CCC Blog

OSTP Studying Benefits of Video Games

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:04:25 +0000

USA TODAY is out this week with an interesting article featuring the work of MacArthur Foundation Fellow Constance Steinkuehler, an Assistant Professor in the Educational Communications & Technology program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — who’s on assignment for 18 months as a Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy [...]

“Scientific Visions That Take the Prize”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:37:45 +0000

Back in October, we told you about the ninth International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge – a joint effort by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine to celebrate the grand tradition of visualization, specifically for communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. For the first time ever, this year’s Challenge allowed participants to [...]

OSTP Posts Comments to Public Access RFIs

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:05:03 +0000

Back in November, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting broad public input about “the long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of Federally-funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Now this week, OSTP has posted the comments that it received — [...]

DARPA Announces Proposers Day for New PERFECT Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:26:45 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) has announced a Proposers Day for a new program — Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) — to introduce the research community to the PERFECT vision and goals, and to facilitate interaction and coordination among prospective PIs and technology developers. The Proposers Day [...]

“Go Viral to Improve Health”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:06:53 +0000

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Academy of Engineering (NAE) have partnered to launch the “Go Viral to Improve Health” Health Data Collegiate Challenge, designed to spur undergraduate and graduate students to create health-related apps. The contest is aimed at students pursuing degrees in health, engineering, and computer science. And the prize for the [...]

“The Mathematics of Taste”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:02:53 +0000

Ever wondered how companies determine the best flavors and scents for their packaged food, drinks, cleaning products, toiletries, and so many more items? Well, turns out it’s a multibillion-dollar business, with millions of dollars spent every year on R&D, including consumer testing. But if colleagues at MIT have their say, the way of this business could [...]

DARPA Seeking to Develop a “Cognitive Fingerprint”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:42:55 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is out this month with a broad agency announcement soliciting “innovation research proposals in support of the development of new software-based biometric modalities” that go beyond the current focus of passwords for identity validation: The current standard method for validating a user’s identity for authentication on an information [...]

“Computational Thinking: A Digital Age Skill for Everyone”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:31:06 +0000

The International Society for Technology in Education (ITSE), in partnership with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), is out with an outstanding four-minute video — Computational Thinking: A Digital Age Skill for Everyone – providing an introduction to computational thinking. It’s part of the ITSE’s recent efforts to develop an operational definition [...]

“The New Era of Computing”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:56:05 +0000

An interesting interview with Alex Szalay, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University – about data-intensive computing — in Datanami this week: When it comes to thought leadership that bridges the divides between scientific investigation, technology and the tools and applications that make research possible … Szalay is one of the first scientists that springs to [...]

USAID Posts Draft RFA with Emphasis Spanning Analytics

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:46:56 +0000

USAID is launching what it calls “an exciting and ambitious” program to engage universities and research institutes in novel ways to improve the agency’s (and larger development community’s) ability to define and solve large development challenges. Computing appears poised to play an important role here, as key goals of the program are “to advance evidence-based analysis [...]

Verisign Announces Internet Infrastructure Grant Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:44:48 +0000

Verisign has announced its 2012 Internet Infrastructure Award Program, seeking proposals that pursue “research that has the potential to improve the availability and security of Internet access in all parts of the world.” Expanding on a program first launched in 2010, this year’s program seeks to emphasize research that ”advances security and stability, encourages Internet deployment, and [...]

NAE Names 2012 Draper, Gordon Prize Winners

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:16:09 +0000

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) named the winners of its 2012 Charles Stark Draper and Bernard M. Gordon Prizes yesterday, honoring the pioneers of the LCD and those who architected Harvey Mudd College’s engineering design curriculum, respectively. According to the NAE, the Draper Prize — honoring “those engineers whose accomplishment has had a significant impact on society [...]

Surgical Robots, Sensor Wristbands Advancing Health, Energy

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:42:45 +0000

Over the last year, we’ve described many opportunities at the intersection of computing and healthcare as well as computing and sustainability — and there are a couple great examples in the press this week. Researchers at the University of Washington have engineered Raven II, a new surgical robot with wing-like arms predicated on an open [...]

