The National Science Foundation has just announced a new Foundation-wide activity, Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI), that builds on recent advances in computation and communications to make new thrusts in three focal areas: New Computational Challenges (NCC), Knowledge Networking (KN), and Learning and Intelligent Systems (LIS). Mathematics and statistics are intrinsic to KDI and mathematical scientists can participate at several levels. However, the proposal solicitation was posted only in February 1998 and proposals are due May 8, 1998, with letters of intent by April 1. Given the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the solicitation and the short time for preparation of proposals, the IMA offered a one-day workshop to describe in some detail to the mathematical sciences community the scientific opportunities represented by KDI. Similar workshops were hosted by MSRI (February 27), NISS (March 9), and Rice University (March 2).

The purpose of this workshop was to inform mathematical scientists about the funding opportunities presented by KDI and, in particular, the mathematical research areas that are of greatest interest. Proposal preparation issues and issues of interdisciplinary collaboration were also addressed. The workshop began with a 40-minute presentation by the NSF Division of Mathematical Sciences Program Director for KDI, Mike Steuerwalt, on the main issues of the workshop and was followed by three consecutive sessions on New Computational Challenges, Knowledge Networking, and Learning and Intelligent Systems. Each session featured three short talks by researchers working on projects that are highly relevant to KDI, followed by a panel discussion. Each panel was composed of the speakers for the session and appropriate NSF representatives.

Workshop Participant List

Click on the titles to find abstracts and links to presentation materials.

Back to Top

1997-1998 Emerging Applications of Dynamical Systems