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

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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

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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

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“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?

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Materials Genome Initiative

Discovery Property Certification Deployment

optimization

Development System Manufacturing

design and integration

Sustainability

and recovery

18–20 years

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Materials

Continuum

Today

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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NSF I-Corps™

I-Corps L

I-Corps @NIH

Lab-Corps

I-Corps in

Mexico

I-Corps with

ARPA-E

Scaling I-CorpsTM

QUESTIONS?

IDEAS, SUGGESTIONS!

May 14, 2015 21

pkhargon@nsf.gov