The following is a letter to the community from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). 

Dear CISE Community,

Download the Challenge #1 Tools 

DARPA has recently released the software for all of the design and collaboration tools used by participants in its first FANG Challenge.  Source code for the META design tools, VehicleFORGE collaboration platform and iFAB foundry IT infrastructure are currently available for download from their online repository @ http://cps-vo.org/group/avm.  

Three new reports prepared for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) distill the perspectives of executives and technical experts from industry, academia and government on the "ifs" and the "what's next" of emerging intelligent systems-of-systems technologies.

The three reports are:

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has published this report to the President and the Congress on the progress in the NIT R&D program since 2010.  The current study finds that important NITRD investments responsive to the 2010 recommendations have been made, with notable progress in the multi-agency investments in “big data,” NIT-enabled interaction with the physical world, health IT, and cybersecurity. Furthermore, significant progress has been made in creating infrastructure for network scaling and testbeds.

The ASEE Engineering Research Council held a meeting in Washington DC on March 5, 2012.  There were presentations from OSTP, ASD-R&E, AFOSR, ARO, DOE, NIH, NSF, ONR, USDA about the agencies' research interests, funding levels and new opportunities including CPS.  Several of the presentations had information relevant to CPS, including Dr. Reginald Brothers, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; John P.