The mission of Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community and enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research.  CCC conducts activities that strengthen the research community, articulate compelling research visions, and align those visions with pressing national and global challenges. CCC communicates the importance of those visions to policymakers, government and industry stakeholders, the public, and the research community itself.

In accordance with the mission, CCC is issuing a new call for proposals for workshops that will create exciting visions and agendas for research at the frontiers of computing.

From the solicitation:

Successful workshops will articulate new research visions, galvanize community interest in those visions, and mobilize support for those visions from the computing research community, government leaders, and funding agencies…Proposals are encouraged across the full spectrum of theoretical and applied work related to the creation and application of information technologies as well as their use in addressing important scientific or societal challenges…Budgets can range in size from $10,000 to as much as $200,000, depending on the size and scope of effort that will be supported…Proposals may be submitted by email anytime to cccrfp@cra.org as an attachment in PDF, Postscript, or Word.  For CCC planning purposes, proposals with start dates prior to September 2014 should be submitted by 1 December 2013.

Examples of past visioning activities funded by the CCC cover a broad range of computer and information science and engineering topics, such as Online Education, Health IT, Spatial Computing, and Disaster Management (see the full set of funded activities here).

Many of these past visioning activities have had a significant impact on the national research agenda.  CCC held two visioning activities in Health IT, one in 2009 and another in 2012.  The 2009 workshop resulted in a white paper titled Information Technology Research Challenges for Healthcare: From Discovery to Delivery, which was cited in the National Science Foundation (NSF) solicitation for Smart Health and Wellbeing.  The 2012 workshop resulted in a workshop report, titled Computing and Healthcare: New Opportunities and Directions.  In 2013, NSF updated their program to a new joint program with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called Smart and Connected Health.  This new solicitation also references the CCC and the work done through both Visioning Workshops.

If you have ideas or topics topic for visioning, please consider submitting a proposal by the December 1 deadline. Proposals should be no more than six pages in length. They should describe the existing or potential vision(s) and proposed activities in detail, including how the larger community will be engaged.

For more information, see the complete call for proposals. And if you have questions, please e-mail us.

We look forward to receiving your ideas!