NSF Funding opportunity

[Paolo Gaudiano]

The following was forwarded to me by Paul Werbos. It is being sent to
various newsgroups and mailing lists, so please accept my apologies if
you receive multiple copies.

	Paolo Gaudiano

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NSF has just announced a new initiative in Learning and Intelligent
Systems, with a first-year funding of about $20 million.  The
announcement is up on the web site:

 http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/LIS/index.htm

The scope of this initiative is not 100% clear from the outside, but
the core will involve support of collaborations across major
disciplines (e.g. biology, engineering, computer science, psychology,
education), hopefully to develop a more unified understanding of
learning mechanisms/models/designs/issues applicable to both natural
and artificial systems. Neural network models are mentioned, along
with several other paradigms, as a tool for understanding and
implementing learning in a more unified way across disciplines.

Technology development and education will also be a major part of
this. The relative emphasis between basic science and software
development is still not entirely clear, but both will clearly have a
major role. It is clear, however, that there is White House interest.