NIST Seeking Submissions to Text REtrieval Conference

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:36:43 +0000

The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) — which recently posted a solicitation containing opportunities for computing researchers — is now out with a call for submissions to its 21st annual Text REtrieval Conference (TREC), “the premier experimental effort in the field to encourage research in information retrieval and related applications” by providing a large [...]

NIH Institute Creates New Division for Bioinformatics, Comp Bio

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:17:52 +0000

The National Institute of General Medicine Sciences (NIGMS), an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supporting basic research and research training, announced earlier this month that it would establish two new divisions — including one focused on biomedical technology, bioinformatics, and computational biology – as part of a reorganization that includes the dissolution of [...]

Magnetic Memory Miniaturized to Just 12 Atoms

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:54:31 +0000

Ahead of an article to be published in tomorrow’s Science, IBM Research today announced the development of the world’s smallest magnetic memory bit by its Almaden research staff. At low temperatures, the magnetic storage approach requires only 12 magnetic atoms — making it at least 100 times denser than today’s hard disk drive and solid state memory chips — [...]

NIH Requesting Input on Data and Informatics

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:26:03 +0000

The National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) soliciting input into the deliberations of its newly established Working Group on Data and Informatics, which is seeking to investigate the management, integration, and analysis of large biomedical datasets. According to the announcement: The group will gather information [...]

NSF Holds Smart Health and Wellbeing Webinar

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:08:47 +0000

Moments ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) wrapped up an informational webinar about its new multi-disciplinary Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) program. Expanding on a solicitation first issued in spring 2011 by the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), the new program spans NSF’s CISE, Engineering (ENG), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorates — and calls for [...]

NSB Releases Report on NSF’s Merit Review Criteria

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:20:33 +0000

Following an extensive review by a task force to determine if the merit review criteria used by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to evaluate all proposals remain appropriate, the National Science Board (NSB) yesterday released its report — National Science Foundation’s Merit Review Criteria: Review and Revisions – recommending that NSF “better define the two criteria for the [...]

Qualcomm Announces $10 Million Tricorder X Prize for Revolutionizing Healthcare

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:54:50 +0000

Last May, the X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm announced that they were joining forces to develop a competition to enhance integrated digital health. Earlier today, in his keynote at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV, Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul E. Jacobs announced the $10 million competition – with the aim of stimulating innovation and creating a new category of consumer device [...]

NIST Announces 2012 Measurement Science & Engineering Research Grants Programs

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:56:58 +0000

Last month, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced its FY 2012 Measurement Science and Engineering Research Grants Programs, with an emphasis on a number of areas of computing, including cyber-physical systems, intelligent systems, and systems integration. A key domain for NIST is energy and the environment, including the smart grid. According to [...]

First Person: “The Man Who Wants to Translate the Web”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:24:57 +0000

Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Luis von Ahn is featured in CNN.com’s TEDTalk Tuesdays this week for his Duolingo project, which seeks to provide a free way to learn languages and translate the World Wide Web. Check out Luis’s write-up for CNN.com below, and video of his TED Talk after the jump. I want to translate the Web into every major [...]

New DoD Strategy Puts Focus on Technological Innovation

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:18:02 +0000

President Obama, together with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and members of the Armed Forces, rolled out a new military strategy in a much-publicized event at the Pentagon last week. What’s interesting is that the strategy calls for an increased investment on technological innovation, including in areas of cybersecurity and intelligence systems. As the President penned in his [...]

CCC Launches Undergraduate Summer Research Listing Site

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:56:00 +0000

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is unveiling a new website today allowing researchers to advertise undergraduate summer research positions and students to find such opportunities. These listings will appear from a link on the CCC’s relatively new Computer Science Research Opportunities & Graduate School (CSGS) website, which has information on summer research opportunities, a Q&A on [...]

NSF to Hold Webinar on Smart Health & Wellbeing Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:07:35 +0000

(This post has been updated; scroll down for the latest.) As we’ve previously reported in this space, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently issued a cross-directorate solicitation on Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB), calling for interdisciplinary proposals addressing ”fundamental technical and scientific issues that would support much needed transformation of healthcare from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive, proactive, evidence-based, person-centered and focused [...]

