On October 23-24, 2017, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will hold the Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium in order to address the current and future contribution of computing and its role in addressing societal needs.
The two days are organized around four main themes:
- Intelligent Infrastructure for our Cities and Communities: Intelligent infrastructure is already transforming our nation’s cities and communities, but the technological revolution is just now beginning. This session will highlight some of the major advances taking place now, while at the same time emphasizing the substantial body of research, much of it crossing disciplinary boundaries, that still needs to be done.
- Security and Privacy for Democracy:Computing research enables new technology to help society cope with information security and privacy risks. This session will explore how differential privacy enables new understanding of the population while protecting privacy.
- AI and Amplifying Human Abilities:This session will examine the emerging role of AI in augmenting human abilities in new and powerful ways. Speakers will also ground their remarks in application areas ranging from health, transportation, universal access, data analysis, and education.
- Data, Algorithms, and Fairness:Data-driven and algorithmic decision-making increasingly determines how businesses target advertisements to consumers. As data-driven decisions increasingly affect every corner of our lives, there is an urgent need to ensure they do not become instruments of discrimination, barriers to equality, and threats to social justice.
The CCC recently produced a white paper series on intelligent infrastructure in collaboration with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA). The series highlights a number of areas that could be enhanced through further research and investment including transportation, disaster management, agriculture, rural communities, and wireless communication. Learn more about why a national research agenda for intelligent infrastructure would be beneficial to the competitiveness of the United States and the social good of citizens in the series’ lead paper and check out the full series here. You can also find out more about the CCC’s recent infrastructure related initiatives on the Intelligent Infrastructure Task Force page.
The CCC is also currently focused on the areas of cybersecurity and privacy. The CCC just finished a two part workshop series on sociotechnical cybersecurity, with workshops in 2016 and 2017, in order to evaluate potential research areas that can promote effective and appropriate consideration of the socio-technical factors and sound and effective principles of cybersecurity assessment, evaluation, and intervention. A workshop report is in progress. You can learn more about the CCC’s work involving cybersecurity on the Cybersecurity Task Force page.
In 2015-2016, the CCC held a four part series of workshop on privacy by design, which has produced three workshop reports: State of Research and Practice, Privacy Enabling Design and Engineering Privacy. For more information about the CCC’s history with privacy, view the Privacy and Fairness Task Force page.
Check out the blog next week to see how artificial intelligence and data and fairness fit into the CCC’s endeavors or take a look at our website today!
For more information about the symposium please see the agenda and symposium website. The event will be livestreamed here starting at 8:30AM EDT on Monday, October 23rd. You can also join the twitter conversation using #CCCsymposium!
