NSF Engineering Directorate – Overview
and Priorities
Pramod P. Khargonekar
Assistant Director for Engineering
National Science Foundation
1
Presentation at USNC/TAM 2015 Annual Meeting
May 1, 2015
NSF ENG
Investing in engineering research and
education and fostering innovations to
benefit society
2 Credits, left to right: Google; Shanti Hamburg, MAE, West Virginia University; NSF; NSF; Franz X. Kärtner and Greg Hren, MIT.
Directorate for Engineering (ENG)
3
Emerging Frontiers and Multidisciplinary Activities
(EFMA) Sohi Rastegar
Assistant Director Pramod Khargonekar
Deputy Assistant Director
Grace Wang
Senior Advisor Mihail Roco
Chemical, Bioengineering,
Environmental, and Transport Systems
(CBET) JoAnn Lighty (DD)
Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing
Innovation (CMMI)
Deborah Goodings (DD)
Electrical, Communications,
and Cyber Systems (ECCS)
Samir El-Ghazaly (DD)
Engineering Education and
Centers (EEC)
Don Millard (acting DD)
Industrial Innovation and
Partnerships (IIP)
Barry Johnson (DD)
Directorate Operations Officer
Judy Hayden
Program Director for Evaluation and Assessment
Alexandra Medina-Borja
ENG R&RA Budget ($M)
FY 2014
Actual*
FY 2015
Estimate
FY 2016
Request
Change over FY 2015
Estimate
Amount Percent
CBET $167.76 $177.82 $192.26 $14.44 8.1%
CMMI 195.23 209.52 222.73 13.21 6.3%
ECCS 100.37 110.43 119.24 8.81 8.0%
EEC 119.50 117.49 110.39 -7.10 -6.0%
IIP 205.99 226.98 248.11 21.13 9.3%
SBIR/STTR 159.99 177.11 194.36 17.25 9.7%
EFMA 44.27 50.07 56.49 6.42 12.8%
ENG TOTAL $833.12 $892.31 $949.22 $56.91 6.4%
4 * FY 2014 actuals were adjusted to reflect EFMA
reallocations in order to facilitate comparison across
fiscal years.
Larger Context
• Employment, economic growth & competitiveness, and sustainability imperatives
• Mega problems: food, health, energy, water, security, education, infrastructure, …
• Global flows of components, products, services, knowledge, and people
• Stubborn long-standing issues in STEM talent, diversity, and education
• Federal support of research funding and public policy issues 5
Major Trends and Forces
• Ubiquitous computing and communications
– Computational modeling, data, simulation, optimization pervasive in all fields of engineering
– Networks and computation deeply integrated into engineered systems
– Machine intelligence
• Systems science and engineering
– Multi-scale analysis, design, and optimization
– Integration of physical and cyber components
– Range: nano- to micro- to macro-scale
– Scale and complexity: large numbers of components
– Safety, robustness, resilience, …
6
Major Trends and Forces
• Nanoscale science and technologies – Improving understanding and new tools at the atomic and molecular scales
– Progressing from passive components to active systems, design, and manufacturing
• Biology/Medicine Frontier – Interaction of engineered systems and biology at all scales – DNA to cells
to organs to organisms to eco-systems
– Engineering for neuroscience and brain
– Synthetic biology
– Plants, food, and agriculture
– Advanced biomanufacturing
– Biologically inspired engineering
7
Major Trends and Forces
• Behavioral/economic/cognitive sciences
– Human behavior and game theory in engineered
systems and technology design
– Prominent role in infrastructure systems such as
electric grid, transportation, water, gas
– Economic, regulatory, policy issues
• Design, creativity, aesthetics, …
8
ENG Initiatives and Priorities Address National
Interests
• Innovations at the Nexus of Food,
Energy, and Water Systems
• Risk and Resilience
• Cyber-Enabled Materials, Manufacturing,
and Smart Systems
– Advanced Manufacturing
• Understanding the Brain
• National Nanotechnology Initiative
• Optics and Photonics
• Education and Broadening Participation
– IUSE: Improving Undergraduate Science and
Engineering
– INCLUDES: Inclusion across the Nation of
Communities of Learners that have been
Underrepresented for Diversity in
Engineering and Science
• Innovation Corps
9
Risk and Resilience
- Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems
and Processes (CRISP)
Improve the resilience, interoperation, performance, and readiness of critical
infrastructure
– Advances knowledge of risk assessment and predictability
– Supports the creation of novel tools, technologies, and engineered systems
solutions for increased resilience
CRISP: jointly supported by ENG, CISE, and SBE
– Enhance the understanding and design of interdependent critical infrastructure
systems and processes that provide essential goods and services, both under
normal conditions and despite disruptions and failures from any cause
$17M
10
Cyber-Enabled Materials, Manufacturing,
and Smart Systems (CEMMSS)
• Focus on breakthrough materials, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and cyber-physical systems
– materials discovery, property optimization, systems design and optimization, certification, manufacturing and deployment
– research on the networked integration of manufacturing machines, equipment, and systems into an increasingly accessible manufacturing service infrastructure
– electronic, mechanical, computing, sensing devices and systems, controls, and intelligent systems that enable ubiquitous, advanced robotics to be realized
– intelligent decision-making algorithms and hardware into physical systems
11
12
“Advanced manufacturing is a family of activities that
(a) depend on the use and coordination of information, automation, computation, software, sensing, and networking, and/or
(b) make use of cutting edge materials and emerging capabilities enabled by the physical and biological sciences, for example nanotechnology, chemistry, and biology.
