CIG encourages member proposals to NSF and solicits feedback on CIG-II

Dear Members of the CIG Community:

The aim of this memo is to update the CIG community on plans for continuing our activities beyond the end of our current funding and encourage members of the community to collaborate with computational scientists and seek funding from some relatively new NSF programs. We also solicit feedback on the evolving vision for CIG-II; click the Comments button at the end of this page to provide your input.

CIG, which began in September 2004, has achieved most of the short-term goals and made substantial progress on several long-term goals outlined in the original proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF). Significant accomplishments for CIG include (1) the adoption of modern software engineering techniques and infrastructure for our community; (2) development of several packages using common components, such as PyLith for the short-term tectonics community and Gale for the long-term tectonics community; (3) deployment of the Seismology Science and Geodynamo gateways, (4) development of a compressible mantle convection code in spherical geometry linked to seismology and mineral physics; (5) implementation of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) codes within the mantle convection and magma migration subdisciplines; and (6) building a community dedicated to state-of-the-art, open-source geodynamics modeling software.

As we enter our final year of initial funding for CIG and look towards extending our activities into the future, our plans continue to evolve in response to changes in funding opportunities. When we submitted the yearly update to the rolling five-year strategic plan to NSF in July, we envisioned funding CIG-II via two proposals: one to the Division of Earth Sciences' (EAR) Geoinformatics program to support the core infrastructure and one to the Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program to support development of state-of-the-art software. To this end, in the next few months CIG will be forming a proposal writing committee associated with seeking follow-up funding through the Geoinformatics program to continue its operations as a central place for software repositories, documentation, testing, and community building. However, given that NSF will not fund center-sized CDI type III proposals this year, the SSC and EC encourage members of the CIG community to vigorously pursue their own proposals to various NSF programs, e.g., CDI, PetaApps, and Collaboration in Mathematical Geosciences (CMG) to fund development of new geodynamics modeling software. Such proposals may reference CIG as a potential collaborator, and the EC will consider writing letters of collaboration for full proposals on request.

Small, focused collaborations with the scientific computing community provide some of the best opportunities to significantly advance our science. CIG can enhance these collaborations and other efforts to develop state-of-the-art geodynamics codes via its software repository, automated build, regression testing, and benchmarking infrastructure, and dissemination of the resulting codes as well-documented, open-source software to the broader geodynamics community.

Preliminary proposals to CDI are due December 8, 2008 (Type I) or December 9, 2008 (Type II) and CMG proposals will be due in early February 2009.

Sincerely,
Brad Aagaard, chair of the SSC
Marc Spiegelman, chair of the EC