CCC Blog

DoD Announces Robotics Grants

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:51:32 +0000

Last fall, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for its Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP), which “augments current university capabilities or develops new university capabilities to perform cutting-edge defense research.” At the time, the BAA specifically encouraged proposals “for instrumentation supporting research in robotics.” Today, the DoD is announcing the results [...]

KDD Workshop on Sustainability Calling for Papers

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:35:03 +0000

The organizers for this year’s second KDD workshop on Data Mining Applications in Sustainability (SustKDD 2012) have issued a call for papers. The workshop seeks to bring together researchers working on applications of Knowledge Discovery and Data-mining (KDD) to sustainability in diverse areas, especially in infrastructures such as IT, Smart Grids, water, and transportation. From the [...]

“A Neurally Controlled Robotic Arm”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:56:08 +0000

An article published in Nature this afternoon is generating some buzz in the news media, largely for the advances in fundamental computing research, particularly with respect to brain-machine interfaces. From a msnbc.com story: The stroke that disconnected Cathy Hutchinson’s brain from her body has kept her silent and unable to move for more than 14 years. [...]

Recapping Last Week’s Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring Workshop

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:02:45 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Mario Bergés, an assistant professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Mario recently co-organized the first International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring. (This post originally appeared here.) Last Monday, May 7th, the 1st International Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) Workshop took [...]

NSF, NIH Holding Second Big Data Webinar May 21st

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:51:57 +0000

For those who missed last Tuesday’s webinar about the Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science and Engineering (BIGDATA) program – the centerpiece of the Administration’s $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative – the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced that they will hold a second webinar next Monday, May 21st at 11am EDT. Registration [...]

DoE Seeking “Smart” Home Photovoltaic System

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:24:40 +0000

As part of its recently announced SunShot Initiative — “a collaborative national initiative to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade” — the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for “transformational solar technologies and [...]

Administration Announces New Materials Genome Commitments

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:47:34 +0000

Nearly a year ago, the Obama Administration announced a $500 million Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) to stimulate the development of new technologies to spur high-tech manufacturing. A key focus for the computing research community was a $70 million commitment to research in next-generation robotics. But as we’ve noted previously, another important aspect of the AMP for computer science was the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), a [...]

DARPA to Unveil Initiative on Natural Language Analysis

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:41:43 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced plans to issue a new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) titled Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text (DEFT) – a program that will require leveraging advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and computational linguistics ”to assist warfighters with planning and decision-making by inferring implicit information in text, filtering redundancy and connecting [...]

BuildSys 2012 Calling for Papers: Sensors, Buildings, Energy

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:12:58 +0000

The organizers of BuildSys 2012 – ACM’s workshop on systems’ issues in the area of building controls, energy management, embedded, and networked sensors — have issued a call for papers. The workshop, which “provides an ideal convergence venue for the Sensor, Building, and Energy research communities to address the research challenges facing the design, deployment, use, and fundamental limits of [...]

Waterman Awardees Present to NSB, Visit Local High Schools

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:11:44 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Scott Aaronson and Robert Wood, the joint recipients of the 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award, visited the National Science Foundation (NSF) last week. In addition to presenting to the National Science Board (NSB) and chatting with NSF staff, they spent some time describing their research projects and experiences to [...]

DARPA Seeking Game-Based Interactive Medical System

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:36:08 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has issued a call for proposals through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, seeking a mobile application that couples game design, architecture, and fundamental research in HCI and education to develop a mobile application that teaches medical first-responder skills. According to the solicitation (following the link; emphasis added): Combining [...]

One-on-One With 2011 Turing Award Winner Judea Pearl

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:23:32 +0000

As part of a continuing series of interviews with thought leaders in computing, our friends at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) have published a podcast this week featuring 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award winner Judea Pearl: The interview reveals the fascinating role of philosophy and empirical science in Pearl’s work, which encompasses probability, causality, and counterfactual thinking. [...]

NSF, NIH Hold Joint Webinar on BIGDATA Solicitation

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:54:07 +0000

Earlier this afternoon, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) held a joint webinar addressing the Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science and Engineering (BIGDATA) solicitation announced in late March — the cornerstone of the Federal government’s $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative (more after the jump). “Today we are presenting the first NSF-NIH webinar [...]

