The following is a special contribution to this blog from the organizing committee of the National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop to Identify Interdisciplinary Data Science Approaches and Challenges to Enhance Understanding of Interactions of Food Systems with Energy and Water Systems — held during October 5-6, 2015 at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Waterfront Centre in Washington, DC. This article summarizes some of the highlights of the workshop. In the coming decades, the world population is projected to grow significantly resulting in increased strains on the world’s limited food, energy, water and other natural resources. Furthermore, these strains may be amplified due to the effects of global climate change and increasing […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to accept nominations for the 2016 Alan T. Waterman Award. The Waterman Award is NSF’s highest honor. Each year, the Foundation bestows the award to recognize the talent, creativity, and influence of a singular young researcher. Congress established the Alan T. Waterman Award in August 1975 to mark the 25th Anniversary of the NSF and to honor its first Director. The annual award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by the NSF. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $1,000,000 over a five year period for scientific research or advanced study in the mathematical, physical, […]

The MacArthur Foundation has named its 2015 class of MacArthur Fellows, recognizing 24 exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for significant contributions in the future. Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000, paid out over five years. The Fellowship comes with no stipulations or reporting requirements, and allows recipients maximum freedom to follow their own creative visions. One of the fellows is John Novembre, a computational biologist in the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, who is shedding new light on human evolutionary history, population structure and migration, and the etiology of genetic diseases. Another one of the fellows is Christopher Ré, […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from John Oberlin, Maria Meier, Tim Kraska, and Stefanie Tellex in the Computer Science Department at Brown University. Their Acquiring Object Experiences at Scale was one of the winners at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Blue Sky Ideas Track Competition at the AAAI-RSS Special Workshop on the 50th Anniversary of Shakey: The Role of AI to Harmonize Robots and Humans in Rome, Italy. It was a half day workshop on July 16th during the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2015 Conference. The Innovative Idea Baxter is a two armed manipulator robot which which is gaining popularity in the research and industrial communities. At […]

The U.S. Department of Commerce‘s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the next round of the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) at a White House Smart City Forum hosted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). See the White House Fact Sheet to read all the announcements made at the Forum. NIST announced that the kick-off conference for the next round of the Global City Teams Challenge will take place November 12-13, 2015 at NIST’s Campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Registration for the conference is now open. Please use this link to register. There is no registration fee. Pre-registration is required and closes November 5, 2015. The draft agenda can […]

Samsung recently announced that it will allow more of its products to interact with its competitors’. Starting with this year’s Gear S2, a smart watch, all future devices will be able to connect with any smartphone running Google Inc’s Android operating system 4.4 and higher. Prior to this, Samsung’s smart watches required a Samsung smartphone. This business decision is part of the larger trend of the growing importance of the Internet of Things (IoT). Internet of Things is a catch-all term to describe the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enable these objects to collect and exchange data. This includes devices such […]