CSC 200 Assignment: ITRUG Microproposals


Recognizing that many of the most creative endeavors in history have been accomplished by very young people, the National Science Foundation has (we will pretend) conceived the ITRUG program (Information Technology Research for UnderGraduates). ITRUG awards are intended to support highly innovative research in information technology primarily conceived by students between the ages of 16 and 25 that is high risk, but has high potential payoff. Grants of up to $100K (and possibly more) are available to support investigations into basic information technology or its applications that have the potential to produce revolutionary contributions in areas of national public interest, including (but not limited to) industrial productivity, energy production, transportation, security, defense, law enforcement, housing, urban development, workforce utilization, medicine, health care, education, communication, the environment.

Write a 2-4 page proposal describing an idea for innovative ITRUG research, its potential benefits, and the resources you would need to bring it about.

Proposals are due by the beginning of class on Thursday, February 26. Please generate your proposal in PDF format only, and e-mail to the TA. Kirk will post the proposals on-line as they arrive; you can find them through his index page You are then to read them all, and rank them according to the NSF review criteria. Send your rankings, via email to the professor, no later than 6:00am on Tuesday, March 2. (I want to have the compiled rankings available for use in class that day.) You are required to rank the proposals (including your own) in a strict total order from #1 (best) to #19 (worst) — no ties.

Update, March 2:

Final rankings and panel outcomes can be found HERE. Yellow shaded lines are proposals written by members of panel A and debated by members of panel B; white lines are proposals written by members of panel B and debated by members of panel A. The column marked “average” gives the average rank (1–18) given the proposal by all members of the class (across both panels); the column marked “variance&8221; is the variance in those rankings (sum of the squares of the differences from the average). Proposals are listed in order of these average rankings. The order differs slightly from that of the in-class handout due to post-class correction of one student's ranks.


Last Change: 05 January 2005 / Michael Scott's email address