Three New DIMACS Special Focus Programs

DIMACS是离散数学和理论计算机科学中心，有着悠久的历史，聚集了不同兴趣和背景的研究人员，研究和促进离散数学、理论计算机科学、统计学、运筹学和相关领域的最新进展，以及它们在电信、国土安全、物理科学、工程和公共卫生等广泛领域的应用。DIMACS的标志性活动是“特别关注”(SF)，这是一个涉及数百名不同参与者的多年协调活动计划，旨在解决一个广泛而重要的主题，该主题有望迅速发展，并具有很高的科学、工业和社会影响潜力。该项目由以下三个相互作用的战略框架组成：1)。信息共享和动态数据分析：检测、监控和收集数据的能力为改善生活提供了巨大的潜力：设计更好的系统，更好地管理大型复杂系统之间的交互，识别微妙的问题和糟糕的结果。需要更多的工作来实现跨越多个、不同的、有噪音的数据源的系统，并使用它们来正确地得出结论和做出决策。SF涉及数据准备和质量、隐私和安全、持续和分布式处理以及融合和推理，探索在网络搜索引擎和在线社交网络、医疗保健、城市规划和交通管理以及国土安全等领域的应用。算法和能源：保持强劲的能源供应，以满足不断增长的经济需求，并平衡成本和环境限制，已成为国家和全球的主要优先事项。SF的主题是多尺度时间模型、多尺度空间模型、风险和可靠性度量、数据表示和模型共享，以及随机优化，这些有助于我们分析新的动态能源定价算法，优化能源生产、储存和传输的投资，管理动态的新电网，以及分析电动汽车和绿色信息技术的计划和协议。网络安全：在一个一切都通过有线或无线网络连接的世界中，新出现的网络和应用比以往任何时候都更提出了提供安全和隐私的挑战。SF主题涉及电网等关键基础设施系统，具有高度社会、工业和政府影响的应用程序，如不断变化的网络攻击格局，身份管理机制，云计算等新范式的安全，以及密码学、信息论和编码理论等基础研究。这三个SF将导致大量研究活动，包括重大的新科学成就和重大的科学研究方向。该项目对社会有重大的潜在好处：处理多样化、动态数据的能力得到提高，反过来又促进了医疗、国土安全、商业和其他领域的进步；能源基础设施的改善和多样化有助于保持获得负担得起的能源，同时降低这样做的环境成本；需要改善网络安全，以确保我们能够合理地依赖我们在日常生活中使用的系统。该项目还加强了从K-12到研究生的学生和教职员工的教育计划。

DIMACS, the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, has a long history of bringing together groups of researchers with different interests and backgrounds, to study and advance the state of the art in discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, statistics, operations research, and related areas, as well as their applications in a wide variety of domains including telecommunications, homeland security, the physical sciences, engineering, and public health. DIMACS's signature activity is a "special focus" (SF), a multi-year program of coordinated activities involving hundreds of diverse participants and addressing a broad, important topic that is poised for rapid advancement and has high potential for scientific, industrial, and societal impact. The project consists of the following three interacting SFs:1). Information Sharing and Dynamic Data Analysis: The ability to instrument, monitor and collect data provides huge potential to improve life: designing better systems, better managing interactions between large complex systems, identifying subtle problems and bad outcomes. More work is needed to realize systems that span multiple, diverse, noisy data sources and use them to correctly draw conclusions and make decisions. The SF addresses data preparation and quality, privacy and security, continual and distributed processing, and fusion and inference, exploring applications in areas including web search engines and online social networks, healthcare, urban planning and traffic management, and homeland security.2). Algorithms and Energy: It has become a major national and global priority to maintain a robust supply of energy that meets the demands of a growing economy and balances costs and environmental constraints. Themes of the SF are multiscale temporal models, multiscale spatial models, risk and reliability measures, data representation and model sharing, and stochastic optimization that can contribute to our ability to analyze new dynamic energy pricing algorithms, optimize investments in energy generation, storage and transmission, manage a dynamic new power grid, and analyze plans and protocols for electric vehicles and green information technology.3). Cybersecurity: New emerging networks and applications raise more than ever the challenge to provide security and privacy in a world where everything is connected via wired or wireless networks. SF themes address critical infrastructure systems such as the power grid, applications with a high societal, industrial and governmental impact such as the changing landscape of cyber attacks, mechanisms for identity management, security for new paradigms like cloud computing, and fundamental studies such as cryptography, information theory, and coding theory.These three SFs will lead to a great deal of research activity, including significant new scientific accomplishments and significant new directions of scientific research. The project has significant potential benefit to society: improved capabilities to handle diverse, dynamic data in turn enables advances in medicine, homeland security, commerce, and other areas; improving and diversifying the energy infrastructure helps maintain affordable access to energy while mitigating the environmental costs of doing so; and improvements in cybersecurity are needed to ensure that we can justifiably rely on systems we use throughout our daily lives. The project also enhances educational programs for students and faculty from K-12 to graduate students.