Boulder Language Technologies

This is the second workshop for NSF Interactive Systems Program grantees, following a very successful similar workshop that Rob Jacob put together for the program in November 1995. By far, the most important result of Rob's workshop was the collection of capsule summaries of each active grant. Not only did grantees learn about each other's work, interested researchers and other NSF staff learned about the program and found the efforts underway to be extremely promising for the field of computer science as a whole. It is our hope that attendees of this workshop, some who were present in 1995 and many new people, will continue to learn about each other's work and explore potentials for collaboration on future work, conferences, symposia, etc.

Directing this program has certainly been exciting in the time that I've been in the position as its program officer. We have continued the interagency Human Language Technology Initiative with DARPA, started the Human Language Resource Initiative with DARPA, and launched the STIMULATE Initiative with NSA, CIA, and DARPA. This period also witnessed the transition of Federal support in computing from more strictly high-performance computing and networking toward human centered computing. A new Presidential Advisory Committee is now eagerly embracing this new direction as well. We are also working on a new Universal Access Initiative and are providing advice on the NSF-wide Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Initiative. The program budget has favorably reflected the increased attention from all fronts in the topics of the program.

It is my hope that you will use the opportunity of this workshop to take some time out of your busy lives to enjoy yourselves, meet others within your NSF research community, and chat with us about your concerns and successes in research and education. We are pleased that you are a part of this community and look forward to meeting with you in Oregon.