Surge in Postdocs Continues, According to Latest Survey Data

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:29:38 +0000

The recent surge in the number of new Ph.D.s in computer science and allied fields pursuing postdoctoral positions has continued in the past year, according to the latest data from the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) annual Taulbee survey being published this month — warranting renewed attention to CRA’s efforts to engage the community in a conversation about [...]

Waterman Awardees to Present to National Science Board Today

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:22:32 +0000

Scott Aaronson and Robert Wood, the two computer scientists who in March were named joint recipients of the 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award, will deliver half-hour presentations about their research to the National Science Board (NSB) later this morning. The presentations are scheduled to begin at 11am EDT, and they will be streamed live via the web as part of an [...]

Big Data: A “Transformative New Currency” for Science

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:45:18 +0000

Calling data “a transformative new currency for science, engineering, education, and commerce,” National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Farnam Jahanian kicked off a briefing about ‘Big Data’ on Capitol Hill earlier today. Organized by TechAmerica, the briefing sought to bring together a panel of leaders from government and industry to discuss [...]

ACM Announces Distinguished Service, Doctoral Dissertation Awardees

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:38:00 +0000

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) continues to roll out its annual awards, today naming William Wulf the recipient of its 2011 Distinguished Service Award and Seth Cooper its 2011 Doctoral Dissertation Award. Wulf is being recognized for his service as both the Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the President of [...]

Simons Foundation Awards UC Berkeley $60M to Launch Theory of Computing Institute

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:51:20 +0000

This morning, the University of California, Berkeley, announced a $60 million grant from the Simons Foundation – which seeks ”to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences” — to establish the new Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. The goal is to have “computer theorists and researchers from around the globe … converge to [...]

Computing at the USA Science & Engineering Festival

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:09:36 +0000

Computing was among the excitement this past weekend at the 2nd Annual USA Science & Engineering Festival, held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The festival is the largest celebration of science and engineering in the U.S. and featured over 500 exhibits and 75 performances and shows on multiple stages. The National [...]

NSF, NIH to Hold Webinar on Big Data Solicitation

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:02:55 +0000

Late last month, the Administration unveiled a $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative, committing new funding to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The initiative includes a joint solicitation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), providing up to $25 million for Core Techniques and Technologies for [...]

The Inaugural Collective Intelligence Conference

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:39:40 +0000

Researchers from multiple disciplines spanning computer science, mathematics, the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, and biology gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week for the first-ever Collective Intelligence conference. Organized by Tom Malone (MIT) and Luis von Ahn (Carnegie Mellon University), the conference sought papers about behavior that is both collective (spanning groups of [...]

21st Century Cities — and Microsoft’s Energy-Smart Buildings

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:06:54 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Elizabeth L. Grossman, a member of Microsoft Corporation’s Technology Policy Group. Yesterday, Microsoft’s Innovation & Policy Center, in Washington, DC, hosted a panel discussion on “21st Century Cities” as part of the @Microsoft Conversations series. The panel explored the technology and policy opportunities and challenges [...]

ACM Honors Innovators for Research, Education Advances

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:50:54 +0000

Congratulations to Luis von Ahn, Hanan Samet, Hal Abelson, and Stephanie Forrest, who today were named recipients of four prestigious awards issued by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The awards, which honor the recipients for the significant contributions that they have made to enable computer science to solve real-world challenges, “reflect achievements in human-computer interaction, computer science [...]

NSF’s Arctic SEES Program

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:14:09 +0000

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and a consortium of French agencies, has announced a new program under its Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) initiative focused on the Arctic. This program — dubbed Arctic [...]

“Standards for Postdoc Training”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:02:13 +0000

An interesting editorial (subscription required) in this week’s Science magazine, authored by Alan I. Leshner, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Executive Publisher of Science: Postdoctoral (Postdoc) training has become virtually institutionalized in many parts of the world as a discrete stage in the career progression in most science and engineering fields. [...]

NSF, SRC Partner on Failure-Resistant Systems

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:41:20 +0000

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) have just announced a new joint initiative – Failure-Resistant Systems (FRS) – that seeks to address “compelling research challenges in failure resistant systems that are of paramount importance to industry, academia, and society at large.” According to the solicitation, which spans NSF’s directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) [...]

