Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an annual program designed to engage students of all ages in computer science. It is observed each year, in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906). This year, CSEdWeek is December 7-13, 2015. What started as a grassroots movement and then inaugurated by Congress in 2009, CSEdWeek has quickly grown with over 100,000 CS Ed Week events planned around the world. There are many ways to participate and to bring computing to others, such as hosting students in your research lab, visiting a high school class to share your stories with students, or by linking up with a community organization […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Jagan Sankaranarayanan and Shashi Shekhar. Jagan is the Department Head of the Data Management Group at NEC Labs America, Cupertino, CA and Shashi is the McKnight Distinguished University Professor at the University of Minnesota. Jagan served as the program co-chair for the ACM SIGSPATIAL 2015 conference, while Shashi served as the chair of the session on the vision. We are delighted to report on the success of the Vision paper track from ACM SIGSPATIAL 2015 that was held November 3—6 in Seattle, Washington. The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems 2015 (SIGSPATIAL 2015) is the twenty-third event in a series of […]

Preparations for the fourth Heidelberg Laureate Forum are in full swing, and applications from young researchers to attend are now being accepted. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum was created by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies, ACM, the International Mathematical Union, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters to provide an opportunity for young researchers to spend a week with winners of the Turing Award, Abel Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, and Fields Medal.  To date three forums have been held (2013, 2014, and 2015), and all have been viewed as a major success by the 40 laureates and 200 young researchers in computer science and mathematics who attended […]

The Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) Kick-off Workshop is this week, November 12-13th, 2015, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  The Global City Teams Challenge, planned by NIST and US Ignite, is an initiative designed to advance the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within a smart city/smart community environment. More than 40 project teams or “action clusters” are currently participating in the GCTC. Please check out the agenda for the event, which includes the following speakers: Nigeria: Bernard Ewah, Head of e-Government from National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Intel: Trina Ward, Senior Director, IoT Strategy & Technology Office AT&T: Ed Davalos, Director – Industrial […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has partnered with London-based Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to launch a global science competition for new products to advance “open science,” a movement to make scientific research data broadly accessible to the public. From the NIH news release: The volume of digital information generated by biomedical research often called “big data” is growing at a rapidly increasing pace. Researchers’ ability to derive knowledge from data is hindered by their ability to find, access and use it. The goal of the Open Science Prize is to support the development and prototyping of services, tools and platforms to overcome these hurdles to ensure data […]

The next WATCH talk, called Computer Security and the Internet of Things is Thursday, November 12, 2015 from Noon-1pm ET. The presenter is Tadayoshi Kohno from the University of Washington and the UW Information School. His research focuses on helping protect the security, privacy, and safety of users of current and future generation technologies. Kohno is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and a Technology Review TR-35 Young Innovator Award. Kohno is also a member of the National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience, the IEEE Center for Secure Design, and the USENIX Security Steering Committee. Kohno received his Ph.D. from the University […]