Information science and technology has evolved over the last fifty years from an activity that focused on enabling more efficient calculations to a major intellectual theme that spans numerous disciplines in engineering and the sciences. To go further, however, we need new, unified ways of looking at, approaching, and exploiting information in and across the physical and biological realms, as well as the social sciences and engineering.

Caltech has launched an Institute-wide intellectual, educational, and outreach initiative called Information Science and Technology (IST). Building on an interdisciplinary foundation based on information, IST is the first activity in the country that combines research and teaching ranging from the fundamental theoretical underpinnings of information to the science and engineering of novel information substrates, biological circuits, and complex social systems.

It will reach into virtually every academic discipline including physics, chemistry, biology, social science, computer science, applied mathematics, and engineering.

IST has formed four new interdisciplinary research centers:

1. The Center for the Physics of Information (new computational substrates, architectures, and algorithms for the computing devices of the future)
   
   
2. The Center for Biological Circuit Design (analysis and synthesis of biological circuits)
   
   
3. The Social and Information Sciences Laboratory (exploring social systems such as markets using information science and engineering; investigating engineering problems using tools from the social sciences)
   
   
4. The Center for the Mathematics of Information (theoretical mathematical foundations for information science across disciplines)

The centers are being organized to answer the following critical questions over the next ten years:

• What are the fundamental physical limits to information?
• How does nature compute and communicate information?
• How does information shape social systems?
• What are the theoretical foundations of information?

IST will foster a unifying, information-centered language and roadmap for the study of these and other problems across academic disciplines.

These new centers will join the Lee Center for Advanced Networking and the NSF Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering to form the nucleus of information science and technology research at Caltech.

IST will also be a vital and contributing part of the core Caltech academic educational experience. New undergraduate and graduate programs will combine engineering and science with a clear focus on information, and direct exposure to the central issues across the entire intellectual landscape. The programs will train a new breed of information scientists and engineers across a broad spectrum of disciplines.

IST will also engage external constituencies in a highly visible, comprehensive outreach program in order to build a well-informed dynamic community of specialists and non-specialists interested in information science and technology. In addition to the executive, visitor, and affiliates programs, we will also develop and conduct workshops, lectures, and summer schools.