One-on-One With Watson Creator David Ferrucci

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:19:53 +0000

David Ferrucci, the IBM Research Staff Member who led the development of Watson – the question-answering system that bested human competitors on Jeopardy! in February 2011 — recently visited the National Science Foundation (NSF) to describe the fundamental advances underpinning the supercomputer. While there, Ferrucci took a few minutes to sit down for an interview by Helen Hastings, a senior at [...]

NASA Holds International Space Apps Challenge;Preliminary Results Posted

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:08:23 +0000

Last October, we noted that NASA had announced plans to run an International Space Apps Challenge in early 2012, bringing together officials from international space agencies, scientists, and citizens in an effort to use publicly-released scientific data to create, build, and invent new solutions that address challenges of global importance, from the impact of weather upon the global economy to the depletion [...]

NSF Issues IGERT Solicitation Focused on Big Data

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:54:09 +0000

The National Science Foundation (NSF) last week issued a new solicitation under its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, providing a specific track for training the next generation of researchers in computational and data-enabled science and engineering. The solicitation is part of the Foundation’s (and Administration’s) Big Data Initiative, which was announced last month. According to [...]

CISE Researchers Discuss “Security for Cloud Computing”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:02:03 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Klara Nahrstedt and Roy Campbell, faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Mohamed Gouda, program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The trio recently organized and ran a NSF-sponsored workshop on Security for Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is becoming an integral part of our computing and communication ecosystem, [...]

ACM Names 2012-13 Athena Lecturer

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:51:16 +0000

The Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W) yesterday named MIT’s Nancy Lynch its 2012-13 Athena Lecturer, recognizing Lynch for her advances in distributed systems enabling dependable Internet and wireless network applications. The Athena Lecturer award, which comes with a $10,000 honorarium provided by Google, “celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer [...]

DARPA Robotics Challenge: Q&A With the Program Manager

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:11:55 +0000

Last week, we reported on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge, which will launch this October with a $2 million prize — plus up to $32 million in related R&D work — “to whomever can help push the state-of-the-art in robotics beyond today’s capabilities in support of the [Department of Defense's' disaster recovery mission." [...]

Bringing Computer Science and Journalism Together

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:28:35 +0000

Computer scientist — and 2009 Computing Innovation Fellow (CIFellow) – Nick Diakopoulos recently published a white paper about the similarities between journalism and computer science that’s attracted quite a bit of buzz. In an article in Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab earlier this month: What if journalism were invented today? How would a computer scientist go about building it, improving [...]

Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Finals Later This Month

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:30:06 +0000

Later this month, the best and brightest cyber defense students from 10 universities throughout the country will descend on San Antonio, TX, for the 8th annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) sponsored by Deloitte. The three-day final, which kicks off on April 20th, challenges participants on the “operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing [...]

Multi-Agency Earth System Models (EaSM) Proposals Due

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:29:07 +0000

The National Science Foundation (NSF), through its cross-cutting Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) initiative and together with the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Energy (DoE), is seeking proposals for its Earth Systems Modeling (EaSM) program. The goal of EaSM is to foster interdisciplinary efforts aimed at the “development and application of next-generation Earth System Models” [...]

Computational Biology and “Dusting Off the Turing Test”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:55:12 +0000

This week’s Science magazine features a special section on computational biology: Today, the availability of vast quantities of new data, together with striking advances in computing power, is promising to give us new insights into the mechanisms of life. This special section … highlights recent advances and outstanding challenges. Such a section would be interesting by itself. [...]

More on the White House’s Grand Challenges Initiative

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:21:27 +0000

At an event at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in downtown Washington yesterday, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Deputy Director for Policy Tom Kalil expanded upon a blog post earlier this week describing the Administration’s keen interest in Grand Challenges — “ambitious yet achievable goals that capture the public’s imagination and that require innovation and breakthroughs in science and [...]

Regina Dugan’s TED 2012 Talk

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:14:13 +0000

Recently-departed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Regina Dugan gave a “breathtaking” TEDTalk at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, in late February, describing some of the extraordinary projects — a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, etc. — funded by her agency, and the paths to success. Dugan began: You should [...]

