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Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

CCC Council Member Chandra Krintz Shares Takeaways from NSF Sustainable Computing Workshop

July 15th, 2024 / in Announcements, CCC, climate / by Petruce Jean-Charles

Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released an early version of their final report for their workshop on Sustainable Computing for Sustainability. One of CCC’s council members Chandra Krintz was on the steering committee, where she brought her expertise in fostering collaboration on computing foundations for sustainability and climate resilience to the workshop.

According to Krintz, the committee was charged with designing the workshop, identifying key participants, reviewing participant submissions, and running the workshop in Washington DC this past April.

“Together, workshop participants helped to identify new research, multidisciplinary collaboration, and investment opportunities for this increasingly important area of computing research. The event also helped grow the CCC LinkedIn Climate/Computing Networking Group,” Krintz said. “Congratulations and thanks to the organizers and to NSF for the success of the event and the important contributions that were made to the field of sustainability.”

The recommendations in the report emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of sustainable computing, advocating for approaches that transcend disciplinary boundaries to address complex sustainability problems effectively. Collaboration between industry and academia is encouraged to facilitate technology transfer and ensure impactful outcomes in sustainable computing research. The integration of sustainable computing into educational curricula is stressed as crucial for developing a skilled workforce capable of tackling sustainability challenges.

Additionally, the recommendations stress the importance of local impact considerations in climate models, alongside global perspectives. They call for community-building initiatives and dedicated support mechanisms to leverage local understanding for actionable outcomes. The potential of machine learning in optimizing building energy efficiency is also highlighted, despite challenges posed by fragmented and proprietary data sources in the sector.

These recommendations advocate for holistic approaches to sustainable computing, emphasizing open data sharing, interdisciplinary collaboration, education, local impact awareness, and innovative technologies like machine learning to achieve meaningful sustainability outcomes.

Each recommendation underscores the importance of sustained support and broad stakeholder involvement in addressing today’s sustainability challenges effectively.