“Your Connected Vehicle is Arriving”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:20:43 +0000

There’s a great piece in MIT’s Technology Review this week — written by Thilo Koslowski, Vice President and head of the Automotive, Vehicle ICT & Mobility Practice at Gartner – describing how cars are becoming networked, to the Internet and to one another, and how this new trend will redefine transportation as a whole in the next decade. Some excerpts: [...]

“Digging Into Data Challenge” Winners Announced

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:04:10 +0000

Last March, we noted that the National Science Foundation (NSF), together with 7 other international funders, was launching the second round of an international grant competition designed to spur cutting-edge research in the humanities and social sciences. Called Digging Into Data, the challenge specifically sought to promote large-scale, international and interdisciplinary analysis of large data [...]

“Low-Cost Robots Could Transform Science”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:34:21 +0000

Happy New Year, everyone! As we kick off 2012, here’s an interesting story – in the December Communications of the ACM – about how low-cost robots stand to impact science moving forward: A new generation of inexpensive robots could make the machines ubiquitous, opening up robotics to new areas of research, says James McLurkin, assistant professor of computer science and director of the robotics [...]

Explaining Why Computing is Important

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:29:17 +0000

IBM Fellow Grady Booch, co-creator of UML and object-oriented programming, has launched “a transmedia project” seeking to engage “audiences of all ages in the story of technology that has changed humanity.” He’s hoping to put together a multi-part television documentary, together with a book, e-book, website, app, and educational curriculum to tell the story about [...]

2011: “The Year the Device in Your Pocket”…

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:18:59 +0000

…became “the center of your world.” So says technology writer/editor Joshua Topolsky — founding editor-in-chief of The Verge and former editor-in-chief of Engadget — in an year-end technology review for The Washington Post. It’s worth a quick read (emphasis added below): As far as years in technology go, 2011 was one for the record books. It [...]

“Top 11 Scientific Twists from 2011″

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:11:37 +0000

msnbc.com’s Cosmic Log is out with its list of the top 11 scientific twists from 2011 this morning: The past year brought us the supercomputer that trounced flesh-and-blood champions on the “Jeopardy” TV show … genetic discoveries that showed us the tangles in humanity’s family tree … a tsunami that shouldn’t have been as catastrophic as [...]

“The Unique You to Build a Better Password”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:19:49 +0000

The New York Times published a two items last Friday about computer security research efforts to supplement, and perhaps one day eliminate, passwords. From the print edition: Passwords are a pain to remember. What if a quick wiggle of five fingers on a screen could log you in instead? Or speaking a simple phrase? Neither idea is far-fetched. Computer scientists in [...]

The CCC Blog in 2011: Our Top Posts from the Year Revisited

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:40:44 +0000

As we celebrate the holidays and get set to close the books on 2011 — a banner year for the CCC Blog, with more than twice as many page views as in any previous year — we thought we would take a quick look back at some of the most popular topics on the Blog [...]

Applications Open for Google’s 2012 Policy Fellowships

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:59:50 +0000

Google is calling for applications to its 2012 Google Policy Fellowships, which offer undergraduate, graduate, and law students interested in Internet and technology policy “the opportunity to spend the summer contributing to the public dialogue on these issues, and exploring future academic and professional interests.” According to Google: Fellows will have the opportunity to work at [...]

Microsoft’s BlueHat Prize: $200K for the Next Security Technology

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:12:19 +0000

Seeking to motivate the development of novel solutions to serious computer security threats, Microsoft Corp. has launched an inaugural BlueHat Prize contest, offering a grand prize of $200,000 to the most innovative submission. In particular, Microsoft aims “to challenge security researchers to design a novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory [...]

IBM’s “Five in Five” for 2011

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:54:13 +0000

IBM is out with its sixth annual “Five in Five” list, specifying five technology innovations that have the potential to change the way we live, work, and play over the next five years. It’s a list that has met with some success over the years — for example, a 2007 prediction that “cell phones will [...]

DARPA Announces 2012 Young Faculty Award Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:15:10 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced its Young Faculty Award (YFA) program for 2012, seeking to “identify and engage rising stars in junior faculty positions [i.e., untenured Assistant or Associate Professors within five years of appointment to a tenure-track position] in academia and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs.” Among [...]