AFOSR Seeking “Transformational Computing”

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:41:56 +0000

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) has announced a new basic research initiative seeking to bring together the computational hardware, software, aerospace sciences, physics, and applied mathematics communities “to develop a novel and unique capability to design, optimize, build, and deploy specialized high-performance computing platforms to speed development of Air Force systems.” According to [...]

DARPA Unveils Robotics Grand Challenge

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:02:13 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unveiled the DARPA Robotics Challenge yesterday, offering a $2 million prize — plus up to $32 million in related R&D work — “to whomever can help push the state-of-the-art in robotics beyond today’s capabilities in support of the [Department of Defense's] disaster recovery mission.” The challenge seeks the development of “ground [...]

Strategic Planning for the NIH Common Fund

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:12:22 +0000

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has scheduled two meetings in early May to facilitate strategic planning for its Common Fund, seeking to gather input from the research community that will help inform potential new program ideas. Among the broad themes around which the NIH wishes to center discussion at these “forward focus workshops”: computational and informatics [...]

Dept. of Education Releases Learning Analytics Issue Brief

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:21:24 +0000

The Department of Education’s (ED) Office of Educational Technology today released a draft issue brief — Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics – representing the results of a months-long discourse among 8 academic and 15 industrial data mining and learning analytics experts conducted by SRI International. The brief, inspired by ED’s 2010 [...]

OSTP Announces Grand Challenges Conference;CCC Seeking Your Topic Ideas

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:15:57 +0000

Yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced that it will convene a Grand Challenges conference this summer, highlighting the “progress the Administration has made on existing Grand Challenge initiatives” and recognizing “new commitments and actions by Federal agencies, companies, philanthropists, universities, and non-profits to set and meet Grand Challenges.” To aid [...]

CRA’s Taulbee Survey: Undergraduate CS Enrollments Up for Fourth Straight Year

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:13:10 +0000

The Computing Research Association (CRA) today released a report – Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends, 2010-2011 – providing summary data from its annual Taulbee survey of Ph.D.-granting departments in computer science and allied fields in the U.S. and Canada. As posted on CRA’s Policy Blog: Enrollments in undergraduate computer science programs rose 9.6 percent in the 2011-12 school year, [...]

DARPA to Issue New Grand Challenge

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:52:28 +0000

Word surfaced last week of a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge, expected to be issued shortly. First reported by Hizook and later confirmed by Wired, the new Grand Challenge calls for “a humanoid robot (with a bias toward bipedal designs) that can be used in rough terrain and for industrial disasters.” According to [...]

Transformative Research: Reflections on a NSF Workshop

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:14:27 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Michael E. Gorman, a Professor in the department of science, technology, and society (STS) at the University of Virginia. Mike recently completed a rotation as a program director at the National Science Foundation, and co-funded a workshop on transformative research that took place in Washington, [...]

DoE to Launch “Apps for Energy” Challenge Today

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:24:00 +0000

Later today, the Department of Energy (DoE) — together with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Itron, and Gridwise Alliance — will launch the Apps for Energy competition, “challenging developers to use the Green Button data access program to bring residential and commercial utility data to life.” Through the competition, DoE will offer $100,000 in cash prizes to the [...]

Google’s Project Glass: Augmented Reality Glasses

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:14:22 +0000

Google unveiled details about its Project Glass initiative Wednesday, attracting quite a bit of buzz in the popular press. In a Google+ post co-authored by Babak Parviz, Steve Lee, and Sebastian Thrun: We think technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t. [...]

NPR Hosts Conversation About Last Week’s Big Data Launch

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:51:15 +0000

NPR’s Diane Rehm Show on Monday featured an hour-long discussion among several thought leaders — titled “The New World of Massive Data Mining” – about the Federal government’s new Big Data R&D Initiative: Every time you go on the Internet, make a phone call, send an email, pass a traffic camera or pay a bill, you create [electronic data]. In [...]

NSF Announces New Expeditions in Computing Awards

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:38:10 +0000

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) today announced four new Expeditions in Computing awards, providing each selected project team up to $10 million in funding over five years to pursue “ambitious fundamental research” that will shape “the future of computing and information technologies for decades to come.” [...]

