Content-Description: Report Break-out Group: New IDM-Related Research Efforts: Interdisciplinary Research Group leader: Suad Alagic The general principles that should apply to collaboration with other sciences, collaboration with industry, and the impact of the IDM research on society suggested by this group are: I. General Principles The basic principle of interdisciplinary research should be that it must contribute both to the research problems and research directions in computer science, as much as it contributes to other disciplines. Projects in which new computer technologies are applied to other sciences are, of course, encouraged. However, the above principle does require the right balance between contributions to computer science itself and contributions to other disciplines. A similar principle applies to collaboration with industry. Research which aims at significant computer science results that are at the same time of industrial relevance should have high priority. This means that in addition to basic research, IDM projects could also be directed to software development at the level of prototyping. Contributing to the industrial standards in such a way that they reflect properly the established recent research results is also an important component of collaboration with industry. IDM projects should aim not only at the impact on industry, but also at the impact on society. II. Specific Recommendations 1. Grants - Supplementary funds for ongoing projects for interdisciplinary research. These are intended to be one-year (or so) grant extensions that would follow a much simpler procedure than the regular proposal process. - Separate funding initiatives to IDM researchers to transfer ideas and results from current or recent IDM activities to application areas. Further IDM research would likely result but it is not required. Interdisciplinary research and contacts are expected. - Small travel grants to permit people to visit other research groups. - Summer courses for interdisciplinary training to bring different communities together. - Matchmaking grants for computer science and other science disciplines. - Better support for students. NSF funding to computer science or interdisciplinary students to do joint computer science/interdisciplinary research for Masters or PhD degrees. - NSF support to develop inter-disciplinary courses hosted in Computer Science and targeted to graduate students to encourage and inform the next generation of researchers. - Improving the review process to make it more suitable for interdisciplinary research proposals. 2. Industry - Supplementary funds or grant extensions to establish collaboration with industry (for example, for software capitalization). This recommendation is similar in spirit to the corresponding recommendation for collaboration with other sciences. - Partnership with industry and venture capital via matching funds. - Small grants across disciplines for industrial collaboration. - Scientific consulting program for transferring research results to industry. - Longer term collaborative efforts. - Collaboration with smaller, start-up companies should be encouraged. - Impact on industrial standards should be supported. 3. Programs - The role of, and the justification for major research initiatives should be investigated with respect to the position which computer science has in these initiatives. This suggestion is based on the concern that other disciplines are benefiting more in these initiatives than computer science. - Small interdisciplinary workshops across disciplines and across directorate-s on emerging research issues. - International grant program to strengthen interdisciplinary research. - Cross Directorate programs. - The potential benefits of the mediator model proposed at the IDM '2000 Workshop should be investigated. 4. Research Areas This is a non-exclusive list of research areas suggested by the group: - Research related to new software technologies - Experimental, software-development-oriented research - Knowledge management - Web-related research - Research on data and information visualization - Repositories of data and algorithms for interdisciplinary research - Data mining for interdisciplinary research - Multimedia information systems for interdisciplinary research - Environmental information management research - Bio-informatics - Research related to industrial standards 5. Relationships - Increase visibility at conferences and in journals that indirectly deal with database management and information retrieval. This would be accomplished by stimulating PIs to submit papers to such conferences. - Increase the level of interaction with other areas of technical endeavor (e-commerce, bio-informatics, automated manufacturing, medical and health info-systems, office automation, environmental engineering, other engineering applications, digital government, industrial standards). - Establish a dynamic, current list of people (perhaps via a special Web page) actively seeking partners for interdisciplinary research or collaboration with industry.