science collaborative environments. All proposals should also address capacity building. NIH seeks proposals that tackle the above issues as part of data sets related to health and disease, especially imaging, molecular, cellular, electrophysiological, chemical, behavioral, epidemiological, or clinical data sets.

Many offices at NSF and NIH are participating in the solicitation. NSF offices include the Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO), Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), Geosciences (GEO), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), and Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE); and the Offices of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) and Polar Programs (OPP). NIH offices include the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Library of Medicine (NLM), and National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

Letters of Intent: Letters of Intent are not required.

Due Dates: No preliminary proposals are required. Full proposals are due June 13, 2012 for mid-scale projects and July 11, 2012 for small-scale projects.

Total Funding and Award Size: NSF and NIH plan to award a total of $25 million to 15 to 20 projects. Small-scale awards will be up to $250,000 per year for up to three years, while mid-scale awards will be up to $1 million per year for up to five years.

Eligibility and Limitations: This solicitation uses regular NSF eligibility requirements. There are no limits on the number of proposals that can be submitted per organization. Principal investigators are limited to two proposals.

Additional Resources: Contacts and additional information are available at http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504767.

 

NSF Dear Colleague Letter – IGERT-CIF21 Track

NSF has released a Dear Colleague letter to alert the community that it will establish a Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) track in its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. The CIF21 track aims to educate and support the next generation of researchers working on big data issues. NSF will publish a funding opportunity with more details shortly. The Dear Colleague letter is available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12059/nsf12059.jsp.

 

NSF Dear Colleague Letter – Data-Intensive Education-Related Research Funding Opportunities

EHR, SBE, CISE, and OCI released a joint Dear Colleague letter to alert the community that a solicitation on data-intensive education research will be released shortly. The solicitation will call for participants in an Ideas Lab to "advance teaching and learning focused on transforming large datasets into knowledge that leads to actions that can improve learning environments”. NSF expects to fund a range of research projects generated at the Ideas Lab. The Dear Colleague letter also highlights existing NSF funding opportunities in this area. The Dear Colleague letter is available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12060/nsf12060.jsp.

 

Other Activities

In addition to the new competitions listed above, NSF, DOE, and USGS announced newly awarded grants and projects:

National Institutes of Health (NIH) – 1,000 Genomes Project Data Available on Cloud

NIH posted the 1000 Genomes Project data on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) computing cloud. According to the NIH press release,[2] the data set is the world’s largest on human genetic variation and will now be available for use by researchers.

National Science Foundation (NSF) – New Big Data Awards in Ongoing Initiatives

• The Directorate of Geosciences will award the first round of grants to support the Earth Cube[3] initiative, which aims to create a unified data infrastructure for the geosciences.
• The Expeditions in Computing program[4] will award $10 million for a project at University of California, Berkeley to integrate machine learning, cloud computing, and crowd sourcing to convert large volumes of data into useable information.
• The Research Training Groups in the Mathematical Sciences (RTG) program[5] will award $2 million to the University of California, Davis for undergraduate training in graphical and visualization techniques for complex data.
• The Focused Research Groups in the Mathematical Sciences (FRG) program[6] will award $1.4 million to an unnamed group to support statistical and biological research on protein structures and biological pathways.
• The international Digging into Data Challenge announced its second round of awards to support humanities and social science research involving large data sets.[7]

A complete listing of NSF announcements related to Big Data is available at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123607.

 

Department of Energy (DOE) – New Scientific Discovery Through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) Institute

DOE announced[8] a $25 million award to create a new SciDAC Institute, the Scalable Data Management, Analysis, and Visualization Institute (SDAV). SDAV will be led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and will bring together six national laboratories and seven universities to help scientists manage and visualize data from large and complex simulations run on DOE supercomputers.

 

US Geological Survey – Big Data for Earth System Science Awards

The John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis[9] announced its latest round of awards, which will contribute towards the Big Data initiative. These awards will help improve understanding of a range of issues including how species respond to climate change, earthquake recurrence rates, and the next generation of ecological indicators.

 

Ongoing Programs

The White House also compiled an extensive listing of ongoing programs across the Federal government that relate to Big Data challenges: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/big_data_fact_sheet.pdf.