Here’s a “must read” article for you HCI types:  a New York Times obituary for John E. Karlin, a Bell Labs industrial psychologist who is responsible for 7-digit dialing, the layout of the touch tone pad, the length of the cord on telephones (back when they had cords), and a slew of other “everyday things.” “A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them? “And when, not long afterward, the dial gave way to push buttons, new questions arose: round […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Douglas H. Fisher, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University. In this blog entry, Doug highlights the CCC-sponsored visioning activity on Online Education, which will be held next week. The CCC-sponsored Workshop for Multidisciplinary Research for Online Education (MROE) convenes Monday and Tuesday of next week (February 11-12) at the Grand Hyatt in Washington D.C.  An impressive group of about 70 academic and industry participants, and many observers from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and elsewhere, will explore and delineate computer science and multidisciplinary research agendas designed to improve formal and informal education. The workshop will build on CCC’s […]

Election to the National Academy of Engineering – which has roughly 2,000 members across a dozen fields – is one of the highest professional honors accorded to engineers in academia, industry and government. Today, the NAE Class of 2013 was announced – 69 new Members and 11 new Foreign Associates.  Elected in Section 5, Computer Science & Engineering, were: Anant Agarwal, president, edX (online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard University), and professor, electrical engineering and computer science department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. For contributions to shared-memory and multicore computer architectures. David Dill, professor, department of computer science, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. For the development of techniques to verify hardware, software, […]

Check out CCC council member Lance Fortnow’s blog, “Computational Complexity.” Today’s post focuses on postdocs in computer science. Anita Jones is troubled by the growing number of postdocs in computer science, she uses “troubling” twice in the first paragraph of her CACM Viewpoint. But is it really a troubling trend or just a natural outgrowth of a maturing field?   Theoretical computer science leads computer science in having and even embracing a postdoc culture. Nearly every graduating PhD in theoretical computer science that remains in academia takes a postdoc position before taking an tenure-track job. If anything I hear theorists lamenting a drop in theory postdocs this year with the end […]

The White House is currently accepting applications for the second round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program. The program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during six-to-12 month “tours-of-duty” that aim to save lives, save taxpayer money and fuel job creation. Applications will be accepted through March 17, 2013. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) expects to host three of the nine new Presidential Innovation Fellow Projects.   Two of the fellows will work on Cyber-Physical Systems. Cyber-Physical Systems refers to the convergence of networking and information technology with engineered physical systems to create a new generation of […]

In “The Explosive Growth of Postdocs in Computer Science,” a VIEWPOINT article in Communications of the ACM, CCC Council member Anita Jones analyzes trends that have accompanied the increase of CS postdocs in recent years. “The dramatic increase in postdocs changes the overall balance in the number of participants of different kinds in the academic research enterprise, that is the number of tenure-track faculty, graduate students, research faculty, teaching faculty, and postdocs. What effect does that have on other members of the enterprise?   When a recently graduated Ph.D. moves to a new research project, that person brings fresh ideas and even different assumptions about research. It is possible that a rapidly flowing […]