The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is sponsoring another track in its Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track series at the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), November 16-22, 2014 in Hong Kong. This track emphasizes visionary ideas, long term challenges, and opportunities in software engineering research that are outside of current mainstream topics of the field. The submissions to this track will be judged on the extent to which they expand the possibilities and horizons of the field or challenge existing assumptions prevalent in the field.  The CCC will sponsor three Best Paper Awards in this special track, which will be selected out of the accepted papers based on evaluations by the program committee. Papers […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Innovation Office (I2O) hosted Demo Day 2014 to highlight DARPA’s ongoing contributions to preserving and expanding Information Technology superiority on May 21. The Pentagon event showcased the span of DARPA projects designed to change how the nation addresses growing national security challenges posed by the Information Revolution and by the increasing global availability of sophisticated information technologies.  Some of the projects on display were: DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC): CGC, to be launched this summer, will be the first-ever tournament for testing fully automatic network defense systems. The competition’s goal is to vastly improve the speed, scale and effectiveness of IT security against escalating cyber threats. High-Assurance […]

  The following is a special contribution to this blog by Limor Fix.  Limor recently retired from Intel, where she was the director of University Collaborative Research (UnCoR). UnCoR is the primary university-facing division of Intel Labs.  Limor is a member of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council.  This week, in Washington DC, an exciting and highly energetic workshop focused on “Computing Visions 2025: Interacting with the Computers All Around Us”. This workshop was the first among several workshops planned for 2014, organized by a steering group of computing leaders drawn from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate Advisory Committee (CISE AC) and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC).  Successful […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is pleased to announce a Distinguished Lecture on Monday, May 12, 2014 at 2:00 pm (EDT) by Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson titled The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. Brynjolfsson is the Schussel Family Professor at the  MIT Sloan School of Management , Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, Chair of the MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Editor of the Information Systems Network. His research and teaching focuses on how businesses can effectively use information technology in general and the Internet in particular. Abstract: We are at an inflection point in our economy.  A wave of exponential, digital and […]

The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) released a new National Academies report, At the Nexus of Cybersecurity and Public Policy: Some Basic Concepts and Issues. As we as a nation become more dependent on information and information technology, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important.  The report highlights 6 key findings about cybersecurity and public policy: Cybersecurity is a never-ending battle, and a permanently decisive solution to the problem will not be found in the forseeable future. Improvements to the cybersecurity posture of individuals, firms, government agencies, and the nation have considerable value in reducing the loss and damage that may be associated with cybersecurity breachers. Improvements to cybersecurity call for two distinct […]

In January, President Obama asked for a comprehensive review of policy issues on big data and privacy during his speech on signals intelligence.  As a part of the comprehensive review, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was asked to examine the topic.  PCAST setup a working group, co-chaired by Members William Press and Susan Graham, who is also the Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC).  The working group has reviewed the technical literature, consulted with experts, and engaged with the broader community of social scientists and law for perspective to produce a report titled Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective. The Report highlights five recommendations: […]