Lawrence Goldberg, NSF
On 16 July 2014, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a “Dear Colleagues Letter” that signaled the foundation’s enhanced interest in optics and photonics as an area for funding and investment. We caught up with Lawrence Goldberg, the senior engineering advisor in the NSF Division of Electrical, Communications & Cyber Systems (ECCS) within the Directorate of Engineering, to talk about the foundation’s newly signaled focus on optics and photonics and what is underlying the trend.
OPN: First, just a bit of background—what is a Dear Colleagues Letter, and who is this particular message aimed at?
Lawrence Goldberg: A Dear Colleagues Letter is an open letter to the community—it is addressed, literally, “Dear Colleagues”—and it’s really intended to convey information on NSF programs and specific opportunities. It is not intended to be a solicitation, or a call for proposals, indicating that there is a particular deadline date for a competition and that there is money set aside for it.
We sent out a Dear Colleagues Letter in optics and photonics to convey the increasing interest of NSF in this topic area, and to encourage researchers, through our normal programs, to submit interesting proposals in that general area.
OPN: OK, let’s talk about that. The letter signals, as you suggest, a new view at NSF of the importance of optics and photonics; it says, for example, that the foundation has “identified optics and photonics research and education as a key area of interest.” Why the new emphasis on these areas, and why now?
LG: The topic area has been growing in national visibility—certainly with the release by the National Academies of their 2012 report Optics & Photonics: Enabling Technologies for Our Nation. That report actually led NSF to do its own internal roadmapping study on optics and photonics, and how they are supported throughout the foundation. I was co-chair of that group, which involved people from all directorates within NSF, because optics and photonics are supported in various ways throughout the foundation.
More recently, the emphasis has increased with the results of another study, which was done by the Fast-Track Action Committee on Optics and Photonics, a group set up by the administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The fast-track report was released publicly earlier this year.
So there’s a growing emphasis, and I think you see the professional societies, such as OSA and SPIE and IEEE, making a major effort in dissemination, first of the National Academies report, and then trying to build emphasis in the community, including through industry, of the importance in this topic area. And NSF is trying to increase visibility within the community as well.
OPN: Optics and photonics are, as the NSF letter notes, “enabling” technologies that cut across a wide array of disciplines. How does NSF’s structure of directorates and divisions built around classical disciplines—many of which use photonics but aren’t about photonics—handle such a case?
LG: Well, if you read the Dear Colleagues Letter, it does emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary aspects of the field—that it requires expertise across disciplinary boundaries. That was one of the things we’re trying to encourage in the release of this letter. And you will note that there are three separate directorates at the NSF—Engineering; Math and Physical Sciences; and Computer and Information Science and Engineering—that are co-signatories on the letter. And we’re encouraging submissions that could be interdisciplinary in nature.
NSF is indeed structured in a traditional disciplinary organization—similar to universities. And major structural changes are always difficult within that kind of organization. So we have, over the years, encouraged interdisciplinary efforts in a variety of programs—not just optics and photonics, but in environmental areas, for example, where it’s obvious that research occurs in many disciplines, and it requires people working together, in small and in large groups, to be effective.
For optics and photonics, we have encouraged that in a number of ways. For example, my division, the ECCS in the Engineering Directorate, has worked informally with the Division of Materials Research in the Math and Physical Sciences Directorate to co-review proposals that have both a device and a materials aspect, in the area of photonics and also in electronics. So we’re building this effort to really work cooperatively for those proposals that would require a joint review to be effective.
This Dear Colleagues Letter puts an emphasis on that, and on encouraging people to consider submitting to one or more divisions in these directorates that are listed, in topics that clearly are interdisciplinary in nature. So we’re trying to increase the community’s efforts that do cross these traditional boundaries, and it’s obvious that the ones we’ve highlighted lend themselves very well to that.
OPN: What are some of those specific topic areas the letter has highlighted?
LG: We wanted to give examples of areas where we thought there was opportunity for progress, but not to indicate that those were the only areas of interest. So we call them “topics of particular interest” for this coming fiscal year, fiscal 2015, which begins in October. There’s an emphasis on photonics at the nanoscale that crosses materials, devices and systems, with examples given in the letter. And there’s an area that particularly involves our computer science directorate, on very high-speed optical communications systems that contribute both to networking and computing and to computer architecture. So those were some areas where we were encouraging submissions that could be co-reviewed.
OPN: The letter notes that “current economic trends of innovation” are becoming “increasingly international.” How does that stack up in the impetus for the NSF’s action?
LG: Clearly, if you look at the National Academies study, it does mention the increasing competition from abroad. And we see that in Europe, for example, through their framework programs, such as Horizon 2020, which have placed an increasing emphasis on investments in photonics; and Photonics21, an industry-led consortium that has worked for years to advance photonics funding in the European Union. So Europe’s placement of significant funds in those areas is a real challenge in terms of where innovation will occur. And we see that in Asia as well—in China, India, Japan.
What is of concern, in a national sense, is that with such developments overseas, and innovation occurring increasingly there, we’re finding that leading talent educated here in the U.S. increasingly is relocating in overseas areas. We have many graduate students from abroad; in the past they commonly have tended to stay in the States, but now they’re seeing great opportunities in their homelands. So we have to invest in the areas that really can drive innovation in this country, and encourage development of these technologies and new start-up companies. We see that as an important challenge for this country.
OPN: So what are the next steps?
LG: We’ve encouraged people to submit proposals to our core programs—what NSF calls “unsolicited” proposals. They have a window for submission; for my division it’s October to November, and there are similar submission windows for other divisions in the foundation. We’re expecting—and hoping!—to see some excellent proposals, increasing in number and quality, submitted to these programs, for the coming fiscal year, 2015. That will give us an indication of how the community’s response and perceived needs are, and this could help drive the way the foundation invests in a budgetary sense in fiscal 2016.
OPN: What about outside of NSF? What else are you seeing on the federal side that suggests that the U.S. is taking photonics more seriously as an area of investment?
LG: Just within the last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation released a committee markup for the America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2014. This Act was originally passed in 2007 and reauthorized in 2010, and now the Senate committee is moving on the 2014 Act.
There’s a section in the reauthorization bill—section 614, called “Sense of Congress; Optics and Photonics Innovations”—that makes a strong statement about the importance of the field in competitive areas. It says that the federal agencies, industry, and academia need to “seek partnerships to develop optics and photonics into more mature technologies and capabilities,” and that the federal science agencies, as appropriate, should “identify optics and photonics-related programs with their agencies” and “partner with the private sector and academia,” etc.
So that’s very exciting—the increased visibility of optics and photonics that’s there in that bill. Of course, the bill still has to go through full Senate and the House before it reaches the president, but it’s a very encouraging aspect. And one other point I’ll make is that the Department of Defense has a Request for Information on two potential new Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation (IMIs), under the administration’s National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. Six candidate areas for those two IMIs are currently being considered, and photonics is one of those under consideration.
So I think, across the nation and in various agencies, there’s a great deal of interest in pursuing this field, which is exciting. And it all goes back to that National Academies study in 2012.