This project is to hold a two-day workshop in Arlington, Virginia on May 23-24, 2011. The purpose of the workshop is to exchange ideas, methods, success stories, cautionary tales, and future directions regarding academic collaboration between US and China institutions. The goal of the workshop is to foster investigating new avenues to encourage and enable meaningful collaborative research projects in computing to leverage the newly found and expected future growth of research and education capabilities in China. The main participants of the workshop will be US-based academic scholars. The workshop will also invite scholars based in China, as well as officials of NSF and other government agencies. The intellectual merit of this workshop is twofold. First, the workshop, through exchange of experiences, participants will gain further insightful understanding of the Chinese education structures and research programs, and their differences from those of the US. Second, the participants will identify research fields and methods to engage CISE researchers in China. Ultimately, the workshop will lead to more engagement of CISE researchers in China and improve our education and research programs at our home institutions. The broader impacts of the workshop are reflected in the hope that more collaborations between US-based and China-based CISE researchers will benefit the faster advancement of CISE research and education, and benefit the academic communities of both countries. More specifically, the broader impacts of the workshop include potential for strong growth in the number and scale of collaborative projects between US and Chinese researchers. The workshop will also bring together more diverse teams to bear on critical research problems across International borders. Finally, the increase in US-China collaborations will serve as an effective channel for academics to share educational tools and experiences while integrating research results into local curricula.
This grant supported a workshop on issues and topics related to research collaborations between US-based and China-based researchers. The workshop was held at Arlington, VA on May 23-24 2011. The workshop co-chairs were Ben Y. Zhao from UC Santa Barbara, and Xiaowei Yang from Duke University. The workshop co-chairs received guidance from a 4 person steering committee, which included in its ranks: James Landay, University of Washington, Fred Roberts, Rutgers University, Harry Shum, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft, and Aidong Zhang, University of Buffalo. Attendees at the workshop included a number of NSF program managers and directors, as well as over 50 US-based academics in different areas of computer science with interests in US-China collaborative projects. The workshop agenda included detailed experience talks from 7 academics, group breakout discussions on related topics, and talks from NSF personnel on available mechanisms and plans for related research initiatives. The workshop produced a number of findings, including current challenges for academics intent on US-China academic collaborations, as well as detailed next step recommendations for NSF. Slides available from talks at the workshop are available online at the workshop website: http://current.cs.ucsb.edu/nsf-uschina11/ In addition, Jason Hong wrote a blog entry summarizing the events and findings at the workshop on the CACM blog entry. The entry is online here: http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/108741-improving-computer-science-research-collaborations-between-us-and-china/fulltext
