Assessing NASA's University Leadership Initiative
Assessing NASA's University Leadership Initiative

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2021-02-08

Total Pages: 49

ISBN-13: 0309685605

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NASA created the University Leadership Initiative (ULI) to engage creative and innovative minds in the academic arena to identify significant aeronautics and aviation research challenges and define their unique approach to their solution. The ULI was started in 2015 as part of the larger University Innovation Project, with the goal of seeking new, innovative ideas that can support the U.S. aviation community and NASA's long-term aeronautics research goals, as established by its Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. Assessing NASA's University Leadership Initiative reviews the ULI and makes recommendations to enhance program's impact to benefit students, faculty, industry, and the U.S. public.

Review and Assessment of Planetary Protection Policy Development Processes
Review and Assessment of Planetary Protection Policy Development Processes

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-10-17

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 0309478650

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Protecting Earth's environment and other solar system bodies from harmful contamination has been an important principle throughout the history of space exploration. For decades, the scientific, political, and economic conditions of space exploration converged in ways that contributed to effective development and implementation of planetary protection policies at national and international levels. However, the future of space exploration faces serious challenges to the development and implementation of planetary protection policy. The most disruptive changes are associated with (1) sample return from, and human missions to, Mars; and (2) missions to those bodies in the outer solar system possessing water oceans beneath their icy surfaces. Review and Assessment of Planetary Protection Policy Development Processes addresses the implications of changes in the complexion of solar system exploration as they apply to the process of developing planetary protection policy. Specifically, this report examines the history of planetary protection policy, assesses the current policy development process, and recommends actions to improve the policy development process in the future.

A Review of NASA Human Research Program's Scientific Merit Assessment Processes
A Review of NASA Human Research Program's Scientific Merit Assessment Processes

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2012-08-20

Total Pages: 53

ISBN-13: 0309260531

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At the request of NASA, an IOM committee reviewed NASA Human Research Program's (HRP's) Scientific Merit Assessment Processes for directed research. Directed research is commissioned or noncompetitively awarded research that is not competitively solicited because of specific reasons, such as time limitations or highly focused or constrained research topics. The scientific merit assessment processes have been developed by NASA to evaluate individual directed research tasks in order to ensure the scientific integrity of the HRP's directed research portfolio. The committee examined the HRP's current scientific merit assessment processes and conducted a public workshop to identify best practices among other federal agencies that use various assessment processes for similar types of directed research. Review of NASA Human Research Program's Scientific Merit Processes: Letter Report finds that the scientific merit assessment process used by the HRP for directed research is scientifically rigorous and is similar to the processes and merit criteria used by many other federal agencies and organizations - including the Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, and the United States Department of Agriculture - for comparable types of research. This report also makes recommendations on ways to streamline and bolster the accountability and transparency of NASA's current processes.

Intelligent Systems and Applications
Intelligent Systems and Applications

Author: Kohei Arai

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 897

ISBN-13: 3030821935

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This book presents Proceedings of the 2021 Intelligent Systems Conference which is a remarkable collection of chapters covering a wider range of topics in areas of intelligent systems and artificial intelligence and their applications to the real world. The conference attracted a total of 496 submissions from many academic pioneering researchers, scientists, industrial engineers, and students from all around the world. These submissions underwent a double-blind peer-review process. Of the total submissions, 180 submissions have been selected to be included in these proceedings. As we witness exponential growth of computational intelligence in several directions and use of intelligent systems in everyday applications, this book is an ideal resource for reporting latest innovations and future of AI. The chapters include theory and application on all aspects of artificial intelligence, from classical to intelligent scope. We hope that readers find the book interesting and valuable; it provides the state-of-the-art intelligent methods and techniques for solving real-world problems along with a vision of the future research.

Principal-Investigator-Led Missions in the Space Sciences
Principal-Investigator-Led Missions in the Space Sciences

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2006-04-22

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 0309100704

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Principal Investigator-Led (PI-led) missions are an important element of NASA's space science enterprise. While several NRC studies have considered aspects of PI-led missions in the course of other studies for NASA, issues facing the PI-led missions in general have not been subject to much analysis in those studies. Nevertheless, these issues are raising increasingly important questions for NASA, and it requested the NRC to explore them as they currently affect PI-led missions. Among the issues NASA asked to have examined were those concerning cost and scheduling, the selection process, relationships among PI-led team members, and opportunities for knowledge transfer to new PIs. This report provides a discussion of the evolution and current status of the PIled mission concept, the ways in which certain practices have affected its performance, and the steps that can carry it successfully into the future. The study was done in collaboration with the National Academy of Public Administration.

SBIR Program Diversity and Assessment Challenges
SBIR Program Diversity and Assessment Challenges

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2004-09-20

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 0309165733

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In response to a Congressional mandate, the National Research Council conducted a review of the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) at the five federal agencies with SBIR programs with budgets in excess of $100 million (DOD, NIH, NASA, DOE, and NSF). The project was designed to answer questions of program operation and effectiveness, including the quality of the research projects being conducted under the SBIR program, the commercialization of the research, and the program's contribution to accomplishing agency missions. The first in a series to be published in response to the Congressional request, this report summarizes the presentations at a symposium convened at the beginning of the project. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the SBIR program's operations at the five agencies responsible for 96 percent of the program's operations.

Assessment of the NASA Astrobiology Institute
Assessment of the NASA Astrobiology Institute

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2008-04-20

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 0309114977

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Astrobiology is a scientific discipline devoted to the study of life in the universe - its origin, evolution, distribution, and future. In 1997, NASA established an Astrobiology program (the NASA Astrobiology Institute - NAI) as a result of a series of new results from solar system exploration and astronomical research in the mid-1990s together with advances in the biological sciences. To help evaluate the NAI, NASA asked the NRC to review progress made by the Institute in developing the field of astrobiology. This book presents an evaluation of NAI's success in meeting its goals for fostering interdisciplinary research, training future astrobiology researchers, providing scientific and technical leadership, exploring new research approaches with information technology, and supporting outreach to K-12 education programs.

Computation-Aware Algorithmic Design for Cyber-Physical Systems
Computation-Aware Algorithmic Design for Cyber-Physical Systems

Author: Maria Prandini

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-12-16

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 303143448X

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This contributed volume aims to build the foundation of a framework for computationally aware algorithmic design for cyber-physical systems (CPSs), focusing on approaches that take computation into account at the design stage to address their impact on performance and safety. It demonstrates how novel techniques may emerge from the combination of formal methods, model predictive control, distributed optimization, data-driven methods, reconfigurable/adaptive methods, and information-theoretic techniques. Chapters are written by both researchers and practitioners and cover such topics as analysis and design of uncertain CPSs, cooperative and non-cooperative paradigms for handling complexity in large scale CPSs, task-relevant environment abstractions for autonomous systems based on information theory, information flow in event-based stabilization of CPSs, set-valued model predictive control, and automated synthesis of certifiable controllers for CPSs. State-of-the-art applications and case studies are provided throughout with a special focus on intelligent transportation systems and autonomous vehicles. Graduate students and researchers with an interest in CPS verification and control will find this volume to be a valuable resource in their work. It will also appeal to researchers from disciplines other than control, such as computer science, operations research, applied mathematics, and robotics.