The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi (Assistant Director) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). See the Computing Research Association‘s (CRA) bulletin post about CSGrad4US here.  February 2, 2021 Dear Colleagues: The computer and information science and engineering fields are experiencing booming undergraduate enrollments. Many of these undergraduate degree recipients have outstanding job opportunities in industry and at other organizations, and only a small fraction of these individuals considers pursuing related doctoral degree-granting programs. In order to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students in these areas and thereby bolster the U.S. population in the Nation’s computer and […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently released A National Research Agenda for Intelligent Infrastructure: 2021 Update, which surveys a comprehensive set of earlier intelligent infrastructure whitepapers from 2017 and a more recent set of companion Quadrennial whitepapers on closely related topics. The update then highlights four themes of rising national prominence where intelligent infrastructure can play an enabling role.  Examples of how intelligent infrastructure can have an impact include: COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters: Intelligent infrastructure such as GIS dashboards, computational simulations, cloud computing, and broadband helped virus monitoring, policy-intervention comparisons, tele-work, tele-education, and  tele-health. New opportunities include National Pandemic Informatics Infrastructure to monitor virus mutations, as well as emergency […]

Nominations are open for the 2021 Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship through February 22, 2021. Eligible faculty will then be contacted in early March to submit their proposals by March 29, 2021. The Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship recognizes emerging leaders in the field of computing who have exceptional talent for research and innovation. Qualifying faculty must have received their terminal degree in May 2016 or later, and their research must be closely related to the general research areas carried out by Microsoft Research. These full-time faculty members must also conduct research, advise graduate students, and teach in the classroom in North or South America. Provisions of the award include $100,000 USD […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. Established in 2006 through a cooperative agreement between the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Computing Research Association (CRA), the CCC provides a voice for the national computing research community, facilitating the development of a bold, multi-themed vision for computing research and communicating that vision to a wide range of stakeholders. To fulfill its mission, the CCC needs visionary leaders — people with great ideas, sound judgment, and the willingness to work collaboratively to see things through to completion. The Council is composed of 20 researchers representing the breadth […]

Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Vice Chair Dan Lopresti was recently elected president of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR).  IAPR is an international association of non-profit, scientific, and professional organizations (national, multi-national, or international in scope) concerned with research in pattern recognition, computer vision, and image processing. IAPR was established in January 1978 and currently consists of 50 national societies, bringing together nearly 10,000 researchers in these fields. The organizational structure of IAPR includes 13 Standing Committees and 17 Technical Committees. IAPR sponsors or endorses several dozen conferences and workshops annually for the benefit of the international scientific community. Lopresti was elected by an international Governing Board at the […]

A Message from CISE Leadership Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community,  Happy New Year!  2020 certainly brought its share of challenges, and our sympathies are with all of you most directly affected by them.  Along the way, 2020 also brought many exciting opportunities and successes for the CISE community.   AP CS Principles: For example, the College Board recently reported that the workforce—especially among young women, students of color, and first-generation students—setting them on a path to declaring a CS or STEM major in college. Specifically, the report found that AP CSP students are more likely to declare a major in STEM and more than THREE times as likely (an 11.7 percentage point increase) to declare a major in computer science than similar students who attended high school […]