A Message from CISE Leadership

Dear CISE Community, 

Earlier this month, the Biden-Harris Administration submitted to Congress the President’s priorities for fiscal year 2022, which starts on Oct. 1, 2021. The request includes $10.17 billion for NSF, a 20% increase over current levels. This funding request includes investments to enhance fundamental research and development in all fields including CISE; tackle racial equity in science and engineering; address climate science and sustainability research; and strengthen U.S. leadership in emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, quantum information science, advanced wireless, and more. While more details are expected later this spring in the NSF fiscal year 2022 budget request to Congress, the release of this budget document marks the beginning of the annual budgetary process. In the meantime, the work that you all do continues to drive the frontiers of our field – and positively reinforces the value of federal investment in fundamental research, education, and infrastructure.  

Additionally, with  Earth Day on April 20, we want to take a moment to reflect upon the incredible and indispensable advances that our computer and information science and engineering community has made in all areas of sustainability. In CISE, we frame this both in terms of computing for sustainability—the ways that a host of CISE topics help advance society’s sustainability goals overall, and also sustainability in computing —the ways we can turn our attentions inward and mitigate the environmental and sustainability impacts of our field itself. These bidirectional synergies of ideas and techniques puts many CISE topics at the forefront of our societal attentions to this global grand challenge. From advanced sensing and cyber-physical systems, to intelligent systems and data analytics, to energy-efficient and sustainable materials and much more, the CISE research community plays a key role in many critical areas, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, extreme events, and more.  Over the years, our investments pertaining to these important issues have permeated the CISE portfolio, spanning our core and crosscutting programs, the long running Expeditions in Computing program, and most recently, the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program. We look forward to your continued ideas and vision in these topic areas as you consider your future research plans. 

Finally, a couple important items in closing: 

• Earlier this year, we noted the launch of the CISE Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US), which seeks to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in CISE fields. We have extended the deadline of this program to April 27, 2021. Please help us spread the word about this new opportunity!  
• We note with joy and pride that the 35th anniversary of the formation of the CISE Directorate is fast approaching on May 1. CISE’s 35th birthday will be a focus of our next May newsletter. As we prepare for that, please share your stories, memories and highlights with us at cisehighlights@nsf.gov!  

Best,

_{Margaret Martonosi}

_{NSF Assistant Director for CISE}

_{Joydip Kundu}

_{Acting Deputy Assistant Director for CISE}

_{Erwin Gianchandani}

_{Senior Advisor, Office of the Director}

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