Science Means Innovation

On March 29, 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) conducted a bipartisan congressional briefing sponsored by the Coalition for National Science Funding and hosted by the Congressional Research and Development Caucus and its Co-Chairs Rush Holt (NJ-12) and Judy Biggert (IL-13) and special guests Representatives Daniel Lipinski (IL-3) and Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18).

"For 60 years, NSF has played a central role in innovation by catalyzing the development of fundamental ideas in science and engineering and supporting the people who generate them," said NSF Director Subra Suresh. "NSF remains the nation's engine of innovation, the fuel for which is fundamental research. NSF's mission positions it to stimulate innovative research that connects the science and engineering enterprise with potential economic, societal and educational benefits."

NSF supports a broad range of fundamental science and engineering research. Through a series of innovation programs, NSF continues to catalyze the transformation of fundamental research efforts into market reality and nurture the commercialization of technology, creating high-quality jobs and economic growth. These NSF programs leverage partnerships with the private sector in order to strengthen the nation's innovation ecosystem, enhancing America's global economic competitiveness.

"Let me congratulate the NSF for acknowledging the vitality of science in America. As a former Member of the House Science Committee, I always say that science is the work of the 21st century. We are now in the 21st century," said Rep. Lee at the briefing.

Rep. Lipinski said, "We need to do the best that we can to leverage the research in this country and translate it into new products, new businesses and new jobs. The NSF has a number of programs to do this: to make research discoveries that create innovations and help spur the economy."

The briefing highlighted NSF-supported efforts, representing activities at the three primary stages of innovation: (1) Making discoveries through industrially relevant fundamental research, (2) Creating new technology companies, and (3) Moving useful technology into the marketplace.

Basic research is at the core of NSF's mission, with the agency providing $5.6 billion for fundamental science and engineering to 11,000 of our nation's colleges and universities. One mechanism NSF supports to enhance basic research in partnership with industry is the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) program. Richard Haber, site director of the Ceramic, Composite, and Optical Materials Center at Rutgers University, highlighted work from the I/UCRC program.

Professor Haber spoke to how I/UCRCs conduct cutting-edge fundamental research relevant to its industry and end-user members. He cited examples of economic benefits through the successes of a New Jersey-based startup company called Solidia Technologies, which produces a new kind of concrete with a negative carbon footprint.

Neil Kane, president of Illinois Partners is an industry mentor for the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. This past year, he has been mentoring an I-Corps team led by Professor Yi Lu of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, helping establish a company that will further develop an innovative point-of-care medical diagnostic device. The I-Corps program was very helpful in our developing a winning commercial strategy. Our startup company GlucoSentient's chances for success are much higher due to the commercial analysis done with the I-Corps curriculum," said Kane.

Stephen Spoonamore, CEO and Chairman of ABSMaterials, Inc., shared his company's experiences as a beneficiary of NSF's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

"The NSF SBIR funding that ABSMaterials has received is allowing innovations in water quality to be validated, fielded and placed into the service of American community needs far faster than otherwise possible," said Spoonamore.

The SBIR program--begun at NSF in 1982 and a successful model for programs now in 11 federal agencies--provides small businesses with support at the critical early stages of research and development. ABSMaterials emerged as a company ten years after its Chief Science Officer, Paul Edmiston, received his first NSF grant for basic research. Edmiston has since received an additional academic research grant and two SBIR grants to further the work. The company has received five SBIR grants to further the work.

"These speakers' stories exemplify the value of NSF-funded basic research and the partnerships that facilitate success in American innovation," said Thomas Peterson, Assistant Director for the Engineering Directorate at NSF. "NSF has developed a strategy--utilizing its long-term experience, existing programs and new initiatives--to increase the likelihood and speed of commercializing discoveries. These discoveries can yield high-value products and processes, new businesses and industries, as well as expand high-quality employment and a more technologically advanced workforce."