It involves both new ways to manufacture existing products, and the manufacture of new products emerging from new advanced technologies.”
President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Report to the President on Ensuring
American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing
Nano-Manufacturing – Context and Challenges
• Tremendous scientific and engineering progress in
nanoscience and nanotechnology
• Steady progress along Moore’s Law
• Major next challenge:
How do we go from materials and devices to
products and associated scalable manufacturing
processes and systems?
13
Materials Genome Initiative
Discovery Property Certification Deployment
optimization
Development System Manufacturing
design and integration
Sustainability
and recovery
18–20 years
Nu
mb
er
of n
ew
ma
teria
ls to
ma
rke
t
Time
Materials
Continuum
Today
14
Vision: Advanced materials are essential to economic security and human well-being and have applications in multiple industries, including those aimed at addressing challenges in clean energy, national security, and human welfare. To meet these challenges, the Materials Genome Initiative will enable discovery, development, manufacturing, and deployment of advanced materials at least twice as fast as possible today, at a fraction of the cost.
MGI - Key Challenges and Goals
• Leading a culture shift in materials research to encourage
and facilitate an integrated team approach that links computation, data, and experiment and crosses boundaries from academia to industry;
• Integrating experiment, computation, and theory and
equipping the materials community with the advanced tools and techniques to work across materials classes from research to industrial application;
• Making digital data accessible including combining data from
experiment and computation into a searchable materials data infrastructure and encouraging researchers to make their data available to others;
• Creating a world-class materials workforce that is trained for
careers in academia or industry, including high-tech manufacturing jobs.
15 MGI Strategic Plan, 2014
http://www.whitehouse.gov/mgi
National Nanotechnology Initiative
(NNI)
Foundational nanotechnology research in electronics and photonics, advanced materials
and manufacturing, bio- and neurotechnology, and nano-EHS.
Emerging research areas: controlled self-assembly; nanomodular materials and systems by
design; novel aspects of semiconductors, nanophotonics and plasmonics; and
nanotechnology for water-energy-food processes
NNI Signature Initiatives: sustainable nanomanufacturing, nanoelectronics for 2020,
nanotechnology for energy, knowledge infrastructure, and sensors
Research infrastructure including the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure
(NNCI) and Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN)
Technology translation and collaboration with industry, especially in nanomanufacturing,
through partnership activities
16
Clean Energy Technology
Invests in fundamental research related to clean energy technologies,
including:
– Solar energy, wind energy, energy harvesting, and other forms of
sustainable energy generation
– Biofuels and bioenergy
– Energy storage and smart grid technologies
– Energy efficiency, systems engineering and optimization for energy
A significant portion of the NSF SBIR/STTR portfolio is related to clean energy
technology
17
Education and Career Development
The Directorate strategically invests in
– CAREER awards
– NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) and Integrative Graduate
Education and Research Traineeships (IGERT) programs
– New approaches to address engineering education challenges,
in connection with Improving Undergraduate STEM Education
(IUSE)
• ENG Professional Formation of Engineers (PFE) supports research and
development for interventions that improve both the quality and quantity
of engineering graduates
18
INCLUDES: Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of
Learners that have been Underrepresented for Diversity in
Engineering and Science
Goal: To mobilize STEM research and education communities for
scalable solutions to broadening participation challenges
– Specific inspirational targets - community-driven selection
– Two evidence based pilots:
• Networks for STEM Excellence
• Empowering ALL Youth for STEM
– Coherent expansion of discipline-based BP efforts
– Engagement of other stakeholders
ENG will align its investments to increase participation of
underrepresented groups with the NSF-wide INCLUDES effort
19
Innovation Corps (I-Corps™)
Provides experiential entrepreneurial
education to capitalize on NSF investments in
basic research
Supports I-Corps™ Teams, Sites, and Nodes
to further build, utilize, and sustain a national
innovation ecosystem
What have we done so far?
500 I-Corps Teams
~45% started companies
37 I-Corps Sites
7 I-Corps Nodes
20
NSF I-Corps™
I-Corps L
I-Corps @NIH
Lab-Corps
I-Corps in
Mexico
I-Corps with
ARPA-E
Scaling I-CorpsTM
Top Related