The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the 2025 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM 2025), and we are thrilled to announce the winners!
SDM, now in its 25th year, provides a platform for researchers to showcase their work tackling issues in data mining in a peer-reviewed setting, and provides a venue for graduate students to connect and receive input on their research. Individuals new to the field learn about research by listening to invited speakers, attending presentations and tutorials, and participating in focused workshops.
SDM 2025 Blue Sky Winners
1st Place
Data Mining the Functional Architecture of the Brain’s Circuitry
Adam Charles, Johns Hopkins University
2nd Place
Better AI for Understanding Life on Earth: Predict First, Design Later
Amarda Shehu, George Mason University
Yana Bromberg, Emory University
3rd Place
Blue Sky: Reducing the Performance Gap Between Commercial and Open-Source LLMs
Adithya Kulkarni, Virginia Tech
Mohna Chakraborty, University of Michigan
Please join us in congratulating the SDM 2025 winners!
CCC sponsors many Blue Sky tracks at various conferences in computing every year. If you are interested in requesting sponsorship of a Blue Sky track at your conference, please email blueskyideas@cra.org . Requests need only include a brief description of the conference and a proposed list of program committee members for the track. For more information — including guidelines for conference program committees, recommendations for selecting winners, and logistics for issuing CCC-sponsored travel awards to the winners, as well as a sample call for papers for a Blue Sky Ideas track — visit our website.