“Data-driven Methods for Understanding Climate Change”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:59:33 +0000

An excellent example of how novel data-driven methods can advance science and society: In February 2012, the journal Nature Climate Change will publish a paper on rainfall extremes in India by principal investigator Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota’s computer science and engineering department and co-principal investigator Auroop Ganguly of the civil and environmental engineering department at Northeastern University in Boston, members [...]

USPTO Seeking Text Recognition, Image Analysis Algorithms

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:46:56 +0000

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), together with the recently created Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (COECI), launched the USPTO Innovation Challenge last week, offering $50,000 in prizes for specialized algorithms that can “help bring the 7 million patents presently in the patent archive into the digital age.” In particular, the USPTO Innovation Challenge [...]

“Scaling Up”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:53 +0000

In the December 2011 Communications of the ACM, CCC Council member and MIT Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Frans Kaashoek discusses multicore computing, security, and OS design: Kaashoek has … conducted wide-ranging research in computer systems, including operating system design, software-based network routing, and distributed hash tables, which revolutionized the storage and retrieval [...]

“The Internet Gets Physical”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:18:38 +0000

In the New York Times’ Sunday Review, technology writer Steve Lohr pens a story all about the “Internet of Things,” noting how “low-cost sensors, clever software, and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care, and food distribution.” From the article: The concept has been around for years, sometimes called the Internet [...]

MIXHS11 Challenges & Visions Session a Success

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:51:41 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Cui Tao and Matt-Mouley Bouamrane, the organizing chairs of the First International Workshop on Managing Interoperability and compleXity in Health Systems, which was held in October 2011 in Scotland (U.K.). We were delighted to host a successful Vision and Challenge Track at the First International Workshop on Managing Interoperability and [...]

“Humans, Computers Each Have Their Place”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:51:15 +0000

In The Washington Post yesterday: Modern technological advances have sparked many concerns that supercomputers, robots and other sophisticated machinery will soon erase the need for skilled workers, especially in industries like manufacturing and construction, perhaps driving the nation’s unemployment rate even higher in the years ahead. Similarly, Americans’ increasing dependence on technology, ranging from constant computer use to around-the-clock [...]

Mosaic Report: Synergies Between CS, Social Sciences

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:56:55 +0000

Earlier this month, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) released a new report – Rebuilding the Mosaic: Fostering Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation in the Next Decade – representing the results of a year-long visioning process assessing the directorate’s existing research investments [...]

NSF: Slight Increase in Ph.D.s in the Computer Sciences;CS Experienced “Fastest Growth” in Past Decade

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:23:53 +0000

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is out with a brief overview of the results of its annual Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) for 2010, finding that the numbers of Ph.D.s in the computer sciences increased by 3.5 percent that year, more than in any other discipline. (The total number of doctorates awarded by U.S. academic institutions declined for the [...]

Highlights: Predicting Hurricanes, Visualizing Research, and Perceiving Leaning

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:54:00 +0000

A series of computing research advances making the news in the past week: A New Forecasting Algorithm to Predict Hurricane Intensity and Wind Speed Scientists at Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Intelligent Data Analysis Lab (IDA) [have] developed a new forecasting algorithm called the Prediction Intensity Interval model for Hurricanes (PIIH) to help better predict hurricane intensity. PIIH [...]

33 Days Later, the DARPA Shredder Challenge is Solved

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:12:27 +0000

Last Friday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the end of its Shredder Challenge – a competition for computer scientists and puzzle enthusiasts alike to piece together a series of shredded documents — when a small team of just three San Francisco-based computer programmers correctly reconstructed each of the five challenge documents and solved their associated [...]

ACM Names Its 2011 Fellows

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:38:14 +0000

ACM is out with its 2011 Fellows, 46 of its members from universities, corporations, and research labs being recognized ”for their contributions to computing that have provided fundamental knowledge to the computing field and generated multiple technology advances in industry, commerce, healthcare, entertainment, and education.” They join a distinguished set of colleagues honored since 1993. Check out [...]

IARPA Seeking Machine Learning Breakthroughs

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:29:34 +0000

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is out with a request for information (RFI) this month, seeking input on “a possible future IARPA investment (such as a program or grand challenge)” in automatic machine learning: Machine learning (ML) is used extensively in application areas of interest to IARPA including speech, language, vision, sensor processing, [...]

