An interesting interview with Alex Szalay, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University — about data-intensive computing — in Datanami this week: When it comes to thought leadership that bridges the divides between scientific investigation, technology and the tools and applications that make research possible … Szalay is one of the first scientists that springs to mind.   Szalay, whom we will dub “Dr. Data” for reasons that will explained in a moment, is a distinguished professor in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Aside from his role as a scientist — an end user of high performance computing hardware and applications — he also serves director of the JHU […]

USAID is launching what it calls “an exciting and ambitious” program to engage universities and research institutes in novel ways to improve the agency’s (and larger development community’s) ability to define and solve large development challenges. Computing appears poised to play an important role here, as key goals of the program are “to advance evidence-based analysis and test new solutions, to champion and incubate creative approaches to accelerate solutions to traditional development challenges, and to encourage universities to assist in addressing development problems through sustainable, creative, and multidisciplinary approaches.” USAID has posted a draft request for applications describing the new development centers that it is aiming to fund through this program. […]

Verisign has announced its 2012 Internet Infrastructure Award Program, seeking proposals that pursue “research that has the potential to improve the availability and security of Internet access in all parts of the world.” Expanding on a program first launched in 2010, this year’s program seeks to emphasize research that “advances security and stability, encourages Internet deployment, and improves the Internet infrastructure overall.” Verisign will issue two $200,000 awards; each award will support two graduate students for one year, plus institutional overhead. According to the Verisign announcement: Verisign is pleased to declare that it will announce two $200,000 research awards on May 2012 to support research that has the potential to improve the availability […]

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) named the winners of its 2012 Charles Stark Draper and Bernard M. Gordon Prizes yesterday, honoring the pioneers of the LCD and those who architected Harvey Mudd College’s engineering design curriculum, respectively. According to the NAE, the Draper Prize — honoring “those engineers whose accomplishment has had a significant impact on society by improving the quality of life, providing the ability to live freely and comfortably, and/or permitting the access to information” — went to George H. Heilmeier, Wolfgang Helfrich, Martin Shadt, and T. Peter Brody “for their efforts in the engineering of the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) that is utilized in billions of consumer devices” today. From the NAE announcement:

Over the last year, we’ve described many opportunities at the intersection of computing and healthcare as well as computing and sustainability — and there are a couple great examples in the press this week. Researchers at the University of Washington have engineered Raven II, a new surgical robot with wing-like arms predicated on an open source platform that can perform surgery on simulated patients — with the aims of speeding up procedures, reducing errors, and improving patient outcomes: The latest version of the Raven has mechanical wrists that hold tiny pincers. Coming soon is a piece that will allow research groups to attach the same tools used by commercial surgical […]

The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) — which recently posted a solicitation containing opportunities for computing researchers — is now out with a call for submissions to its 21st annual Text REtrieval Conference (TREC), “the premier experimental effort in the field to encourage research in information retrieval and related applications” by providing a large test collection, uniform scoring procedures, and a forum for organizations interested in comparing their results. TREC has the following goals: to encourage research in information retrieval based on large test collections; to increase communication among industry, academia, and government by creating an open forum for the exchange of research ideas; to speed the transfer of technology […]