Recently The Atlantic published an article, “The Joy of Teaching Computer Science in the Age of Facebook.” The article has a Q&A with Mehran Sahami, a professor and Associate Chair for Education in Computer Science at Stanford University. Sahami gives his perspective on how the field has evolved over the past few decades. Twenty-five years ago, most people didn’t own home computers, these days they are an integral part of everyday activities. Technology is in increasing part of people’s lives, so everyone should have a better understanding of it.  Sahami has seen general awareness of computing increase and many more sub-areas develop.  Sahami was always interested in being a professor, however after earning his Ph.D. […]

On February 20 at 12:00pm EST, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will host it’s next Washington Area Trustworthy Computing Hour (WATCH) talk.  Deanna Caputo of the MITRE Corporation will give a talk titled Going Spear Phishing: Exploring Embedded Training and Awareness.  Caputo is currently a Principal Behavioral Psychologist supporting the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities.  Previously, she worked for the Department of Defense as a senior human factors intelligence analyst.  She holds a Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from Cornell University, with specialization in Judgment and Decision-making and Psychology and Law.   Abstract To explore the effectiveness of embedded training, we conducted a large-scale experiment that tracked workers’ reactions […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Ran Libeskind-Hadas, R. Michael Shanahan Professor and Department Chair of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College, currently on sabbatical at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Ran is a member of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council and Co-Chair of the Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E).  I’m on sabbatical this year and have been visiting computer science departments at colleges and universities, small and large.  One of the recurring stories that I hear is that a growing number of non-majors are choosing to take introductory CS courses.  And, some of these students get so excited that they choose to take a second CS course.  […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Blue Waters and eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) projects are hosting the 8th Extreme Scaling Workshop August 14-15, 2014, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The conference committee seeks submissions of excellent quality addressing the challenges of using, designing, deploying, or integrating infrastructure for both big data analysis and large-scale computation to facilitate scientific discovery. The Extreme Scaling Workshop 2014 will showcase the discoveries, innovations, and achievements of those who use, build, and/or support advanced architectures at extreme scales around the world. The workshop will also provide a forum among researchers, professional staff, students, HPC center staff, and representatives from funding agencies to explore […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) invites nominations for members to serve on its 20-person Council. We are looking for individuals who have ideas, energy, initiative, and time to work with the community and on its behalf towards fulfilling the mission of the CCC. The CCC is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field.   For example, How can computing accelerate progress in health care? How can computing advance the next decade of scientific research? How can we make the best of the abundance of data available in digital form and our increasing ability to analyze it? How can the […]

DARPA’s new Memex program seeks user-defined, domain-specific search of public information, and plans to use its groundbreaking research to fight human trafficking. What makes this a groundbreaking new initiative? Currently web searches use a centralized, one-size-fits-all approach that searches the Internet with the same set of tools for all queries. Even though it is useful and successful commercially, it’s still a mostly manual process that doesn’t aggregate results which would be more useful for government purposes. The new search technologies developed through the Memex program will have the potential to  revolutionize the discovery, organization and presentation of search results. From the DARPA website: “We’re envisioning a new paradigm for search that would tailor […]