NY Times Keeps Talking Computing

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:44:29 +0000

In addition to Tuesday’s special Science Times describing the future of computing, The New York Times has featured several other articles this week about cutting-edge work in the field. For instance, yesterday, the Times covered University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Professor Oren Etzioni’s electronics price prediction startup Decide – which utilizes data mining and machine learning over electronics prices to help [...]

NY Times‘ Tuesday Science Section All About the Future of Computing

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:44:53 +0000

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Science Times in yesterday’s New York Times — devoted entirely to “the future of computing”: What’s next? If we had a supercomputer that could predict the future, we would tell you. Then again, if the past is any guide, the predictions would certainly be wrong. This [...]

White House Unveils Cybesecurity R&D Roadmap

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:55:24 +0000

Earlier today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a new report — Trustworthy Cyberspace: Strategic Plan for the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Program – specifying an agenda for game-changing cybersecurity R&D. As U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt noted in a blog post, the report provides ”a roadmap to ensuring [...]

NIH: “Looking at the Potential of mHealth to Solve Long-standing Problems”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:25:10 +0000

Over 3,600 officials spanning government, industry, and academia are gathered at the third annual mHealth Summit just outside Washington, DC, this week, “to advance collaboration in the use of wireless technology to improve health outcomes in the U.S. and abroad.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius kicked off the conference on Monday morning, [...]

NSF Rolls Out “CS Bits & Bytes”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:00:22 +0000

In celebration of CSEdWeek – this week! – the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) rolled out CS Bits & Bytes this morning, a one-page biweekly newsletter highlighting innovative computer science research. The NSF CS Bits & Bytes series will emphasize how computer science permeates and improves our lives and supports progress in [...]

NSF Holds Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) Webinar

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:22:44 +0000

Earlier this afternoon, the National Science Foundation (NSF) held an informational webinar about its new multi-disciplinary Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program. Replacing NSF’s Trustworthy Computing (TwC) program this year, SaTC expands cybersecurity research support within the Foundation beyond the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate for the first time, to include the directorates for Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences (SBE) and Mathematical and Physical [...]

“Return of the Human Computers”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:10:24 +0000

An interesting piece about the future of human computing in the print edition of The Economist tomorrow – and it features the thinking of CCC Council member Eric Horvitz along with several others: …Over the past few years, human computing has been reborn. The new generation of human computers carry out different tasks, but they mirror their predecessors in many other [...]

Cybersecurity at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:15:11 +0000

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) will host the CCC Council’s very own Fred Schneider at 1pm EST today as part of its 60th Anniversary Commemorative Seminar Series. In a talk titled “Cybersecurity: Technology and Policy,” Fred will describe his research supporting “the construction of concurrent and distributed systems for high-integrity and mission-critical settings with [...]

Health Care Innovation Challenge

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:08:19 +0000

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation – within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — officially rolled out its Health Care Innovation Challenge, with up to $1 billion in grant funding to those who “implement the most compelling new ideas to deliver better health, [...]

DEBUT, Gig City™: Pushing the Envelope With Prize-Based Innovation

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:12:03 +0000

Two relevant challenges announced recently that are placing emphasis on prize-based innovation: DEBUT Challenge (for undergraduate students): The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) has announced a competition — called the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge – for undergraduate students to foster the design and development of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic devices and [...]

DARPA May Pursue Crowdsourced Software Testing

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:41:35 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Information Innovation Office (I2O) announced last week its intention to issue, perhaps in December, a solicitation for Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV), with the goal of investigating “innovative approaches that automatically create games capable of transforming formal verification problems into compelling games for end users to play.” From the official notification: [...]

“Millions of Printers Open to Hack Attack”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:11:58 +0000

An interesting computer security research result making news this morning — and stirring some controversy — courtesy of msnbc.com: Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it [...]

“Google, Microsoft Talk Artificial Intelligence”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:39:57 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) MIT’s Technology Review has an in-depth interview with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research, and Eric Horvitz, a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research (and a member of the CCC Council), about their optimism for the future of AI: Google and Microsoft don’t share a stage [...]

A Recap of Supercomputing

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:55:26 +0000

Last week in Seattle a record attendance of more than 11,000 people from throughout the world met at the Seattle Convention Center for SC11 – the largest international supercomputing conference focusing on high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis through a large industrial and research exhibition and a highly peer reviewed technical program (which was attended by almost 5,000 [...]

