AITEC NEWS No.11
August 27, 1997
Issue #11
(issued on Jul.10,1997 in Japanese)

Introduction

 After experiencing two big typhoons in the Tokyo area in June, which was very rare, we are coming out of the rainy season and waiting for summer. It is the fourth month in FY 1997, and I hope that your business is going well this year.

In Japan, in response to Japanese Government directives concerning administrative reform, many government agencies have started structural reform. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), in order to ensure that major problems caused by changes in world structure such as vanishing country borders are dealt with effectively, is forming project teams in which more than one division cooperate with each other, abolishing 25 old divisions and establishing 24 new ones. Consequently, our activities at AITEC will be gradually affected in line with these governmental structural reforms.

For now at AITEC, we have been busy with two projects: the Contract Research Program FY'97 which is the AITEC funding program and introduced in this issue, and the KLIC Programming Contest that we announced in the previous AITEC NEWS.

For the Contract Research Program FY'97, we received many research proposals both from domestic and overseas universities. We are also expecting more applicants from overseas for this year's KLIC Programming Contest than for last year's. We are pleased to see that IFS is becoming more international and "borderless." Let's begin with the headlines. (Makiko Sato)

AITEC NEWS Headlines

1. Mr. Ogawa Promoted to CAIT as Manager for General Affairs

 Mr. Yoshihisa Ogawa, who had worked as manager of the department of FGCS Technology at AITEC for two years, was promoted to the Central Academy of Information Technology (CAIT) as manager for general affairs on May 12, 1997.

He had worked on the preparation of the FGCS project, and after being posted to ICOT, devoted himself to the FGCS project and to its follow-on project for a total of 13 years. After the FGCS project was wound up, he directed the IFS dissemination project at AITEC. He was considered to be the "master of ICOT" or "the man who formed the important framework of the FGCS" among those involved in the FGCS project.

CAIT, his new work place, is an institute that conducts education and related research in the IT field and intends to establish a new educational framework for IT in Japan. Mr. Ogawa is expected to take the initiative in leading CAIT into new areas. On behalf of everyone, we would like to express our sincere appreciation for his contribution to ICOT and AITEC.

Filling Mr. Ogawa's place, we welcome Mr. Kazuo Yamatsugu as manager of the department of FGCS Technology at AITEC.

(Shunichi Uchida)
(No Referenced Article)

2. Research Proposals for Research Funding Program FY'97 Selected!

 On June 27, 22 research proposals were selected for the Research Funding Program FY'97 for the purpose of developing advanced software, by the refereeing Committee.

As we extended the program for FY 1997 to soliciting programs from overseas, we received about twice as many proposals as we had expected. Because Japan's information technology, especially software technology, is outpaced by that of the US, research and development of "useful software" is essential. We hope that the AITEC research funding program can serve as a stepping stone for stimulating domestic researchers.

In this kind of funding system based on an "open and competitive" framework, researchers have a greater opportunity to present their research; concomitantly, the quality of research is evaluated more strictly. We therefore expect a more challenging spirit from researchers for the Research Funding Program.
(Article No.11-1)

3. Summary Report of "Research for Intelligent Software Resource Creation and Sharing Mechanism"
--- Role of Program Manager in the US Research Funding Program

Have you heard of the position title "Program Manager (PM)"? In Japan, open and competitive R&D funding programs are currently a hot topic among researchers. A program manager is a person who is responsible for managing such R&D funding programs.

Last autumn, AITEC researchers visited the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and some other US sites in order to research the US national R&D funding system. These organizations have 50 years' experience of managing R&D funding programs. (Please refer to the AITEC NEWS No.6 regarding our research trip.)

The details of the research including some interviews are covered in the report, "Intelligent Software Creation and Sharing Mechanism (1997 March)."

Here, I will report on the role of program managers that was found to be especially impressive during the visit to the US.
(Article No.11-2)

4. New Report from Department of Future Technology Studies on WWW

 The department of Future Technology Studies (FTS) has published the following reports on its activities of FY 1996.

The reports of H8-1 to H8-3 will be made publicly available on the WWW as soon as they are ready (Japanese version only). We plan to publish an English translation of H8-8 on the AITEC Homepage. (http://www.icot.or.jp/)

(No Referenced Article)

Articles in This Issue

1. FY 1997 Contract Research Projects Selected!

 AITEC has worked on the development and dissemination of "parallel symbolic processing technology" and "knowledge processing technology." Both are core technologies developed in the FGCS. As part of the dissemination work, we started a Contract Research Program for IFS-based advanced software in FY 1996. In the program in FY 1997, we have just finished evaluating research proposals and selected 22 projects.

