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

[Brad Aagaard]

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. Please visit
http://geodynamics.org/cig/proposalsndocs/documents/2008-10-17 and
click the Comments button at the end of that 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