“Quantified Health”: Larry Smarr Discusses His 10-Year Quest

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:23:56 +0000

Among the 10 world-changing ideas we featured earlier today is the “forever health monitor,” i.e., the ability to exploit today’s technology to quickly, easily, and fairly inexpensively monitor our own vital signs in real time, so that we may pinpoint the first signs of trouble as they arise. It turns out one man – Internet pioneer and [...]

Scientific American‘s 10 World-Changing Ideas for 2011

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:46:58 +0000

In the December 2011 issue of Scientific American: Revolutions often spring from the simplest of ideas. When a young inventor named Steve Jobs wanted to provide computing power to “people who have no computer experience and don’t particularly care to gain any,” he ushered us from the cumbersome technology of mainframes and command-line prompts to the breezy [...]

More Stanford CS, Entrepreneurship Courses Go Online

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:55:59 +0000

This fall, Stanford launched a highly-publicized experiment in online learning, offering three of its most popular introductory computer science classes — Machine Learning, Introduction to Databases, and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence — through the Web for free. The classes, taught by Stanford faculty, are being held online in conjunction with the regular on-campus courses. And by [...]

NSF Launches Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace Program; Webinar Scheduled

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:48:21 +0000

Last month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched a new multi-disciplinary program — Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) – seeking proposals that address cybersecurity needs. SaTC replaces NSF’s Trustworthy Computing (TwC) program, expanding support within the Foundation to include, in addition to the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), the directorates for Social, Behavioral, [...]

“Computing and AI for a Sustainable Future”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:46:05 +0000

Following last month’s focus on smart health and wellbeing, IEEE Intelligent Systems is inaugurating the Department of AI and Sustainability — another area of national importance! — in its forthcoming November/December 2011 issue. Doug Fisher, a Professor of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University who recently served as a Program Director at the National [...]

Third Annual CSEdWeek Just Around the Corner

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:30:22 +0000

The third annual Computer Science Education Week — CSEdWeek for short — is just around the corner! Endorsed by Congress as December 4-10, 2011, in recognition of Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday (Dec. 9th, 1906) and her many contributions to the field of computer science, CSEdWeek is “a call to action to raise awareness of [...]

Talk to your DARPA Program Manager!

Ed Lazowska — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 21:09:05 +0000

On November 15, seven University of Washington faculty members from Biology, Bioengineering, and Computer Science & Engineering were privileged to share a 2-hour breakfast in Seattle with DARPA Director Regina Dugan, Deputy Director Ken Gabriel, IIO Office Director Dan Kaufman, IIO Program Manager Ben Cutler, and U.S. Marines Operational Liaison Col. Robert Durkin. One message [...]

“Emerging Challenges of Data-Intensive Scientific Computing”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:15:41 +0000

Computing in Science and Engineering is out with a special issue for November/December 2011 focused on Big Data — and the significant research opportunities emerging from a growing wealth of scientific data. As guest editors Francis Alexander (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Adolfy Hoisie (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), and Alexander Szalay (Johns Hopkins University) write in their [...]

Google’s Citation Tracker Kicks Off

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:12:31 +0000

From our friends at The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Wired Campus Blog: Anyone can now track his or her citations via Google Scholar. The free citation service is “a simple way for authors to compute their citation metrics and track them over time,” the company said in an announcement [Wednesday] on the Google Scholar blog. Google [had] [...]

USAID, ED Seeking to Tap Technology to Teach Children

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:46:05 +0000

At 10am EST this morning, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — together with its Australian counterpart AusAID, World Vision U.S., and World Vision Australia, and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) — will launch a $20 million initiative to “focus global attention on finding ground-breaking, scalable innovations that improve early grade reading outcomes for all children in [...]

What the DARPA Network Challenge Showed

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:33:25 +0000

As we’ve previously noted in this space, in December 2009, 10 red balloons were deployed from locations throughout the U.S. as part of the DARPA Network Challenge — a competition to “explore the roles the Interent and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.” [...]

