Contact: Bob Ratliff
A Mississippi State University professor is among a group of national researchers and others in Washington this week to submit a list of the nation's information technology needs.
Joe Thompson, a Giles Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering, was one of nine members of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee who met Monday with Vice President Al Gore at the White House.
The 26-member panel includes prominent computer scientists, computational scientists and industry executives. Thompson is the only member of the group from the Southeast.
During the meeting with Gore, committee members reviewed the group's interim report that recommends a $1 billion increase in federal spending over the next five years on information technology research.
"The nation currently depends on a fragile software infrastructure and is underinvesting in essential fundamental software research," Thompson said shortly before the meeting began. "Increased research is needed to produce robust software, more powerful supercomputers and communications networks capable of handling the one billion users expected to be on the Internet by 2005."
In addition to the funding request, the group called for a greater emphasis on educating college students to meet the demand for experts in high performance computing and networks. Also cited was the need to connect major research universities to the Next Generation Internet for improved access to resources and expertise.
The complete interim report is available on the National Coordination Office for Computing, Information and Communications' website at http://www.ccic.gov/.