Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure:Report of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure

This report is from a Blue Ribbon Panel convened by the Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)1* of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to inventory and explore these trends and to make strategic recommendations on the nature and form of programs that NSF should take in response to them. The charge to the Panel is premised on the concept of an advanced infrastructure layer on which innovative science and engineering research and education environments can be built. The term infrastructure has been used since the 1920s to refer collectively to the roads, power grids, telephone systems, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works that are required for an industrial economy to function. Although good infrastructure is often taken for granted and noticed only when it stops functioning, it is among the most complex and expensive thing that society creates. The newer term cyberinfrastructure refers to infrastructure based upon distributed computer, information and communication technology. If infrastructure is required for an industrial economy, then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy.

The charge to the Panel is to 1) evaluate current major investments in cyberinfrastructure, most especially the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI)2; 2) recommend new areas of emphasis relevant to cyberinfrastructure; and 3) propose an implementation plan for pursuing these new areas of emphasis.