NSF’s Cyberlearning Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:25:50 +0000

Earlier this fall, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) issued a new solicitation for FY 2012 for its Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program, providing three different research categories of funding. The deadline for the first category — Exploratory Projects — is December 15. From the solicitation: Through the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program, NSF seeks [...]

“Today, the Internet — Tomorrow, the Internet of Things?”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:21:19 +0000

An feature in Computerworld last week takes an in-depth look at the “widely predicted Internet of Things (IoT), where anything with intelligence (including machines, roads, and buildings) will have an online presence, generating data that could be put to uses currently unimagined.” From the article: Dave Evans, chief futurist at Cisco… predicts 50 billion connected devices by 2020, [...]

Reminder: CCC Council Nominations Due Tomorrow

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:32:13 +0000

A reminder that the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is seeking nominations for individuals to serve on the CCC Council beginning January 2012. The deadline for nominations, to be e-mailed to ccc-nominations@cra.org, is tomorrow — Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 — at 11:59pm EST. The call for nominations is reproduced below in its entirety. The Computing Community Consortium Seeks Nominations [...]

First Person: “Science is Only One Part of Policymaking”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:49:27 +0000

Last Monday, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) – together with the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Government Affairs Committee – ran its first-ever Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI). Thirty-five computing researchers from around the country came to Washington to learn about U.S. science policy. Here, one of the participants — Peter Stone, an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science [...]

“Can Computer Science Save Healthcare?”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:08:51 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Following on the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new, interdisciplinary Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) program, we thought this would be an appropriate time to highlight a series of articles about health IT R&D in the September/October 2011 issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems. From the abstract: [...]

NSF Unveils Cross-Cutting Smart Health & Wellbeing Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:04:41 +0000

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Engineering (ENG), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) have joined forces to co-sponsor a new, interdisciplinary Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) program for FY 2012. The solicitation just out today broadens a program first implemented by CISE in spring 2011 — and is consistent with an outline in last [...]

First Person: “In Washington the National is Local”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:57:23 +0000

On Monday, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) – together with the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Government Affairs Committee – ran its first-ever Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI). Thirty-five computing researchers from around the country came to Washington to learn about U.S. science policy. Here, one of the participants – Beki Grinter, an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at [...]

“Inventing the Future of Computing”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:46:02 +0000

For those who may have missed it, an article in last week’s Bloomberg Businessweek – under the heading “creating chips that learn and respond as they gain experience” — described recent and ongoing advances in AI, cognition, and human-computer interaction: In a windowless room deep inside IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, scientists are teaching a computer [...]

NSF Presenting New “CREATIV” Grant Mechanism Today

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:22:18 +0000

At 11am EST today, key officials from the National Science Foundation (NSF), led by NSF Director Subra Suresh, will present a live webcast about the Foundation’s new Creative Research Awards for Transformative Interdisciplinary Ventures (CREATIV) — a “pilot grant mechanism under the Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) initiative, to support bold interdisciplinary [...]

Agencies Seek Input on Public Access to Scientific Data

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:06:20 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting broad public input about “the long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of Federally-funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Some background: OSTP has [...]

Challenges & Visions Track a Centerpiece of SSRR 2011

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:01:14 +0000

The Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) latest Challenges & Visions track was held Nov. 3 at the 9th Annual IEEE Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR) in Kyoto, Japan. The “outrageous visions for computing in rescue robotics” track was a success, expanding the awareness of computing for a less traditionally computational group — roboticists. (Previous tracks [...]

First-Ever Leadership in Science Policy Institute Kicks Off

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:46:21 +0000

Moments ago in downtown Washington, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) convened its inaugural Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), a daylong workshop intended to educate a small cadre of computing researchers about U.S. science policy. Throughout the day, the 35 participants — selected through an open nomination process earlier this year — will be attending [...]

“The U.S. Star in Humanoid Robotics”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:58:18 +0000

In today’s Washington Post Magazine, Dennis Hong, director of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech and “a leader in the movement to perfect the humanoid robot,” gets profiled: In the movies, robots are everywhere, boxing and shooting and running and flying and generally outdoing humans at every turn. In reality, the humanoid robot has a [...]

EarthCube: A Community Experiment

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:18:33 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Amy Apon, Chair of the Computer Science Division at Clemson University’s School of Computing. Apon attended the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) EarthCube Charette this week, and she recounts her experiences below. Earlier this week, the EarthCube community met at the first-ever EarthCube Charette in Washington, DC. EarthCube is [...]

