August 2006

NSF Set to Implement Reorganization of Engineering Directorate

By Barton Reppert

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is set to launch a major reorganization of its Directorate for Engineering, including the addition of cyber systems to the division of Electrical and Communications Systems, as well as creation of a new crosscutting Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation.

The new organizational structure, scheduled to take effect with the start of the 2007 fiscal year on 1 October, marks the first significant reshuffling of the Engineering Directorate, known as ENG, in more than a decade and a half.

According to Richard Buckius, NSF's acting assistant director for engineering, the reorganization is "occurring now because of growing internal and external demands on the directorate, which require a more multidisciplinary, coordinated structure, and because of the need to strategically position the directorate to better address emerging challenges and frontier ideas."

Buckius noted that ENG, just as the rest of the engineering profession, is seriously challenged now to keep pace with increased global competition in innovation, the emergence of new industries, and continuing evolution of engineering research and education. "The profession is more interdisciplinary; research and education are developing a critical synergy; global competitiveness is recognized as a driving force for our economy; and new fields of practice have emerged. The reorganization will enable ENG to better address these developments."

Commenting on the reorganization, Russ Lefevre, IEEE-USA vice president for technology policy activities, observed that "adding cyber systems to Electrical and Communications Systems is a natural move that should have been done years ago. Communications systems research clearly has to be concerned about cybersecurity. The other important move is the new focus on interdisciplinary technology. Many of the most important new engineering research developments are concerned with technology that stretches across many disciplines including even the life sciences."

Main elements of the Engineering Directorate reorganization were described in a 24 May "Dear Colleague" letter signed by Buckius and circulated to the engineering community. It said the new structure "will help ensure that ENG continues to support cutting-edge engineering research and education, while addressing the emerging and perennial needs of the nation."

Under the reorganization plan, ENG's current five disciplinary divisions will be consolidated into three, and three crosscutting units will be established. Specifically, the changes will involve:

• The division of Electrical and Communications Systems (ECS) will add cyber systems to its portfolio to become the division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS).

• The divisions of Chemical and Transport Systems (CTS) and Bioengineering and Environmental Systems (BSE) will merge to form the division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET).

• The divisions of Civil and Mechanical Systems (CMS) and Design and Manufacturing Innovation (DMI) will merge to form the division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI).

According to the 24 May letter, "ECCS will address fundamental research issues underlying component and device technologies, power, controls, networking, communications and cybersystems technologies. The division will also support the integration and networking of systems principles across all scales. ECCS will also ensure the education of a diverse workforce prepared to continue the rapid development of emerging technologies as drivers of the global economy."

Buckius, whose comments came in written responses to questions submitted by Today's Engineer Online, as well as in an interview at his NSF office on 20 July, noted that "cybersystems are emerging as one of the key enabling research tools, not just for engineering, but for all of science, too. Cyberinfrastructure activities are clearly central to electrical engineering. By including ‘cyber' in that domain, we are ensuring that electrical engineers will continue to impact the engineering profession and the National Science Foundation. Through this division in the Directorate for Engineering, we envision a research community that will address major technological challenges for the next generation of devices and systems, due to the convergence of technologies and an increased emphasis on interdisciplinary research."

The three crosscutting units covered by the reorganization are:

• Engineering Education and Centers (EEC), which will now provide more emphasis on its role as a crosscutting division within the directorate.

• The current Office of Industrial Innovation (OII), which will broaden to include new partnerships and become the division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP).

• A new Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI), which will report to the Office of the Assistant Director (OAD).

According to Buckius, EFRI is slated to have a $25 million budget for fiscal 2007. The new office is expected to develop and issue a 2007 solicitation focusing on two potential research areas: (1) Auto-Reconfigurable Engineered Systems Enabled by Cyberinfrastructuer (ARES-CI); and (2) Cellular and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE).

The central idea of ARES-CI, as described in the 24 May Dear Colleague letter, is to "develop autonomously reconfigurable engineered systems that remain robust in the face of unexpected high-consequence natural or intentional failure events (e.g., hurricances, pandemics, or terrorist attacks) that could impact critical infrastructures in unforeseen ways … EFRI plans to fund advances that lead to a fundamental understanding of reconfigurability and allow the design of autonomously reconfigurable engineered systems integrating physical, information and knowledge domains. These autonomously reconfigurable engineered systems will be able to sense, self-diagnose and reconfigure the system to function uninterruptedly when subject to unplanned failure events."

Buckius said that in developing the reorganization plan, the Directorate for Engineering was "very aggressive in soliciting input" from the engineering community. He said ENG presented the overall plan at various professional society meetings and universities, including the ASEE summer 2005 conference, and meetings of the Engineering Deans Council and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association. Also, in July 2005, ENG developed a public comment Web site, which remained active through October of that year.

Barton Reppert is a freelance science and technology writer specializing in S&T policy coverage. He previously worked for 18 years as a reporter and editor with The Associated Press in Washington, New York and Moscow. He can be contacted at barton.reppert@verizon.net. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.