Here, I would like to describe how we selected the projects for FY 1997.

In the first stage, we selected three projects from among five projects continuing on from FY 1996.

For the new research projects for FY 1997, we received a total of 37 proposals including 22 from domestic researchers and 15 from overseas researchers. The 48 referees reviewed them first, and then the evaluation committee selected 19 projects based on the referees' results. We were delighted to receive so many applicants both from domestic and overseas, roughly doubling the level of competitive.

We will introduce the overseas proposals here and also on the AITEC Homepage as soon as preparations have been completed.

The details of research project applications are as follows: 


        Country           Application       Adopted projects

        Japan                    22              13
        --------------------------------------------------
        USA                       8               2
        UK                        2               1
        France                    1               1
        Australia                 2               1
        Russia                    1               0
        Austria                   1               1
        --------------------------------------------------
        Total                    37              19
*************************************************
Contract Research Projects for FY 1997 (22 projects)
*************************************************
  1. 1. Research projects continued from FY 1996 (3 projects)
    1. A Programming System for Statistical Modeling
      (Taisuke Sato: Tokyo Institute of Technology)
    2. A Pattern-Oriented Visual Parallel Programming Environment
      (Etsuya Shibayama: Tokyo Institute of Technology)
    3. Legal Reasoning with Situation Variables
      (Satoshi Tojo: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
  2. New research projects (19 projects; * indicates two year-projects.)
    1. *Development of MGTP on Parallel Machines and Its Advanced Inference Mechanism
      (Ryuzo Hasegawa: Kyushu University)
    2. Static Analyzer of KL1 Programs
      (Kazunori Ueda: Waseda University)
    3. Implementation of KL1 Based on Demand-driven Scheduling
      (Takashi Chikayama: University of Tokyo)
    4. *An Improved Threading of KL1
      (Hiroshi Nakashima: Toyohashi University of Technology)
    5. Research on Message Interface between Klic and Java
      (Jiro Tanaka: University of Tsukuba)
    6. Development of an Efficient Solver for Hierarchical Linear Systems
      (Satoshi Matsuoka: Tokyo Institute of Technology)
    7. Incorporating Linear-Space Best-First Search in MGTP
      (Katsumi Inoue: Kobe University)
    8. *Distributed Constraint Solving for Functional Logic Programming
      (Bruno Buchberger: RISC-Linz/Austria)
    9. A drawing editor based on constraint solving
      (Takeo Igarashi: University of Tokyo)
    10. Improvements on I/O Performance of Parallel Active Database
      (Haruo Yokota: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
    11. Research and Development of Parallel Cooperative Control Software for Mobile Robots
      (Fumio Mizoguchi: Science University of Tokyo)
    12. WEB-KLIC: A Concurrent Logic-based Unified Framework for Internet Programming
      (Gopal Gupta: New Mexico State University/U.S.A.)
    13. GUIdeLA: A Constraint Language and System for Constructing Graphical User Interfaces
      (Neng-Fa Zhou: Kyushu Institute of Technology)
    14. COPLAS, a Conditional Planner with Sensing Actions
      (Jorge Lobo: University of Illinois at Chicago/U.S.A.)
    15. *Research and Development of a Data Mining Engine DATAGOL by Inductive Logic Programming
      (Kouichi Furukawa: Keio University)
    16. Anytime Hypothetical Reasoning
      (Aditya Kumar Ghose: University of Wollongong/Australia)
    17. *A Distribution Project of IFS Japanese Morphological Grammar Rules
      (Hiroshi Sano: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
    18. Concurrent Cooperative Parallel Solvers (CCOPS)
      (Frederic Benhamou: LIFO, Universite d'Orleans and INRIA Rocquencourt/France)
    19. *Applying Constraint Logic Programming Languages for Modeling Multi-objective Decision-making under Uncertainty
      (John Darlington, Imperial College/U.K.)

2. Summary Report of "Research for the Mechanism of Intelligent Software Creation and Sharing"
-- The Role of Program Manager (PM) in the US Solicited Research Program

 Recently, governmental organizations in Japan have begun R&D funding programs which are open for researchers from any sector. In the past, such scientific research funds were limited to those from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Mombusho). Today, the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST), a sub-organization of the Science and Technology Agency, runs the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) program, while the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan(IPA) a sub-organization of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), runs the Advanced Software Technology Project. Such programs and projects are open to any sector and consortium.

Last autumn, AITEC investigated the system of US federal R&D funding programs by visiting the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and several other sites in the US where such programs had already been conducted for over 50 years.

