Mario Bergés (CMU) and Computing Innovation Fellow Zico Kolter (MIT) are co-organizing the first International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring, to be held on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University on May 7th. With support from Bosch Research, the workshop will provide a forum to unite researchers working on the topic of energy disaggregation, particularly on sensing and/or algorithms aspects. The workshop will review the main types of approaches that have been explored to date, and discuss possible paths forward. Key foci will include the growing need for standardized datasets and performance metrics that can allow the field to move forward, as well as possible areas of collaboration among research groups from multiple […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today launched a new blog — Tech @ FTC — focused on technology and consumer issues. Through the blog, the FTC aims to provide a vehicle for the agency’s Chief Technologist to communicate about technology issues to both technology experts and the broader public. Ed Felten, on leave from Princeton University (where he’s Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs) to serve as the first Chief Technologist at the FTC, wrote in his first post: …As the nation’s consumer protection agency, the FTC works on technology issues every day. You’ll see lots of discussion of technology in our reports, cases, speeches and testimonies, not to mention the consumer […]

On Tuesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced a solicitation for proposals that support long-term research in next-generation semiconductor technology, calling the work “critical to the future of the U.S. electronics industry.” Through the solicitation, NIST plans to issue one award of up to $2.6 million in Federal cost-shared funding (a minimum of 25 percent of a project’s budget must come from non-Federal sources) for the project’s first year, with the potential for continued funding for up to five years. Proposals are due by 5pm EDT on Monday, April 16th. According to the solicitation: One area where a clear long-term technological challenge resides is in the development of new […]

The Wall Street Journal features a story about Amazon.com’s purchase this week of robot company Kiva Systems, Inc., providing a glimpse into some of the many computing research advances — in robotics, machine intelligence, and optimization — that have enabled Kiva’s $775 million success story. According to the WSJ article: Amazon.com Inc., said Monday it is buying Kiva Systems, Inc., which makes robots used in shipping centers. The $775 million acquisition comes as Amazon continues its heavy spending on fulfillment centers to help fuel its business…   With Kiva, Amazon is now looking at a more automated approach. The robots are already used by two websites that Amazon has acquired: shoe-retailer Zappos.com and baby-products site […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), together with the National Science Foundation (NSF), is co-sponsoring a limited-participation visioning workshop on computing for disaster management. Led by Robin Murphy (Texas A&M University) and Trevor Darrell (University of California, Berkeley), the workshop will identify ways in which fundamental computing research in the broadest terms can advance the field of emergency response and recovery. The workshop will take place in Washington, DC, on April 23-24, 2012. From the call for participation (following the link):

Earlier this month, we highlighted the Cash for Locating and Identifying Quick Response codes (CLIQR) Quest, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) prize-based challenge seeking to advance the understanding of social media and the Internet. The challenge offered $40,000 to the first individual or team that could locate 7 posters appearing in U.S. cities bearing the DARPA logo and a quick response (QR) code. Though the challenge ran for 15 days — from Feb. 23rd through March 8th — unlike in past challenges, notably the DARPA Network “Red Balloon” Challenge, no team was able to locate all 7 posters and submit the corresponding QR codes. The reason? (Click “more” to find out!)