OIL & GAS

Federal agencies should move research money into supercomputing in fiscal 2006, the Bush administration said. Supercomputing and cyber infrastructure are two interagency areas to which agencies should reallocate funds from lower-priority research and development efforts, according to a memo last week from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Supercomputing tools for strengthening connectivity merit greater priority "due to the potential of each in furthering progress across a broad range of scientific and technological application areas," the memo states. Meanwhile, other research areas included under the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program may receive lessened funding, according to David Nelson, director of the National Coordination Office for IT R&D. The office controls about $2 billion of the federal government's $90 billion IT research tab. NITRD's six program areas are high-end computing; large-scale networking; high-confidence software and systems; human computer interaction and information management; software design and productivity; and social, economic and workforce implications of IT and IT workforce development. Offsets for new fiscal year 2006 priorities could be found from other areas of research. Among programs not under Nelson's office, research in physics was identified as a high-priority area for the administration. Superconductors, quantum condensates, wide-band gap and photonic materials were cited as examples of atomic-level systems with great potential. Agency officials submitting funding requests should measure all programs according to their relevance, quality and performance, and use the Program Assessment Rating Tool to evaluate success, the memo states.