NEWS&ANALYSIS

U.S. SCIENCE POLICY ogy research and development (NITRD) falls

well short of that level. But that assessment
Agencies Rally to Tackle Big Data is just guesswork, the report admits, because
most NITRD dollars (more than $4 billion
John Holdren, the president’s science adviser, a decade within DOE’s Advanced Scientific in 2010) are used to enhance the computing
wasn’t exaggerating when he said last week Computing Research program. The Defense capacity of scientists in other disciplines. A
that “big data is indeed a big deal.” About 1.2 Department says it plans to spend $60 million review of NIH’s $570 million-a-year network
zettabytes (1021) of electronic data are gen- this year on new awards for research on big and information technology portfolio, for
erated each year by everything from under- data, but officials couldn’t say if that amount is example, found that only 2% is actually spent
ground physics experiments and telescopes to more than what it has spent in previous years. on core research.
retail transactions and Twitter posts. Even small investments are welcome. The flagship project in NSF’s new suite of
Holdren was kicking off a federal effort to The U.S. Geological Survey points to a tiny programs addresses that problem head-on.
improve the nation’s ability to manage, under- (annual budget of $650,000) synthesis and It’s a $25 million competition (nsf12499),
stand, and act upon that data deluge. Its goal analysis center in Fort Collins, Colorado, run jointly with NIH, to fund fundamental
is to increase fundamental understanding of that brings groups of scientists together for a research on “core techniques and technolo-
the technologies needed to manipulate and week to crunch large data sets. The National gies” involving big data. But the biomedical
mine massive amounts of information; apply Institutes of Health (NIH) is counting a giant is putting only $3.5 million into the pot

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on June 15, 2012

that knowledge to other scientific fields; this year, as officials say it was hard
address national goals in health, energy, to find uncommitted dollars in the cur-
defense, and education; and train more rent budget.
researchers to work with those technolo- The solicitation encourages
gies. The impetus for the initiative, to be researchers to think big about how
managed by the Office of Science and big data could transform society, from
Technology Policy (OSTP) that Holdren instant access to all health care infor-
directs, comes from a December 2010 mation, to an early warning system for
report by a presidential task force that, failing bridges to sensor-laden cloth-
Holdren said, concluded the nation was ing that protects the wearer from harm.
“underinvesting” in the field. But applicants will be judged by a more
Computer scientists welcome modest yardstick; namely, the best ideas
the spotlight that the White House is for collecting, managing, and analyzing
shining on big-data research. “The data as well as promoting collaboration
announcements demonstrate a recogni- among scientists. Last week, NSF also
tion by a broad range of federal agen- announced a 5-year, $10 million award
cies—Defense, Energy, NIH, and many to the Algorithms, Machines, and Peo-
more—that further advances in “big ple lab at the University of California,
data” management and analysis are crit- Berkeley, one of four new awards under
ical to achieving their missions,” says the agency’s Expeditions in Comput-
Edward Lazowska of the University of ing program and the only one dealing
Washington, Seattle, who co-chaired explicitly with tackling problems relat-
the 2010 report on the nation’s digi- ing to big data.
tal future. “The White House [OSTP] The Defense Advanced Research
deserves enormous credit for herding Projects Agency last week announced
the cats to create a true national initia- Traffic jam. This crowdsourced a $24 million-a-year program to make
tive in this area.” GPS data shows San Francisco taxis “revolutionary advances” beyond cur-
Last week’s event gave half a dozen at 1-minute intervals for a full day. rent systems in processing and ana-
agencies a chance to showcase what lyzing big data. The solicitation
Holdren described as “$200 million in new project begun in 2010 to put data from its (BAA-12-38) emphasizes the challenges of
commitments.” However, it’s not clear what 1000 Genomes Project on Amazon’s cloud- using “imperfect data” available for only a
portion of that figure represents new money computing platform. Researchers who want brief period in the heat of battle, as well as
and how much is a continuation of current to use Amazon’s web services to store and the need to know when humans must override
CREDIT: COURTESY TIM HUNTER/MOBILE MILLENNIUM

activities under the new big-data umbrella. analyze the growing database of genetic robotic systems.
A $35 million investment by the National sequences—the records of some 2700 indi- Jeannette Wing, a professor at Carnegie
Science Foundation (NSF) across several viduals should be available by the end of the Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylva-
areas appears to be the largest commitment of year—will be charged by the hour. nia, and the former head of NSF’s computing
new money this year by any federal agency. Part of the difficulty of quantifying the science directorate, hopes the big-data initia-
The Department of Energy (DOE), for exam- new big-data initiative is, ironically, a lack of tive will give computer scientists the chance
ple, is counting a $5-million-a-year award reliable data on what the government is now to take full advantage of recent developments
made last year to Lawrence Berkeley National spending. The 2010 report recommended $1 in the IT field. “Big data has been a ‘big’ thing
Laboratory for an institute to advance efforts billion a year and asserted that current spend- in computer science for years,” she says. “But
in data management, analysis, and visualiza- ing on a broader cross-agency program to it’s even bigger now, because of data analytics
tion that have been under way for more than advance network and information technol- and cloud computing.” –JEFFREY MERVIS

22 6 APRIL 2012 VOL 336 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

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