 -NSF-

Reporters Invited To NASA Tech Day On The Hill March 28

David E. Steitz

Headquarters, Washington                                        

WASHINGTON -- Journalists are invited to visit "NASA Technology: Imagine. Innovate. Explore," an agency technology showcase on Wednesday, March 28, from 3 to 7 p.m. EDT in the Gold Room (room 2168) of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington. Remarks from hosting members of Congress and senior NASA officials are expected at approximately 5:30 p.m.

The event provides an opportunity to learn how NASA space and aeronautics technology helps enable agency goals while creating or improving products and services that benefit life here on Earth. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will attend the event. Attendees also will have the opportunity to discuss traveling in space with Astronauts Mike Massimino and Mike Good.

Companies displaying technologies include EA Sports, Redwood City, Calif.; ASA Analytics, Waukesha, Wisc.; NVision of Bay St. Louis, Miss.; L'Garde Inc., Tustin, Calif.; Zephyr Technology of Annapolis, Md.; and A&P Technology and Lambda Technology, both of Cincinnati. In addition, six NASA centers will have exhibits that show how the latest space technology advances medicine, improves water quality, designs safer and more efficient airplanes and brings new solutions to everyday challenges.

Hosting the event are Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.); Rep. Chaka Fattah (Pa.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies; Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) of the Senate Appropriations Committee; and Sen. John Boozman (Ark.) of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck will be on hand to discuss how investments in space technology and innovation act as a catalyst for America's new technology economy. NASA hosts will be joined by other members of Congress interested in advancing American innovation through space technology.

More information about NASA technology and innovation is available at http://www.nasa.gov/oct.

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Officials: Cyber Research Needs Innovation, Talent

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON  – As a critical enabler of Defense Department business and military operations and the DOD command-and-control backbone, cyber is the focus of intense research and development in an environment where success means getting out ahead of an evolving threat.

During the unclassified portion of a hearing of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities yesterday, experts from DOD, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Security Agency discussed the department’s vulnerabilities and needs.

“DARPA’s bottom-line message today [is] that DOD is capability-limited in cyber, both defensively and offensively,” DARPA Acting Director Kaigham “Ken” J. Gabriel told the panel. “We need to change that.”

Much of what he could share in the unclassified session already is known, Gabriel said:

-- Attackers can penetrate DOD networks;

-- Users are the weakest link in cybersecurity;

-- The defense supply chain and physical systems are at risk; and

-- The United States continues to spend billions on cybersecurity with limited increase in protection.

“Our approach to cybersecurity is dominated by a strategy that layers security onto a uniform architecture,” Gabriel explained. “This approach … is not convergent with a growing and evolving threat. That’s the defensive picture.”

In cyber offense, he added, modern warfare demands the effective use of cyber and kinetic means.

“The tasks required for military purposes are sufficiently different that we cannot simply scale intelligence-based cyber capabilities and adequately serve the needs of DOD,” the acting director said.

For example, he added, “a cyber exploit that always causes the target system to crash is not much of an intelligence exploit, but it may be exactly the effect a DOD mission calls for.”

DARPA-developed technologies are widely prevalent in military, intelligence and commercial use today, but much remains to be done, Gabriel said. “From our vantage point,” he added, “the greatest vulnerability in cyber offense for the DOD is the lack of capabilities with proportionality, speed and diversity of effects.”

“It's very much an environment where we have to continually up the game and get ahead of the threat,” Zachary J. Lemnios, assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, told the senators.

“We started in computer network defense years ago with the perimeter defense strategy -- a firewall strategy. We then moved to an environment where we have on the commercial side embedded agents that look at network traffic,” he said.

Eventually, Lemnios added, “we're moving to a point where no longer will we be looking for particular attacks, but we will be designing systems on the commercial side that morph automatically -- actually change their features and operating roles to respond to threats before the threats present themselves.”

President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 Pentagon budget request includes a $3.4 billion investment in cyber activities, of which $486 million is dedicated to science and technology investments, he said. This investment is significant, he added, given the department’s complex set of cybersecurity responsibilities and challenges.

