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, the fourth straight year of increase…  

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 the Wired report: Brace yourself, because that era might be here sooner than you think: The Pentagon agency behind some of the most important robotics research will soon challenge experts worldwide to come up with humanoid robots that can navigate their environment and handle tools with near-Homo sapiens skill.  

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, DC, last month. During my two-year stint as a rotator at NSF, I looked for places where I could add value. There was a lot of discussion about transformative research and even some special funds that could be used for projects deemed transformative. In September 2007, the National Science Board (NSB) “unanimously approved a motion to […]

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 software developers and designers who submit the best apps, as judged by a panel of government officials, energy industry leaders, and information technology experts (more after the jump).

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.   A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design […]

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 all, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created each day. This massive pile of information from all sources is called “Big Data.” It gets stored somewhere, and everyday the pile gets bigger. Government and industry are finding new ways to analyze it. Last week the administration announced an initiative to aid the development of Big Data […]