The following is from the Office of Science and Technology Blog by Jo Handelsman, the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. People’s appreciation of game-changing new technologies frequently ignores the long, often twisting path that transforms an idea from fundamental discovery to practical application.  Those who pay for the national research agenda may not always be aware of the early and fundamental work that makes today’s technologies possible.  For example, it was basic research presented in a then-obscure scientific paper by Albert Einstein in 1917 that ultimately translated into the invention of laser technology four decades later.  The development of similarly groundbreaking […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Sebastian Elbaum, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and David S. Rosenblum, Dean of the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore. Their paper Known Unknowns: Testing in the Presence of Uncertainty won second place at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track series at the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), November 16-22, 2014 in Hong Kong. The Innovative Idea Uncertainty is present in most systems we build today, whether introduced by human decisions, machine learning algorithms, external libraries, or sensing variability. This uncertainty leads to occasional misbehavior or incorrect output that is deemed to be acceptable. In the […]

The following is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) by the Assistant Director for the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose.   May 13, 2015 Dear Colleagues: The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announces its intention to revise the submission windows for its core programs as well as the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program for the 2015-16 academic year. Specifically, the following submission windows are anticipated: Medium and Large proposals: September 2015; and Small proposals: November 2015. Specific dates for these revised submission windows will be announced when the core program solicitations are re-issued […]

Can you imagine a robot delivering your baby or downloading a file from your favorite designer to print clothes at home on your 3D printer? You might not have to imagine these things for much longer. These are just a few of the amazing advances we are likely to see in the next ten years, according to seven top futurists who were recently interviewed by The Huffington Post. The article titled 7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions About What The Next Decade Will Bring describes these advances and more. Dr. Ray Kurzweil, inventor, computer scientist, and Director of Engineering at Google, believes that by 2025, 3D printers will be printing clothing and even […]

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced the creation of the new Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research, convergence research is the integration of research in two or more of the following disciplines: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biomedicine, biology, astronomy, earth sciences, engineering, and computational science. The inaugural prize will be awarded for convergence research that benefits human health. The prize is made possible through a generous gift from Raymond and Beverly Sackler and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation, and will be presented annually beginning this year with an inaugural $400,000 award. Two-thirds of the prize money will be awarded to the selected researcher(s), and the remaining third will […]

The organizing committee for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Human Computation Roadmap Summit have released their Workshop Report. The visioning workshop, hosted by the CCC, explored the design and analysis of information processing systems in which humans participate as computational agents. The workshop included over 60 participants from a variety of disciplines, representing academia, private industry and federal agencies (NSF, NIH, NIST, NITRD, OSTP). The rapid advancement of the human computation field toward repeatable and sustainable success models requires a concerted effort by policy-makers, federal funding agencies, multidisciplinary research institutions, private industry, and the public. This report advocates for a new national initiative in human computation, with policy and funding support […]