GEC12: “Jumpstarting Application Development” with US Ignite

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:58:04 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Nearly 300 researchers, entrepreneurs, infrastructure providers, city managers, and others from around the country are gathered in Kansas City, MO, this week for the GENI Engineering Conference (GEC) — the twelfth in a series of conferences since the GENI Project was first funded by the National Science [...]

“Crowdsourcing Nutrition”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:06:36 +0000

Most of us have sat down to dinner and wondered just how many calories we are about to consume. Now, thanks to undergraduate researchers at Harvard University, there’s a way to do it quickly, easily, and quite reliably — all with the simple snap of a photo and the reliance of the crowd. According to [...]

Can You Reconstruct Shredded Documents?

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:38:43 +0000

That’s the question being posed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which recently announced the DARPA Shredder Challenge – a competition for computer scientists and puzzle enthusiasts alike to piece together a series of shredded documents. The goal is “to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might [...]

DoE, ONR Announce Materials Genome Solicitations

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:32:33 +0000

Back in June, the Administration announced a $500 million Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) to stimulate the development of new technologies to spur high-tech manufacturing. A key focus was a $70 million commitment to research in next-generation robotics. But there’s another component of the AMP that also warrants some of our attention: called the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), [...]

Pinpointing Anomalies in Complex Financial Data

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:34:46 +0000

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed new software that helps identify anomalies in complex financial data, in hopes of detecting problematic financial trends that jeopardize U.S. and global financial systems. It’s a great example of the kinds of research opportunities at the intersection of computer science and finance. From [...]

Facebook’s Fellowship Program for Current CS Ph.D. Students

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:44:06 +0000

Facebook has announced a new installment of its Facebook Fellowship Program – providing full-time Ph.D. students involved in on-going research in computer science (and allied fields) full tuition, a $30,000 stipend, $5,000 for travel, and $2,500 for a personal computer in an effort to facilitate their studies. Each applicant must provide a one- to two-page research summary [...]

Keys to Biomedical Innovation: “Data Mining & Information Sharing”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:05:38 +0000

Earlier this month at an event in Washington, DC, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Ph.D., released a blueprint — titled “Driving Biomedical Innovation: Initiatives for Improving Products for Patients” — for spurring biomedical innovation and improving human health. Stemming from “a review of FDA’s current policies and practices, as well as months of [...]

DHS Secretary Talks Cybersecurity Innovation, Workforce

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:51:06 +0000

Before a packed room of leading government officials, technologists, and journalists in downtown Washington this morning, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stressed the need for a new public-private partnership framework that enables innovation and workforce development in cybersecurity in order to adequately protect our nation’s interests from cyber attacks. The event – Cybersecurity Breakfast: Protecting [...]

“7 Big Problems for 7 Billion People”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:09:18 +0000

Sometime on Halloween — yes, Halloween — the world’s population is projected to hit 7 billion. In anticipation of the numerical milestone, msnbc.com has published an article this week calling on leading experts in many different disciplines to weigh in on the challenges caused by the burgeoning world population, noting: How we respond now will determine whether [...]

“Translation Algorithms Used to Crack Centuries-Old Code”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:25:01 +0000

An interesting story making the rounds this week about researchers who have cracked a centuries-old secret message using statistical translation techniques. From Wired UK: Computer scientists from Sweden and the United States have applied modern-day, statistical translation techniques — the sort that are used in Google Translate — to decode a 250-year old secret message. The original document, [...]

International S&E Visualization Challenge: Vote Before Friday

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:49:10 +0000

Back in February, we noted that the National Science Foundation and Science were partnering to run another International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge to celebrate the grand tradition of visualization — specifically for communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. Well, now the submissions are being put to a public vote – with winners to be [...]

Pushing the “Humble Thermostat Into the Digital Age”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:24:44 +0000

An interesting example in today’s New York Times about computing in sustainability: …The humble household thermostat. A boring wall fixture and an unlikely target for innovation? Not to [Tony] Fadell [a former Apple executive who led iPod and iPhone development from 2001 to 2009], his team of 100 computer hardware and software experts and the [...]