“The World According to DARPA”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:38:03 +0000

Our colleagues over at IEEE have published a great piece by G. Pascal Zachary, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, opining on the legacy of recently-departed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Regina Dugan: The most famous name in American innovation today isn’t Apple or Google. Nor is it Facebook, Boeing, or Intel. The iconic American [...]

White House, Labor Dept. Announce Summer Jobs+ Code Sprint

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Calling all developers! Late this afternoon, the White House and Department of Labor announced the Summer Jobs+ Code Sprint, ”challenging the developer community to build apps that reach kids throughout the nation on their browsers, Facebook, Android, iOS, SMS or any other platform.” The Labor Department released an API that opens access to thousands of summer internship, mentorship, and [...]

Towards Smarter Cities and Homes

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:07:10 +0000

This week’s Science magazine features two perspectives (subscription required) authored by three computer scientists – Diane Cook (Washington State University), Michael O’Grady (University College Dublin), and Gregory O’Hare (University College Dublin) – describing visions for future “smart” homes and cities and, notably, the computing research challenges that must be addressed for these visions to become reality. In the first piece about smart homes, Cook [...]

“Computer Science for the Rest of Us”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 15:12:08 +0000

An article in today’s New York Times that’s making the rounds — written by Randall Stross, an author and professor of business at San Jose State University: READING, writing and — refactoring code? Many professors of computer science say college graduates in every major should understand software fundamentals. They don’t argue that everyone needs to be a [...]

Video from Thursday’s Big Data R&D Initiative Launch Posted

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:06:47 +0000

As we’ve covered extensively, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), together with six Federal agencies, rolled out the Big Data R&D Initiative on Thursday afternoon, providing $200 million in funding to improve our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. Highlights included a $25 million solicitation supporting [...]

Sanjeev Arora Named Winner of 2011 ACM-Infosys Award

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:21:50 +0000

Congratulations to Sanjeev Arora, the Charles C. Fitzmorris Professor of Computer Science at Princeton, who yesterday was named the recipient of the 2011 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences for his “contributions to computational complexity, algorithms, and optimization that have reshaped our understanding of computation.” According to an ACM-Infosys press release: Arora’s research revolutionized the approach to [...]

Obama Administration Unveils $200M Big Data R&D Initiative

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:06:25 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) The Obama Administration this morning unveiled details about its Big Data R&D Initiative, committing more than $200 million in new funding through six agencies and departments to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The effort, spearheaded by the White House Office [...]

NY Times on Today’s Big Data R&D Initiative Launch

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:13:44 +0000

Updated Thursday, March 29, at 10:55am: OSTP and the agencies have announced the Big Data R&D Initiative. See the latest details here. *** As we noted on Tuesday, the Obama Administration is announcing a new, multi-agency Big Data R&D Initiative today. An event — to be streamed live via the web – is scheduled for 2pm EDT. New [...]

DARPA’s Space Programming Challenge Kicks Off Today

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:22:41 +0000

Today, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), TopCoder, Inc., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Space Systems Laboratory, is launching the Zero Robotics Autonomous Space Capture Challenge, asking individuals and teams of programmers to develop a fuel-optimal control algorithm that enables a satellite on board the [...]

White House to Announce Big Data R&D Initiative Thursday;Live Webcast Planned

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:23:33 +0000

Updated Thursday, March 29, at 10:55am: OSTP and the agencies have announced the Big Data R&D Initiative. See the latest details here. *** The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), together with the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science, and Department of Defense (DoD), [...]

Improving Our Ability to Predict Tornadoes

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:42:29 +0000

Today’s National Science Foundation (NSF) Science Nation features the work of Amy McGovern, an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Adjunct Associate Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, whose data mining and predictive modeling approaches are transforming the way we predict tornadoes. According to the article: Tornadoes claim hundreds of lives and cause billions of [...]

“Materials Scientists Look to a Data-Intensive Future”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:01:02 +0000

We’ve previously described in this space the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) – a $100 million initiative announced last June to drastically accelerate the discovery, development, and manufacturing of new and advanced materials — describing the critical role to be played by the computer and information sciences and engineering research community, including via predictive modeling, simulation, and visualization capabilities. Now there’s an [...]