The DOD enterprise system includes 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices across hundreds of installations in dozens of countries that are used for business operations. But the DOD cybersecurity capability must extend beyond the enterprise system, Lemnios said, to include mission-critical command and control networks, cyber physical systems and cyber radio frequency systems -- communications systems -- that make up DOD’s tactical systems.

“The emergence of networked tactical systems and cyber physical systems have created new opportunities for increased cyber security attack and disruption,” the assistant secretary said.

The cyber operational domain is built on measures and countermeasures, he added, where technical depth, operational innovation and technology transition are the ingredients for leadership.

“The key to success for all our cybersecurity efforts is talent -- the workforce we have in our laboratories, in academia, in industry, in our small business community and the workforce of tomorrow,” Lemnios said.

DOD has several programs to advance the cyber research and development workforce, he said. These include the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative that attracts high school and college students into cyber security, the DOD Information Assurance Scholarship Program for scholars who want to complete a degree in cyber-related fields, and efforts involving the services.

At the National Security Agency, the research enterprise supports the agency’s information assurance and signals intelligence mission with a highly skilled technical workforce, Michael A. Wertheimer, NSA’s director of research and development, told the panel.

Better than a third of the workforce has PhDs, another third has master’s degrees, and just under a quarter have bachelor’s degrees, Wertheimer said. But poor recruitment and retention practices have caused U.S. production of computer scientists to decline, he added. NSA has created a three-year prototype post-doctoral program to attract new talent, he said.

At DARPA, to create cyber capabilities with the diversity, dynamic range and tempo of DOD operations, the agency launched a program called Cyber Fast Track, which taps a pool of nontraditional experts and innovators, many of whom operate in the “white-hat” hacker community.

“Half of our so-called cyberpunks -- the group of about a half a dozen or eight program managers at DARPA -- don't have PhDs,” Gabriel said. “Their skills, their capabilities, their insights are coming from their practice in the community. And frankly, it will have a shelf life.”

Like all the program managers who work at DARPA, “they'll go through the three to five years, and they'll move on, and others will come in with a newer, different perspective,” he added.

“I think that's an interesting thing about cyber. … It has such a fast refresh and short shelf life that we may have opportunities for a different model of how we retain that capability,” he said.

Geospatial Mapping Enhances Arlington Cemetery Management

From an Arlington National Cemetery News Release

Officials at Arlington National Cemetery will use an Army-designed geospatial mapping system to manage cemetery operations, the executive director of the Army National Cemeteries Program said today.

Kathryn A. Condon testified before the House Veterans Affairs Committee’s disability assistance and memorial affairs subcommitee to provide an update on the progress made in rectifying long-standing management problems at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Arlington is no longer a paper-based operation. … By producing a single electronic map of Arlington, the staff will assign, manage and track gravesites with an authoritative digital map,” Condon said. “It will allow us to synchronize in real time our burial operations at Arlington.”

The geospatial mapping system allows officials to synchronize burial operations with other daily operations, such as public ceremonies, infrastructure repair, grounds upkeep and public safety activities, Condon explained. The system is linked to Arlington’s interment scheduling system, which allows schedulers to assign gravesites and assign procession routes. It also alerts Arlington staff of other activities in the area, she said.

Arlington is the first national cemetery to use this technology, Condon told the panel.

The geospatial mapping system will use the information collected and validated as part of the Army’s gravesite accountability study. The gravesite accountability effort resulted in the first review, analysis and coordination of records kept in various ways at Arlington over the cemetery’s history, Condon said.

The Gravesite Accountability Task Force physically examined and photographed 259,978 gravesites, niches and markers using a custom-built smartphone application and matched each photo with records in a database. Arlington officials are 84 percent complete in validating records, officials said, and are on track to finish this summer.

Once complete, Arlington’s accountability effort will create a single, verifiable and authoritative database of all those laid to rest at Arlington, officials added, and it will be linked with Arlington’s geospatial mapping system.