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.

Media attention has focused on the failure of the 12-member congressional Supercommittee to reach agreement on a package to reduce the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next nine years. However, universities and science organizations are not the victims of the deficit impasse. Generally, federal funding for scientific research is not the target of deficit reduction for several reasons: (1) the amount of domestic discretionary funding for science is not large enough to have significant impact on deficit reduction; (2) science has bipartisan support among politicians since it is part of the innovation economy upon which the country’s financial recovery is partially dependent; and (3) dismantling the scientific infrastructure of the country is counter-productive in the global technology-driven forces of the 21st century. There are aspects of the current federal deficit paralysis that indirectly affect higher education – particularly relating to student aid, academic health centers, and tax policy – but reducing direct federal support of scientific research at academic institutions is not front-and-center.

Now, many are trying to determine what happens next as Congress still has much work to do before adjourning next month. With funding fully enacted for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) the competitive funding arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), with modest increases (NSF and NOAA), flat funding (AFRI) or a slight reduction (NASA), completion of the fiscal year (FY) 2012 appropriations process, especially for NIH funding, is an important challenge. In addition to funding the remaining appropriations bills, which are currently operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) through December 16th, there are other issues looming before Congress, such as extension of unemployment benefits, doctor payments, and tax extenders. This report describes the impact of the collapse of the Supercommittee at the federal level; however, actions might be taken by state and local governments to respond to possible implications associated with the collapse of the Supercommittee process. 

Near-Term Outlook for Science Funding

Among its many to-dos, Congress must still complete nine remaining FY 2012 appropriations bills, including bills that fund the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Education (ED). It is expected that this will be done through one large "omnibus” package before the end of the calendar year. As previously reported, other science agencies for which appropriations bills have been passed—namely NSF, NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Agriculture (USDA)—fared relatively well in FY 2012, receiving budgets that are about flat or slightly increased above the FY 2011 enacted level. A similar outcome is expected for basic research in agencies like NIH and DOE in the final appropriations agreement.

One caveat is that it is not uncommon for a modest across-the-board reduction to be included in an omnibus appropriations bill should it be warranted to keep discretionary appropriations within the overall cap of $1.043 trillion enacted in the Budget Control Act (debt limit agreement). Should the appropriations process stall, there has been some discussion of extending the current CR into early next year, which would result in a freeze for all programs at the current (FY 2011) level until Congress completes an omnibus bill or enacts a CR for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Planning is also underway by agencies for the President’s FY 2013 budget request which is expected to be more conservative than in past years and may even be delayed due to the uncertainty of future budget cuts. The FY 2013 process remains very uncertain at the moment with flat funding for federal research agencies considered "a win” in the coming years.

Budget Scenarios for FY 2014 and Beyond

In August, the Budget Control Act enacted a process that would institute automatic across-the-board budget cuts over nine years, known as sequestration, in the event that the Supercommittee could not reach a deal. However, given that the cuts are not scheduled to go into effect until January 2013 (after the election) and are subject to subsequent revision by Congress, it is possible they will be delayed or never triggered at all. In the event no changes are made to the automatic budget cuts, the White House Office of Management and Budget would be required to reduce the discretionary appropriated budget by $109 billion per year for nine years, allocated equally between defense spending and nondefense spending.

Reductions in discretionary spending from 2014 to 2021 would be achieved by reducing the aggregate overall caps on such spending for each year. While the President could propose specific cuts to agencies such as NIH and NSF, specific appropriations would still be subject to the annual congressional appropriations process and program funding could be increased or further decreased within the overall capped amount for all discretionary spending. As a general rule of thumb, if these cuts were allocated proportionately, it would mean 6 to 8 percent reductions to the domestic spending agencies.

Concerns are already being expressed by the Administration and by both Democratic and Republican Members of Congress over the magnitude of potential spending cuts to defense. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the DOD budget could be cut by as much as 10 percent in FY 2013 under the mandated sequester with additional reductions in discretionary defense spending over the nine-year period to estimated savings of about 8.5 percent in FY 2021. Such reductions, totaling an estimated $492 billion, could impact big defense programs already at issue in Congress, as well as drive changes in the structure and mobility of the nation’s military services already under consideration. Additional reductions in mandatory defense spending are also likely under current law. While some want to undo the sequester for defense, the President has threatened to veto any bill that focuses only on exempting defense spending.

In short, the budget outlook for the next several years is uncertain at best. The main question on the table is whether and how to skirt the automatic cuts that would be levied against FY 2013 appropriations as required under the Budget Control Act. However, flat funding for science agencies remains a possibility over the next few years and should be viewed as a "win” in the current budget climate.

Congressional Quarterly (CQ) has produced a graphic that further explains the sequestration process, should that process go forward without changes by Congress: http://www.cq.com/graphics/monitor/2011/11/23/mon20111123-23deficit-cht.pdf

A study commissioned by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has revealed that black scientists were less likely to receive an NIH grant than white scientists, even after controlling for differences in institutions and academic track records.  The results of the study by Ginther et al.—conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas, NIH, and Discovery Logic/Thomson Reuters—are published this week in the journal Science.

Figure 1 from Ginther et al.  Probability of NIH R01 award by race and ethnicity, FY 2000 to FY 2006.

ASPB has added its voice to a community letter from The Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research to the chair and ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education.  The letter, from 214 organizations and institutions, makes the case for robust funding of the National Institutes of Health in the FY2012 budget:

In this challenging budget environment, we recognize the painful decisions that must be made to secure the nation’s fiscal stability. However, it is imperative that such efforts recognize the federal role in promoting the prosperity and well-being of the American people. Especially in times like these, continuing the nation’s commitment to medical research through NIH is essential to ensuring the health of all Americans and to maintaining U.S. leadership in an increasingly competitive global scientific arena. The Ad Hoc Group strongly recommends that the FY 2012 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill uphold the longstanding legacy of bipartisan support for the health and economic benefits afforded by an unwavering commitment to NIH. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a notice on implementing the final fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget, which cuts about 1% from NIH's budget.

The National Research Council has issued the thirteenth and latest in a series of Congressionally-mandated studies on the national needs for research personnel. The most recent report, Research Training in the Biomedical, Behavioral, and Clinical Research Sciences, advises the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Agency for Healthcare and Quality Research (AHRQ) on personnel needs as they relate to the National Research Service Awards (NRSA) program. The NRSA program incorporates NIH predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships and training grants (including F30, F31, F32, F33, F34, F35, T32, T34, and T35 awards) as well as programs in nursing, oral health, and clinical and health services research. Training grants support a broad range of grad students and postdocs, including those in plant biology. And although the NRSA program directly impacts only a fraction of trainees, it has set the de facto national standard for graduate and postdoctoral training.

all graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are supported by the NIH on Research Program Grants (RPGs) should be required to incorporate certain additional ‘training grant–like’ components into their regular academic training program. These should include RCR [responsible conduct of research] training, exposure to quantitative biology, and career guidance and advising.

Jeremy Berg, director of the National Institute of Health's (NIH's) National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), has announced that he will be stepping down at the end of June 2011. He will become associate senior vice chancellor for science strategy and planning in the health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. He will also be a faculty member in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the university’s School of Medicine.