Cornell Vice President for Research and Advanced Studies Norman R. Scott issued the following statement Jan. 16 concerning the status of Cornell's application to the National Science Foundation for designation as a national center under NSF's new Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure Program:
"Over the last 18 months, the staff of the Cornell Theory Center has been engaged in a new competition for NSF designation as a national center for infrastructure partnerships in supercomputing. We have operated the existing National Center for Supercomputing for the last decade, and our proposal for the next round in serving the NSF was based on the highly successful experience that we have had in meeting the needs of the national high-performance computing community, especially that portion of the community served by one of the world's most powerful systems, our scalable parallel computer produced by the IBM Corporation.
"While the NSF has made no decision concerning the outcome of the current competition, and no decision is expected until the action of the National Science Board in March, discussions with senior staff of the NSF in meetings yesterday here in Ithaca cause us to believe at this time that our proposal has not been given the highest ranking among the four finalists in the competition. This is a most disturbing development, and we are doing everything we can to secure further information from NSF on the status of our proposal. Appropriate steps will be taken by the university as the situation becomes clarified.
"Given the significance of this situation for members of the Cornell community, particularly those serving in the Theory Center, the center's director, Dr. Malvin Kalos, briefed the center's staff on the current situation this morning. Dr. Kalos stated in his remarks that in the event that Cornell is not chosen as one of the sites for the new program, we are most likely to be given substantial transitional funding by NSF through Fiscal Year '98 and possibly beyond. In addition, Dr. Kalos indicated that the center's leadership is already vigorously exploring alternative sources of federal support for its operations and that we are keeping the members of our congressional delegation fully informed of these developments. He assured members of the Theory Center staff that no adverse personnel actions are intended at this time."