In Memoriam: David L. Waltz

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:25:16 +0000

The computing research community lost a wonderful researcher, colleague, and friend last week. David L. Waltz, whose extraordinary contributions and service to the field included a term as member of the CCC Council during the founding years, passed away on Thursday. The New York Times‘s John Markoff has written an excellent tribute: David L. Waltz, a computer [...]

A Workshop on Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:35:16 +0000

Mario Bergés (CMU) and Computing Innovation Fellow Zico Kolter (MIT) are co-organizing the first International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring, to be held on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University on May 7th. With support from Bosch Research, the workshop will provide a forum to unite researchers working on the topic of energy disaggregation, particularly on sensing [...]

FTC Launches New Technology Blog

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:44:25 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today launched a new blog — Tech @ FTC – focused on technology and consumer issues. Through the blog, the FTC aims to provide a vehicle for the agency’s Chief Technologist to communicate about technology issues to both technology experts and the broader public. Ed Felten, on leave from Princeton University (where [...]

NIST: $2.6 Million for Novel Semiconductor Research

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:24:07 +0000

On Tuesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced a solicitation for proposals that support long-term research in next-generation semiconductor technology, calling the work “critical to the future of the U.S. electronics industry.” Through the solicitation, NIST plans to issue one award of up to $2.6 million in Federal cost-shared funding (a minimum of 25 [...]

“Amazon Adds That Robotic Touch”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:35:02 +0000

The Wall Street Journal features a story about Amazon.com’s purchase this week of robot company Kiva Systems, Inc., providing a glimpse into some of the many computing research advances — in robotics, machine intelligence, and optimization — that have enabled Kiva’s $775 million success story. According to the WSJ article: Amazon.com Inc., said Monday it is buying Kiva Systems, Inc., [...]

Computing for Disaster Management Visioning

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:07:29 +0000

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), together with the National Science Foundation (NSF), is co-sponsoring a limited-participation visioning workshop on computing for disaster management. Led by Robin Murphy (Texas A&M University) and Trevor Darrell (University of California, Berkeley), the workshop will identify ways in which fundamental computing research in the broadest terms can advance the field [...]

The DARPA Challenge That Didn’t Go Viral

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:44:23 +0000

Earlier this month, we highlighted the Cash for Locating and Identifying Quick Response codes (CLIQR) Quest, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) prize-based challenge seeking to advance the understanding of social media and the Internet. The challenge offered $40,000 to the first individual or team that could locate 7 posters appearing in U.S. cities bearing [...]

Updated: “Fixing the Brain With Computers”

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:44:18 +0000

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) In IEEE’s Spectrum this week, there’s an interesting interview about man-machine interfaces with neurosurgeon and self-described hacker Richard Bucholz, a Professor of Neurosurgery and the Medical Director for the St. Louis Regional MEG Center at Saint Louis University, and a leading participant in the Human Connectome Project [...]

Agencies Seek White Papers, Announce Cybersecurity Symposium

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:46:38 +0000

Earlier this month, the National Coordination Office (NCO) for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program — the Federal program that provides a framework and mechanisms for coordination among 15 Federal agencies that support networking and information technology research and development — issued a Call for Papers for the National Symposium on [...]

Update: “Bypassing the Password”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:19:22 +0000

Back in January, we described a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program focused on innovative research proposals “in support of the development of new software-based biometric modalities” that go beyond passwords for identity validation. Now The New York Times is out with a story that sheds more light on the initiative: IMAGINE sitting down [...]

“U.S. Accelerating Cyberweapon Research”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:12:12 +0000

The Washington Post is out with an article today about the Pentagon’s “accelerating efforts to develop a new generation of cyberweapons capable of disrupting enemy military networks even when those networks are not connected to the Internet”: Last year, to speed up the development of cyberweapons, as well as defensive technology, then-Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn [...]

OMB, OSTP Seeking Input on Grants, Cooperative Agreements

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:01:31 +0000

Late last month, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Guidance, seeking public comment on proposed changes to single audit, cost principles, and administrative requirements for Federal grants and cooperative agreements. According to OSTP, ”In many instances (e.g., indirect-costs-setting policy), multiple options are outlined [in [...]