During this investigation, we were especially impressed by the role of the Program Manager (PM) at DARPA and NSF. Before our investigation visit, I had imagined that a program manager would manage research and less related research contents, and so thought that for a researcher to become a program manager effectively meant retiring from his or her actual job.

However, after interviewing with several program managers and ex-program managers of DARPA and NSF, our impressions of program managers were greatly changed; we learned that a program manager is a leading researcher as well as a project manager.

The program managers at DARPA require the ability to manage processes of R&D programs from the outset through to the end, and at the same time, as leading researchers they need specific advanced knowledge. At the start-up of projects, detailed discussions take place to select appropriate research themes from among program managers' plans. Only those themes that survive the tough discussions are able to start as actual projects. Research proposals are first evaluated by peer reviewers, but the final decision is up to the program manager.

We also learned that about 30 to 50% of the job is taken up with many business trips to exchange opinions with the researchers and also to deal with their problems. Program managers require a great deal of enthusiasm and ability to take the research project through from the beginning to a successful end.

Because of such hard work, program managers often tend to feel "burned out" when they finish their term, which may run from two to four years. However, one of the program managers passionately said, "It is more attractive to be able to pursue my own research ideas with other leading US researchers as a DARPA program manager rather than only doing research with students who may not always be excellent." He took the post as DARPA program manager from associate professor, and was promoted to professor at the former university.

Through our interviews at DARPA and other US agencies, we learned that the role of program manager is more to act as a leading researcher than as a research manager. And this provides real motivation and incentive for researchers to become a program manager. And of course, a stint as a DARPA program manager can help boost one's career path and promotion. For example, we met some university researchers who had worked as program managers and were later promoted to be deans or directors of research institutes.

On the other hand, the NSF mainly supports a wide range of basic research proposed by researchers, so their funding programs are less needs-oriented than those of DARPA. Therefore, the role of NSF program managers is more like research managers. However, I was impressed by the comments of one NSF program manager, who said, "It is important for a program manager to be an excellent researcher as well as an excellent manager."

In my opinion, in Japan there are a number of research managers who can only manage the research development process and financial matters; there are few program managers who are active researchers with a specific knowledge of research. For the successful execution of R&D funding programs, Japan urgently needs more human resources such as the program managers of DARPA and NSF who are capable researchers and managers possessing strong leadership skills. One of the solutions could be to encourage the movement of people among government, industry and academia, and to introduce personnel to promote such movements.

The above study was carried out as part of the "Survey and Research on Creation and Sharing of New Generation Intelligent Software Resources" sponsored by the Mechanical Social Systems Foundation.
(Makiko Sato)

Message from the Editorial Desk

 We hope you enjoyed AITEC NEWS No.11.

We are now preparing for the Contract Research Program and the KLIC Programming Contest, and are very grateful to those supporting these projects.

We will continue to send you timely information, and hope that it is useful to you.

If you know of anyone who might wish to subscribe to the AITEC NEWS, if you have changed your email address, or if you don't wish to receive AITEC NEWS anymore, please let us know by contacting us at the following address: aitec-news@icot.or.jp

Please also feel free to send in your comments, opinions and requests to the above address.

We published No.12 before No.11 (we hope you have already received it) because we wanted to send you the programming subjects for the KLIC Programming Contest as early as possible. So we'll see you in AITEC NEWS No.13.

Correction: We apologize for a naming error in AITEC NEWS No.10. The incorrect: Jiro Tanaka, Assistant Prof., Tsukuba University should have read: Jiro Tanaka, Associate Prof., University of Tsukuba 

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*                                                                    *
*       A I T E C  N E W S      Issue #11                            *
*          AITEC NEWS Editorial Team:                                *
*            Makiko Sato, Chie Takahashi, Akira Aiba                 *
*            Kazumi Kasai, Kouichi Takeda, Yoshiharu Torii           *
*            Hiroshi Sato, Shunichi Uchida                           *
*          AITEC NEWS English Version Team                           *
*            Masayo Fukushima, Shunichi Uchida                       *
*          Issued on: July   10, 1997(Japanese Version)              *
*                     August 27, 1997(English Version)               *
*          By: Research Institute for Advanced Information           *
*              Technology (AITEC), a subcenter of                    *
*              Japan Information Processing Development              *
*              Center (JIPDEC)                                       *
*              2-3-3, Minato-ku, Shiba, Tokyo 105, Japan             *
*              Tel: +81-3-3456-3191 Fax: +81-3-3455-4877             *
*              E-mail: aitec-news@icot.or.jp                         *
*              http://www.icot.or.jp                                 *
*                                                                    *
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