The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a new investment last week to advance privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and promote their use to solve real-world problems.
The Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing in Practice (PDaSP) program will offer $23 million to enhance the ability to privately share and analyze data for a range of use cases and applications, including those of significant interest to Federal agencies.
NSF’s PDaSP program aligns with the Biden administration’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI EO).
PDaSP is led by the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP).
“The explosive growth of data and computational power in today’s world provide tremendous opportunities to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation,” said Erwin Gianchandani, NSF assistant director for TIP. “NSF is uniquely positioned to lead efforts to enable and promote data sharing in a privacy-preserving and responsible manner to harness the power and insights of data for public good. Through this program, NSF will prioritize use-inspired and translational research that empowers federal agencies and the private sector to adopt leading-edge PETs in their work.”
“In today’s hyperconnected and device-rich world, increasing computational power and the explosive growth of data present us with tremendous opportunities to enable data-driven, evidence-based decision-making capabilities to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation,” NSF said. “However, to be able to responsibly leverage the insights from and power of data, such as for training powerful artificial intelligence (AI) models, it is important to have practically deployable and scalable technologies that allow data sharing in a privacy-preserving manner.”
“While there has been significant research progress in privacy-related areas, privacy-preserving data sharing technologies remain at various levels of maturity in terms of practical deployment,” the agency added.
The PDaSP program will accept proposals that fall into three tracks:
- Advancing key technologies to enable?practical privacy-preserving data sharing and analytics solutions;
- Integrated?and comprehensive solutions for trustworthy data sharing in application settings; and
- Usable?tools and testbeds for trustworthy sharing of private or otherwise confidential data.
NSF said it anticipates making 26 awards – up to 12 Track 1 awards; up to seven Track 2 awards; and up to seven Track 3 awards.
According to NSF, the PDaSP program will advance the White House’s National Strategy to Advance Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing and Analytics unveiled in April 2023.
NSF said it will hold two information sessions for the PDaSP program on July 12 and 23. The proposal application deadline is Sept. 27.
