Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate has sent the following Letter to the Computing Community: Dear Colleagues,   The National Science Foundation CISE Directorate is pleased to announce the formation of a search committee for the Director of the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS).  Dr. Howard Wactlar will finish his term as IIS Director at the beginning of Summer 2014. We greatly appreciate his expertise and leadership during his tenure!   Announcements for the search for his replacement can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/cise/iis/news/staff-iis.jsp and on USAJOBS at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/360852200?org+NSF.   Please send your nominations to committee co-chairs or any of the following committee members. Self-nominations are also […]

UPDATE: Due to the potential storm affecting the DC Metro region, this lecture has been postponed. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is pleased to announce a Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 11:00 am (EST) by Dan Reed titled The Future of Computing-Mediated Research.  Reed is currently the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, as well as University Chair in Computational Science and Bioinformatics and Professor of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Medicine, at the University of Iowa.  He has a distinguished research career spanning academia and industry, including Chair of the Board of the Computing Research Association […]

In anticipation of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter games, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has partnered with NBC Learn to feature the “Science and Engineering of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.” The series highlights the physics, engineering, chemistry, design and mathematics behind the olympics. One of the segments titled, “Olympic movement and robotic design,” features Raffaello D’Andrea, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland. The segment highlights the Quadrocopter, which is similar to a helicopter, except with four independent rotors that allow it to move with more agility. The video shows the Quadrocopter working through a slalom course and also shows the […]

The Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund was announced on February 6, 2014 as a partnership between the Mozilla Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and US Ignite.  The Community Fund will support local innovators in Chattanooga and Kansas City as they build real-life open source applications for gigabit networks to foster the creation of next generation networks. “We are thrilled that the Gigabit Community Fund is bringing together  practitioners and innovators from public and private sectors to enable novel gigabit applications for learning and workforce development. These new apps will have the potential to boost productivity and safety — starting as an experiment in these two communities and growing across the U.S.” – Farnam Jahanian, Assistant […]

On February 4, 2014, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the launch of the DARPA Open Catalog, a website that brings together source code and other data sets for public DARPA-funded projects. DARPA sponsors programs in fundamental and applied research to aid in its mission of creating breakthrough technologies for national security.  The research and development community has been asking about the availability of DARPA results and until now, most of that information has been unavailable.  DARPA has created the Open Catalog to share project resources and outcomes so that researchers can more easily build off of past results. From the announcement: “Making our open source catalog available […]

This year the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is sponsoring a Blue Sky Ideas Track at AAMAS, the Thirteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MutliAgent Systems. AAMAS is the largest and most prestigious international conference in its area, which covers all aspects of research in the areas of agents and multiagent systems, ranging from theoretical aspects to innovative applications. AAMAS typically draws around 650 attendees, with a truly international participation of researchers from the USA and Canada, multiple countries in Europe, Australia, Japan and other countries in Asia, and South America. The goal of this track is to generate out-of-the-box thinking and encourage researchers to present visionary concepts that can lead to future […]