The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) — a standing committee of CRA that seeks to catalyze and empower the computing research community to pursue audacious, high-impact research — has issued a call for proposals for workshop programs that will define visions and agendas for exciting frontiers of computing research. From the solicitation: Successful [workshop] programs will ultimately articulate and mobilize community support for a research vision(s), with the intention of generating support from funding agencies. Proposals are encouraged across the full spectrum of work in the creation and application of information technologies to important challenges, from the theoretical to the practical. Awards can range from $10,000 to $200,000. (Proposers are encouraged […]

From msnbc.com’s Cosmic Log: Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other diseases.   “This is one small piece of the puzzle in being able to help with AIDS,” Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, told me. Khatib is the lead author of a research paper on the project, published today by Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.   The feat, which was accomplished using a collaborative online game called Foldit, is also one giant leap for citizen science — a burgeoning field that enlists Internet users to look for alien planets, decipher ancient […]

Rounding out a busy Friday in Washington, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) spent time during its meeting yesterday reviewing the Federal government’s investment in modernizing the nation’s healthcare system. The discussion took place about 9 months after PCAST unveiled a report on health information technology, in which it argued for the need to “change the fact that health IT has historically been oriented toward administrative functions, not better care,” and emphasized the potential of real-time, real-world, comprehensive data in enhancing the way we deliver care to patients. Though yesterday’s discussion, much like the original PCAST report, did not focus on the research challenges in health IT — instead, […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Moments ago at the White House, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Deputy Director Tom Kalil, Congressman John Yarmouth (D-Ky.), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a bright young 11-year-old from New York City launched Digital Promise — a new national center created by Congress and supported with funds from the Department of Education, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation — to advance technologies to transform learning and education. As part of the announcement, National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Farnam Jahanian, […]

The Chief Information Officers Council (CIOC), working closely with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has just launched the Technology Fellows Program “to help the Federal government compete more effectively with the private sector for IT talent” and ultimately “increase the Federal government’s pool of qualified IT professionals.” From the official program announcement: The Chief Information Officers Council is recruiting the nation’s best and brightest IT and computer science professionals for the newly created Technology Fellows Program… aimed at cutting bureaucratic barriers to entering public service and providing access to unique career opportunities in Federal Agencies to highly talented technology professionals.   Through a competitive application process, recent graduates of top […]

The National Science Foundation’s Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) have issued a joint solicitation for interdisciplinary research and education projects that develop new knowledge at the interface of between computer science and economics & social sciences. From the RFP: An important research interaction has emerged at the interface of computing and economics and social sciences. The synergy between these fields creates a rich opportunity for studying questions that involve interconnected systems with economic and social aspects. This research interaction has already led to the identification of a number of underlying principles and research themes. These include network structures in economic interaction, […]