Ira “Gus” Hunt, the CIA’s Chief Technology Officer, spoke out about the profound changes caused by information technology in recent years — much of it driven by social, mobile, and cloud applications — at the 1st Annual Emerging Technologies Symposium last month, according to Government Computer News. Noting how the Arab spring uprising “would not have been possible without these technologies,” Hunt described how the CIA is increasingly “embracing big data to dramatically speed up the tie it takes to analyze and act on the sea of data its sensors and agents” are collecting. From the GCN, which wrote about Hunt’s talk at the symposium (after the jump):

A great article about iRobot Corporation — and a glimpse into the past and future in robotics — in today’s New York Times: Ever since Rosey the Robot took care of “The Jetsons” in the early 1960s, the promise of robots making everyday life easier has been a bit of a tease.   Rosey, a metallic maid with a frilly apron, “kind of set expectations that robots were the future,” said Colin M. Angle, the chief executive of the iRobot Corporation. “Then, 50 years passed.”   Now Mr. Angle’s company is trying to do Rosey one better — with Ava, a 5-foot-4 assistant with an iPad or an Android tablet for a brain and […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is conducting a Cash for Locating and Identifying Quick Response codes (CLIQR) Quest Challenge, “a prize-based challenge that seeks to advance the understanding of social media and the Internet, and explore the role the Internet and social networking [play] in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.” The challenge began on Feb. 23rd and runs until 12pm EST on Thursday, March 8th. A cash prize of up to $40,000 will be awarded to the first contest entrant to find and submit all of the QR codes. According to the challenge website:

Congratulations to Susan Graham, who was selected earlier this week by the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Board of Directors as its 2012 Distinguished Service Award recipient. CRA makes the award, usually annually, to a person who has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community, in areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications or conferences, and/or leadership. (Susan is currently the Vice Chair of the CCC Council.) Susan was selected “in recognition of the extraordinary contributions that she has made over more than three decades of dedicated and selfless service and leadership.” Here’s the full award description (following the link):

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) have issued a joint solicitation for a CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science. The program seeks to “promote research in the area of Quantum Information Science (QIS) by providing resources [that] allow QIS researchers and researchers from the CISE or MPS disciplines to actively engage in joint research efforts.” A specific goal is to encourage long-term visits by faculty to a host institution. From the solicitation (following the link):

Turing Award-winner Barbara Liskov has been named as one of the 2012 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which has been honoring individuals who have “conceived, patented, and advanced the great technological achievements since the birth of our nation.” The citation reads: Barbara Liskov, for programming languages and systems design: MIT Institute Professor Liskov is considered an innovator in the design of computer programming languages, largely for helping to make computer programs more reliable, secure, and easy to use. Her innovations can be found within almost all modern programming languages. Liskov is part of an elite class that includes several folks from computing. Among them (after the jump):