The AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have organized a new seminar series on Data Science, Big Data, and Internet of Things. The series is a monthly one-hour informational presentation that is open for all to attend in person or online. Michael Franklin from UC Berkeley will be the inaugural speaker tomorrow, Wednesday January 21, from 11:30am to 12:30pm EST. Franklin is the Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Computer Science and Chair of the Computer Science Division of the EECS Department at UC Berkeley. He is director of the Berkeley AMPLab, a 70+ person effort fusing scalable computing, machine learning, and human computation to make sense […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) recently announced a new program called Critical Resilient Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP). CRISP has an upcoming full proposal deadline of March 20, 2015 according to its solicitation. The following are few comments about CRISP from Gurdip Singh, Program Director in the Division of Computer and Network Systems (CISE/CNS). Critical Infrastructures supporting our national economy, health and security are interdependent and reliant on each other.  A system may rely to performance, security and correct functioning of others, and failure/degradation of any of these properties may propagate from one system to other.  The goal of the CRISP program is to explore approaches […]

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is out with its 2014 Fellows, 47 of its members from universities, corporations, and research labs being recognized “for their contributions to computing that are driving innovations across multiple domains and disciplines…including database mining and design; artificial intelligence and machine learning; cryptography and verification; Internet security and privacy; computer vision and medical imaging; electronic design automation; and human-computer interaction.” They join a distinguished set of colleagues honored since 1993. Check out 2014 Fellows, including our own Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council member Daniela Rus! Samson Abramsky University of Oxford For contributions to domains in logical form, game semantics, categorical quantum mechanics and contextual semantics Leslie Lamport Microsoft Research For […]

The next WATCH Talk is this Thursday, January 15, 12:00-1:00pm EDT. Salil Vadhan will discuss Differential Privacy: Theoretical and Practical Challenges. Dr. Salil Vadhan is the Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Director of the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society. His research area is theoretical computer science, specifically computational complexity, cryptography, and differential privacy. Abstract   Differential Privacy is framework for enabling the analysis of privacy-sensitive datasets while ensuring that individual-specific information is not revealed.  The concept was developed in a body of work in theoretical computer science starting about a decade ago.   […]

Ever wondered what was going on in the data science community with relation to biomedical research? Ever wish to share your own knowledge about the field? No need to worry any longer! The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a new data science blog which “is the beginning of a more coordinated and push-oriented communication strategy.” The purpose is to distribute information to the data science community “to foster an ecosystem that enables biomedical research to be conducted as a digital enterprise that enhances health, lengthens life, and reduces illness and disability.” The Associate Director for Data Science (ADDS) Phil E. Bourne, contributed the blog’s first post with his 2014 review of […]

The following is a Computing Research Policy Blog post by Brian Mosley, CRA Policy Analyst.  Just wanted to put up a quick post that due to extra availability we are extending the deadline for nominations and applications to the 2015 Leadership in Science Policy Institute workshop (aka: LiSPI) to January 23rd. We have also pushed back notifying selectees to February 2nd. If you know of someone who meets the qualifications and you would like to nominate them, or if you were nominated but missed the deadline to get in your application, now is your chance. For some more background, check out the LiSPI webpage and our original post on this year’s […]