Last 2005, Mr. Wm. A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, and the AT&T Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Computer Science at University of Virginia was invited in the House of Science to deliver some points about the current state of Computer science research.
There he delivered four points of interest, the first of which is he took it out from the Science the Endless Frontier, the report that established our system of federal funding of basic research, Vannever Bush advocated a system in which the government funds research, but the research to be done is selected on its merit by the researchers themselves. He said that such a system would pay dividends to the nation in national security, prosperity, and health. It is hard to think of a better “poster child” for the truth of this assertion than Computer Science. Consider the abbreviated list:
• National Security: smart bombs, GPS, unprecedented “information awareness” for the war-fighter, unmanned robotic vehicles for surveillance, enormously enhanced training through use of virtual reality, etc
• Prosperity: a 3% national productivity growth fueled by information technology, dozens of multi-billion dollar per year industries (see Figure 1), internet-enabled business models, a 40-fold reduction in the cost of telephony, a global wireless phone system, etc.
• Health: Medical imagery (CAT scans, etc), cochlear implants, bio-sensors, smart prosthetics, smart defibrillating pacemakers, etc.
All of these were made possible by the federal investment in long-term, basic computing research. Like Mr.Wulf, I believe that it is a mistake to think of such funding as an “expense” and it must be regarded as an investment that demonstrably has had a huge return! Technology such as that listed above is the return on the investments made a decade or more ago. Investments made today in research will have equally large returns for our children and grandchildren; conversely, it is our children and grandchildren that will pay if we do not make them now.
Second, computing and computer science is in the unusual position of being both a challenging intellectual discipline in itself, and providing an infrastructure for other fields of science, engineering, and commerce. While the benefits to society listed above can be directly attributed to computer science, there are also many more benefits that have resulted from the use of computing in everything from cosmology, to weather prediction, and to health care. Across this broad spectrum, computer science has enabled a better quality of life for us all. This simply reinforces the notion that funds expended on computing research are demonstrably investment, not expense. They are, in fact, an investment with an enormous multiplier because advances in computing and information technology have immediate, direct and tangible benefits on virtually all human activities.
Thirdly, the idea that basic research begets applied research begets development begets benefits to society is both wrong and counter-productive when applied to public policy decisions. Instead, there is a marvelously rich and productive interplay between basic scientific discovery and application, between universities and industry, between societal need and technology. The bottom line, however, is that if federally-funded, university-based basic research weren’t “in the loop”, these enormously beneficial technologies would not exist. Basic research may not be the original source for all the benefits we enjoy from technology, but it is a vital and irreplaceable component of the rich system that produces them.
Lastly, computer science research is for and about the people. If computing research has a large multiplier because of its broad application, then the people capable of doing that research are yet another multiplier on top of that! Disinvestment in university-based research is a disinvestment in the production of the next generation of people, with far greater negative impact than simply the loss of the research.
In these points raised by Mr. Wulf we can see that at those times the funding for computer science research was being talked over by the government, specifically the US government. As a summary, the government is still arguing whether continued funding for such researches would be beneficial for both government and people. And as Mr. Wulf pointed out, with the proper research support and funding to universities and colleges across the country or even across the globe is beneficial to all, maybe not today but certainly for tomorrow.
Mr. Wulf also stressed the importance of cybersecurity. At that time, PITAC strongly identified the need for a better funded and stable program of long term basic research. The dominant model of cybersecurity, namely a perimeter defense, is flawed and incremental patches to it will never result in the level of security we need for today’s systems, much less the increased dependence we should expect for future ones. This is an excellent example where boldness and courage are needed, and hence where the perception of excessively low proposal success rates can have severe consequences. He emphasized that the future of researches is greatly affected by the resources available, in the mean point, funding is a great issue. New ideas are needed, just as in cybersecurity research, but instead of temerity, conservatism was imposed. Decline in the success rates of proposals indeed has a significant negative impact, however, we must have the courage to explore things and open for discoveries and innovations. One of the highlights of his words is that the thought of research funding is not merely an expense but instead it is an investment.
But on my research today, the government funding to computer science research now leads to the new trend of studying Green Computing. Go to IT related company webpages, search in the Internet or simply read IT magazines and you can see that the trend is going “green. Computers were and are still aiding people for more comfortable life but we can’t deny the fact that at some point the environment is compromised with these advances. Today, consumers are looking for products with good quality but eco friendly and energy efficient which lead to more research about this topic. Computer science researches are going for greener data centers, monitors, hardware and even researches for green softwares. Also, researches for creating products that might lessen the negative effects of computer radiation is also on going. Computers release electromagnetic field radiation.
This EMF is actually a type of radiation. It isn’t the same type as uranium or plutonium; rather, it is a non-ionizing radiation. This means that the emitted radiation is not strong enough to remove electrons, or ionize the atoms. Instead, it just excites the electrons. It already sounds a little Different devices emit different types and amounts of this EMF radiation. But then past and ongoing researches are trying to prove that these is still harmful since it can also premature cell division. The cells actually divide before the DNA is correctly established, which may possibly lead to mutation or can also bring cancer especially for those who have been in contact with computers in a long time (referring to years).
In past, computer science research tends to focus more on using and improving technology. Making it more flexible for implementation of different purposes, beneficial in different areas such as security, defense, healthcare or medicine, and education but nowadays it leans more on ways to make it more eco friendly but not comprising the quality and services it was built to do.
These are the Technical Topics in which Computer Science Researches are now focused:
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2. Commerce
3. Electronic Teaching
4. Information Retrieval, Databases, and Data Mining
5. Machine Learning
6. Networking, Distributed Systems, and Security
7. Robotics, Computer Vision, and Graphics
8. Software Systems and Architecture
9. Green Computing
