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 for Council Members   What questions shape our intellectual future? What attracts the best and brightest minds of a new generation? What are the next big computing ideas — the ones that will define the future of computing, galvanize the very best students, and catalyze research investment and public support?   The Computing Community Consortium […]

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 at the University of Texas at Austin — shares his experiences in the daylong workshop. Scientists and politicians comprise two very different, usually mutually independent cultures.  The analytical mindset that is central to the scientific process is not as pervasive in politics, where compromise and deal-making rule the day. As a result, scientists are often reluctant to engage in […]

(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: In light of such overwhelming interest from governments and academia in adopting and advancing IT for effective healthcare, there are great opportunities for researchers and practitioners alike to invest efforts in conducting innovative and high-impact healthcare IT research. This IEEE Intelligent Systems Trends and Controversies (T&C) Department hopes to raise awareness and highlight selected recent research that helps […]

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 winter’s President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report on networking and information technology R&D as well as a prior Computing Community Consortium (CCC) health IT research roadmap: Through the Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) Program, NSF seeks to address fundamental technical and scientific issues that would support much needed transformation of healthcare from reactive and hospital-centered […]

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 Georgia Tech — shares her experiences in the daylong workshop. This past Monday I participated in the first CCC/CRA Leadership in Science Policy Institute in Washington, DC. The day was broken out into different sessions focused on how the Federal budgeting process works, how to connect to agencies like the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of […]

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 chip to learn from what it sees, much like a human.   The effort is paying off, if performance at Pong is any measure. When the chip, part of a project called SyNAPSE, first learned to play the classic videogame in March, it did poorly. Weeks later, the company reports, it was nearly unbeatable.   […]