The following is a special contribution to this blog from our Vice Chair Gregory Hager (Johns Hopkins University). In the following entry Greg reflects on the first annual PI meeting for the National Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing program held in May in Washington, DC.

I had the privilege of attending the National Science Foundation (NSF) Expeditions in Computing program’s first annual PI meeting which took place on May 14 -16, 2013 in Washington, DC. In its most recent solicitation, CISE describes the Expeditions program as follows: 

The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has created the Expeditions in Computing (Expeditions) program to provide the CISE research and education community with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, fundamental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information. In planning Expeditions, investigators are encouraged to come together within or across departments or institutions to combine their creative talents in the identification of compelling, transformative research agendas that promise disruptive innovations in computing and information for many years to come.

I was truly impressed by the breadth and quality of the Expeditions projects. Each group individually lived up to the promise of  “ambitious, fundamental research” that portrayed a compelling vision for the future of computing. Taken together, the program as a whole presents a breathtaking picture of new directions for the Computer Science (CS) research community.

The program opened with remarks by CISE Assistant Director, Dr. Farnam Jahanian, and continued with a series of panels, presentations, and poster sessions. The list of project presentations included:

• Next-Generation Model Checking & Abstract Interpretation with a Focus on Embedded Control and Systems Biology (Edmund Clarke, Carnegie Mellon University)

• Expeditions in Computer Augmented Program Engineering (Rajeev Alur, University of Pennsylvania)

• Understanding, Coping With, and Benefiting From Intractability (Moses Charikar, Princeton University)

• Open Programmable Mobile Internet (Monica Lam and Guru Parulkar, Stanford University)

• Variability-Aware Software for Efficient Computing with Nanoscale Devices (Rajesh Gupta, University of California, San Diego)

• Customizable Domain-Specific Computing (Jason Cong, University of California, Los Angeles)

• The Molecular Programming Project (Erik Winfree, CalTech)

• RoboBees: A Convergence of Body, Brain and Colony (Robert Wood, Harvard University)

• An Expedition in Computing for Compiling Printable Programmable Machines (Daniela Rus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• Making Sense at Scale with Algorithms, Machines, and People (Michael Franklin, University of California, Berkeley)

• Understanding Climate Change:  A Data-Driven Approach (Vipin Kumar, University of Minnesota)

• Computational Sustainability: Computational Methods for a Sustainable Environment, Economy, and Society (Carla Gomes, Cornell University)

• Computational Behavioral Science: Modeling, Analysis, and Visualization of Social and Communicative Behavior (James Rehg, Georgia Institute of Technology)

• Socially Assistive Robot (Brian Scassellati, Yale University)

NSF has now made the slides from most of the presentations, including the remarks of the CISE Assistant Director, Dr. Farnam Jahanian, available online. I would invite everyone in the CS research community to take advantage of this unique opportunity to view some of the largest, far-reaching investments that CISE is making in the future of computing research.