The heads of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) issued a joint statement this afternoon affirming a commitment to foster multi-national, multi-disciplinary research collaborations on disaster response, particularly in light of the opportunities being enabled by ‘Big Data’: The catastrophic consequences of natural and human disasters have been demonstrated repeatedly in recent years, most notably in the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster but also in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Hurricane Katrina, and regional droughts, floods and fires. These events clearly demonstrate the urgent need for basic research to advance fundamental knowledge and innovation for disaster prevention, mitigation and […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine have announced the 10th International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. The annual competition aims to celebrate the grand tradition of visualizations, in the spirit of communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. There’s a category all about Video Games & Apps — and last year’s winner was Foldit, an entry by University of Washington computer scientists Zoran Popović and Seth Cooper. Judges appointed by NSF and Science will select winners in five categories: Photography, Illustrations, Posters & Graphics, Video Games & Apps, and Videos. The winning entries will appear in a special section of Science (with one entry chosen for the front cover) and be hosted at ScienceMag.org and NSF.gov. In […]

The U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — notably its Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) — together with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday launched a nationwide prize competition to develop personal air pollution and health sensors. In particular, the HHS and EPA are seeking to bring health and computing researchers together to develop highly portable sensors that can measure air quality data while monitoring a person’s physiological response to air pollution. Proposals are due by October 5 — and up to four finalists will receive $15,000 and be invited to develop their proposals into working prototypes, […]

Back in January, the National Science Board (NSB) released a report — National Science Foundation’s Merit Review Criteria: Review and Revisions — recommending that NSF “better define the two criteria for the benefit of the science community.” The report specified three principles governing the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) approach to utilizing these criteria. Last month, the NSF, together with research councils from 50 countries, established a Global Research Council and issued six merit review principles at the conclusion of the first-ever Global Summit on Merit Review. The principles (following the link):

Last week, the UC Berkeley’s School of Information held a forum — called the DataEDGE Conference — seeking to explore the challenges and opportunities associated with the transition to a data-intensive economy. One of the speakers was danah boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research and an Assistant Professor at New York University, who discussed the implications of Big Data on privacy — and the role for researchers and technologists moving forward. The New York Times‘ Bits Blog has coverage of boyd’s talk: “Privacy is a source of tremendous tension and anxiety in Big Data,” says Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research. Speaking last week at a conference on Big Data at the University of […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) has announced plans to hold a workshop on its Gaithersburg, MD, campus next week — Wednesday and Thursday, June 13 and 14 — exploring “key national priority topics” in support of the Federal government’s recently-announced Big Data R&D Initiative. The BIG DATA Workshop is free and open to all, but attendees must pre-register online by this Wednesday, June 6th in order to clear security. According to NIST/ITL (following the link):