Below is a Letter from Dr. Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. Dear CISE Community, I am delighted to announce that Dr. Keith Marzullo has been reappointed to the position of the Director of the Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) at NSF, effective July 2014. Dr. Marzullo has been an exemplary member of the CISE senior management team for the past several years, and we are thrilled that he will continue in his current position. Dr. Marzullo has brought significant broad scientific expertise to CISE and CNS research areas and will continue to provide strong leadership in cybersecurity, networking and distributed systems, cyber physical systems, and other areas in […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Background: Senior computer scientists remember memory “capabilities” as an abstraction for controlling access to objects in machines such as Burroughs B5000 and IBM System/38. In the late 20th century, capabilities lost out to virtual memory with a linear address and per-page protection, as these systems were faster and coarse-grain protection was deemed sufficient. In our 21st century, security is much more important and memory attacks often cross object boundaries (e.g., buffer overflow attacks). Vision:  Wouldn’t it be interesting if one could reincarnate capabilities for better memory security […]

The next WATCH Talk is scheduled for July 17 at noon EDT. Crispin Cowan will reflect on decades of defending imperfect software. Dr. Cowan works for Microsoft adding security to existing operating systems, including the recent Windows 8.1 release. He is especially interested in usable security and effective sandboxing.  Abstract:  “Perfect” (bug-free) software is impractically expensive and slow to produce, and so the vast bulk of consumer and enterprise software products are shipped when they are “good enough” but far from bug-free. As a consequence, there has been a constant struggle to keep attackers from exploiting these chronically inevitable bugs. Much of that attention has been on memory corruption attacks against […]

  We often hear about the dearth of women in computer science and engineering fields. Many organizations are working hard to attract and retain women in these fields. In an article titled 22 Most Powerful Women Engineers In the World, Business Insider showcases powerful women engineers.  From the article: There’s a huge push these days to encourage more girls to learn to code and to hire more women engineers once they graduate. The tech industry knows it can’t fill all the jobs it has while discouraging half the population from joining the industry. It also knows that it can’t do a good job of designing new tech products for women if women aren’t part of the […]

The 15th Annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit is taking place July 14-15, 2014 in Redmond, WA.  There is an exciting program planned with topics including computing devices and the Internet of Things, hardware-software co-design, data visualization, crowdsourcing applications, machine learning, and the algorithms that underlie emerging fields, such as computational neuroscience.  If you’re not going to be in Redmond, you can still be a part of the action, as the event will be live streamed for all to see. Last year’s Research Faculty Summit was a huge success, you can read about in this blog post by Ed Lazowska.  This year looks to be just as promising!

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) will have two live chat sessions on July 10 and July 24 about the AAAS Science & Technology (S&T) Policy Fellowship. The AAAS S&T Policy Fellowships are in seven policy areas and aim to provide diverse opportunities for accomplished scientists and engineers to participate in and contribute to the federal policymaking process. Fellows learn firsthand about the intersection of science and policy. Current and alumni fellows and fellowship staff will answer questions about the fellows’ science policy initiatives on Capitol Hill and at federal agencies, the career impact these fellowships can have, and the 2015-16 application process. July 10 at 2 p.m. EDT: You Too […]