Computer Science at the World Economic Forum

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:54:50 +0000

The following is a special contribution to the CCC Blog by Stephanie Forrest, professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico — and until recently, a member of the CCC Council. Stephanie attended the World Economic Forum’s 2012 Annual Meeting earlier this year, and she writes about her experiences here. U.S. computer science and [...]

“The Computer’s Next Conquest: Crossword Puzzles”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:55:21 +0000

From yesterday’s New York Times: What’s a 10-letter word for smarty pants? This weekend the world may find out when computer technology again tries to best human brains, this time at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. Computers can make mincemeat of chess masters and vanquish the champions of “Jeopardy!” The question is: Can the trophy [...]

Navy Announces “Cutting-Edge Lab” for Robotics, Autonomous Systems

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:52:55 +0000

Earlier today at a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director John Holdren and Chief of Naval Research Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) opened the Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR) on its campus in Washington, DC. LASR aims “to support cutting-edge research in robotics and autonomous systems of [...]

ARPA-E’s Open Call for “Transformational Energy Technologies”

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:52:28 +0000

Earlier this month, the Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) released a $150 million funding opportunity open to all breakthrough energy technologies. Individual awards under the Open FOA will range between $250,000 and $10 million. According to the announcement: To address the challenges imposed by the rapidly evolving global energy market, ARPA-E seeks to support transformational [...]

ACM Names Judea Pearl 2011 Turing Award Winner

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:56:17 +0000

Hot off the press from ACM this morning: ACM has named Judea Pearl of the University of California, Los Angeles the winner of the 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award for innovations that enabled remarkable advances in the partnership between humans and machines that is the foundation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Pearl pioneered developments in probabilistic and [...]

REMINDER: NSF/CISE Running a CAREER Workshop

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:39:04 +0000

As we noted in this space last month, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is holding workshops this spring to help young faculty prepare competitive CAREER proposals. Applications for the second workshop — to be held in Tempe, AZ, near the campus of Arizona State University — open today. The deadline to [...]

CCC Launches NITRD Symposium Website;Videos, Slides, Written Summaries of Talks All Available

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:04:15 +0000

On Feb. 16th, over 150 Federal officials, Congressional staffers, academic researchers, and industry leaders packed a room overlooking the United States Capitol to mark two decades of coordinated Federal investment in networking and information technology research and development with a daylong symposium exploring progress and prospects in the field. Today, I’m delighted to announce that [...]

DoE Announces EERE Postdoctoral Research Awards

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:30:34 +0000

The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has issued a call for 2012 EERE Postdoctoral Research Awards, intended to provide recent Ph.D. recipients with opportunities to conduct research at universities, national laboratories, and other research facilities. This year’s program builds upon 14 inaugural awardees funded in 2011, and includes at least [...]

DARPA Director Stepping Down, Heading to Google

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 22:42:29 +0000

As our colleagues at CRA’s Policy Blog have covered, Wired.com is out with an exclusive story this afternoon about Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Regina Dugan: Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency [...]

The Tag Challenge: 5 Thieves, 5 Cities, 12 Hours on March 31

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:08:59 +0000

The U.S. Department of State has unveiled the Tag Challenge, a “social gaming competition” in which participants will attempt to find five “suspects” as part of a simulated law enforcement search spanning five cities throughout North American and Europe on March 31st. The winning entrant — the first participant or team to successfully locate and photograph all [...]

For March Madness, the Mathematics Behind Bracketology

Erwin Gianchandani — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:51:24 +0000

Just in time for the kickoff of March Madness later today, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson describes the mathematics behind bracketology — and BracketOdds, a website his research team developed that uses data from 27 past tournaments “to identify a distribution that models the probability of certain seed combinations playing each round [...]

UPenn Professor Talks Robotics at TED 2012

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:18:34 +0000

Vijay Kumar, Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics as well as Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a fascinating talk at last month’s 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, summarizing recent advances in his General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab. Kumar described how his lab is blending computer science [...]

CRA Issues Consensus Paper on Postdoctoral Fellowships

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:22:36 +0000

Last February, the Computing Research Association (CRA) — the umbrella organization of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) — launched an effort to engage the computing research community in a conversation about postdoctoral fellows, at a time when survey data were suggesting that a growing number of recent Ph.D.s in the field were pursuing postdoctoral fellowships [...]

