Backgrounder

UNC high-performance computing experts are available
to discuss national report on IT ‘quiet crisis’

Computational science enables investigation of extremely complicated phenomena and processes such as nuclear fusion, the folding of proteins, nanoscience and the global spread of diseases.

Yet a groundbreaking new report, "Computational Science: Ensuring America’s Competitiveness," finds that "this country has not yet awakened to the central role played by computational science and high-end computing in advanced scientific, social science, biomedical, and engineering research; defense and national security; and industrial innovation." The report later calls U.S. diminishing leadership in computational science a "quiet crisis."

The President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, or PITAC, this month released the 117-page report, downloadable as a PDF file at www.nitrd.gov/pubs/. Dr. Daniel A. Reed chaired the advisory committee’s computational science subcommittee and is available to speak on the report’s key cautions, findings and recommendations. To request an interview, contact Deb Saine at (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu.

Reed is vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer and the first Chancellor’s Eminent Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also is founding director of the new interdisciplinary Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), which is based at UNC in partnership with Duke and N.C. State universities and explores the interactions of computing technology with the arts, humanities, sciences and engineering.

Another UNC faculty member served on both the advisory committee and subcommittee: Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, dean of UNC’s School of Information and Library Science. An internationally recognized researcher and scholar in information and library science, Griffiths has had two presidential appointments, one to the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (1996-2002) and the other to the PITAC (2003-present). To request an interview, contact Wanda Monroe at (919) 843-8337 or wmonroe@email.unc.edu.

Computational science is indispensable to critical U.S. areas, the report states, and advances in computing mean that problems previously thought "intractable or beyond imagination" can be analyzed in unprecedented detail.

"Yet, despite the great opportunities and needs, universities and the Federal government have not effectively recognized the strategic significance of computational science in either their organizational structures or their research and educational planning," the report finds. "These inadequacies compromise U.S. scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security."

Furthermore, the report finds that other countries present considerable competition in this area: "In the 21st century global economy, burgeoning science and engineering capabilities of countries around the world – both friends and foes – are increasingly testing U.S. preeminence in advanced scientific R&D and in science- and engineering-based industries."

In its report, the PITAC calls on federal research and development agencies and universities to make coordinated, fundamental changes to their research and education structures to promote and reward collaborative approaches essential to computational science.

Among the recommendations are the following:

· The federal government, through the National Academies and in partnership with academia and industry, should create and execute a multi-decade roadmap for computational science and the diverse fields increasingly dependent on it.

· The federal government should commission a fast-track study to recommend changes and innovations in federal R&D roles and portfolios to more effectively support advances in computational science, remove organizational silos and address the need for innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to R&D based on computational science.

· The federal government should establish national software sustainability centers, provide long-term support for computational science data and software repositories; support national high-end computing leadership centers; implement coordinated, long-term computational science programs to connect these centers and repositories; and rebalance R&D investments to focus on the most pressing needs of computational science – improved software, new hardware architectures, and sensor- and data-intensive applications.

The PITAC is appointed by the President to provide independent expert advice on maintaining America’s preeminence in advanced information technologies.

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Note: More background and a photo of Reed are available by clicking on http://www.unc.edu/news/newsserv/archives/may04/reed051005.html.  More background and a photo of Griffiths are available by clicking on http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/aug04/silsdean081904.html

UNC News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu