For the third year, Major League Baseball (MLB) has partnered with Syracuse University’s School of Information Sciences to give students real life experience, and the league new ideas for fan engagement. The annual contest provides students the opportunity to pitch their ideas for real challenges created by the MLB. This year’s challenge was use the trend of “gamification” to create an application, webpage, or other form of technology that MLB.com’s community can use.   “The winning project, presented a way to merge all of the social media documents that a single game might produce — smartphone photos, tweets, Facebook status updates, etc. — into a single interface. The project’s creators, […]

ACM has joined forces with the newly created Heidelberg Laureate Forum to bring students together with recipients of the Abel Prize, the ACM A.M. Turing Award, and the Fields Medal.  The first Heidelberg Laureate Forum will take place September 22-27 2013 in Heidelberg, Germany.  Applications and nominations will be accepted through February 15. Additional information here (pdf).  This is a tremendous opportunity!

Last year, the Computing Community Consortium and CRA’s Government Affairs Committee held the first Leadership in Science Policy Institute.  A total of 35 participants attended the institute, which featured a series of presentations from science policy experts, current and former Hill staff, and relevant agency and Administration officials.  Topics included the mechanics of the legislative process, serving on advisory committees, and interfacing with Federal agencies. A second Leadership in Science Policy Institute will be held April 11-12, 2013 in Washington, DC. Please discuss this opportunity with your colleagues, identify those you believe would be interested in participating, and submit nominations! The deadline is Real Soon Now – December 14!

The CCC is sponsoring another in its series of “Challeges and Visions” tracks at the 6th Biennial Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR) January 6-9, Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, CA. As part of its mission to identify major new research opportunities, the CCC sponsors “challenges and visions” sessions at several conferences. The goal of these sessions is to break free of the shackles of the normal reviewing process while still requiring a paper.  In this way, a “challenges and visions” session differs from a “midnight session” of informal talks, in that the paper allows the ideas presented to be more broadly accessible. CCC has sponsored eight such sessions […]

The Computing Research Association has adopted a set of “best practices” for postdocs, the result of work done by Anita Jones and Erwin Gianchandani under the auspices of CRA’s Computing Community Consortium. Postdocs have been expanding rapidly in the computing fields.  Only by being introspective and proactive can we ensure that these positions contribute to the professional development of the student, rather than being exploitative.  The “best practices” white paper sets serious expectations for three constituencies relating to the postdoctoral experience: The Ph.D. student considering a postdoc position must educate himself or herself about what a postdoc is, think through the pros and cons of accepting a postdoctoral position at […]

In 1995, the Computer Science & Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council published the first “Tire Tracks Diagram” – illustrating the complex interplay among government, academia, and industry that has made America the world leader in information technology.  The diagram was included in the “Brooks-Sutherland” report examining the nation’s high performance computing and communications program. In 2003, CSTB updated the diagram in the report “Innovation in Information Technology.” A substantial revision has just been published in the new CSTB report “Continuing Innovation in Information Technology.”  The diagram illustrates the flow from fundamental research in fields such as digital communications, computer architecture, computer graphics, and AI into new multi-billion-dollar industry […]