Two Computer Scientists Receive 2012 Alan Waterman Award

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:27:50 +0000

For the first time in the 37-year history of the distinguished honor, the National Science Foundation (NSF) today named two individuals — both computer scientists — as joint recipients of the 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award. Scott Aaronson of MIT and Robert Wood of Harvard were honored with the award, recognizing “an outstanding young researcher in any [...]

Visualization Technologies for Human-Environment Interactions

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:24:07 +0000

The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) — the newest of the national synthesis centers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) focused on fostering synthetic, actionable science related to the structure, functioning, and sustainability of socio-environmental systems — has issued a call for participation in a July workshop on visualization technologies that support research on human-environment [...]

NIST Establishes National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

Erwin Gianchandani — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:52:48 +0000

At a press briefing featuring high-ranking Federal, state, and local officials on its Gaithersburg, MD, campus last month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a new partnership to establish the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a “public-private collaboration for accelerating the widespread adoption of integrated cybersecurity tools and technologies.” The Center received $10 [...]

First Person: “Tracking Data About Your Body”

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:33:17 +0000

Last week, we blogged about Larry Smarr’s efforts to quantify his own health. Turns out Larry is speaking out today, in his own words, as part of a front-page profile on the front page of The San Diego Tribune: “Quantified health, to me, means tracking data about your body — as simple as weighing yourself on a scale [...]

Thank You!

Erwin Gianchandani — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:54:24 +0000

I’d like to pause briefly today to acknowledge you — our readers. On behalf of the CCC Council, many thanks to each of you for reading the CCC Blog regularly, for contributing periodically, and for encouraging your colleagues to do so as well. We saw more traffic to the Blog last month than ever before, and [...]

“Developing Robots That Can Teach Humans”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:29:20 +0000

On the heels of Saturday’s New York Times‘ story about iRobot, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is out with a feature today describing how a pair of computing researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are programming “robot teachers” that can gaze and gesture like humans. According to the NSF piece: When it comes to communication, sometimes it’s our body [...]

CIA CTO: “High Noon in the Information Age”

Erwin Gianchandani — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:49:28 +0000

Ira “Gus” Hunt, the CIA’s Chief Technology Officer, spoke out about the profound changes caused by information technology in recent years — much of it driven by social, mobile, and cloud applications — at the 1st Annual Emerging Technologies Symposium last month, according to Government Computer News. Noting how the Arab spring uprising “would not have been [...]

“For iRobot, the Future Is Getting Closer”

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:31:45 +0000

A great article about iRobot Corporation – and a glimpse into the past and future in robotics — in today’s New York Times: Ever since Rosey the Robot took care of “The Jetsons” in the early 1960s, the promise of robots making everyday life easier has been a bit of a tease. Rosey, a metallic [...]

DARPA CLIQR Quest Challenge Underway

Erwin Gianchandani — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 14:30:11 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is conducting a Cash for Locating and Identifying Quick Response codes (CLIQR) Quest Challenge, “a prize-based challenge that seeks to advance the understanding of social media and the Internet, and explore the role the Internet and social networking [play] in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization [...]

Susan Graham Receives CRA’s Distinguished Service Award

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:17:47 +0000

Congratulations to Susan Graham, who was selected earlier this week by the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Board of Directors as its 2012 Distinguished Service Award recipient. CRA makes the award, usually annually, to a person who has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community, in areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications or [...]

CISE, MPS Seeking to Advance Quantum Information Science

Erwin Gianchandani — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:53:43 +0000

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) have issued a joint solicitation for a CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science. The program seeks to “promote research in the area of Quantum Information Science (QIS) by providing resources [that] allow QIS researchers and researchers from the CISE or MPS [...]

Barbara Liskov Named to Inventors Hall of Fame

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:02:11 +0000

Turing Award-winner Barbara Liskov has been named as one of the 2012 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which has been honoring individuals who have “conceived, patented, and advanced the great technological achievements since the birth of our nation.” The citation reads: Barbara Liskov, for programming languages and systems design: MIT Institute Professor Liskov is [...]

Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud

Erwin Gianchandani — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:51:51 +0000

The following is a special contribution to this Blog by Amr El Abbadi, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Christos Faloutsos, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and Mohamed Mokbel, Associate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota. The trio recently organized a [...]