On November 13, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will host it’s next Washington Area Trustworthy Computing Hour (WATCH) talk. The talk will be “The burden of authentication: What friction points reveal.” The speaker will be Dana Chisnell, from the Center for Civic Design. From the abstract: Everyone whines about dealing with passwords and authentication, but what is the real cost to individual users? In a study conducted with 23 people at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, we asked participants to tell us about every time they authenticated in a 24-hour period. From this, we learned that the friction of authentication goes beyond the specific act of authenticating, spilling over into tasks, productivity, and […]

The following is a guest blog post by CCC Council Member Shashi Shekhar, McKnight Distinguished University Professor Department of Computer Science College of Science and Engineering University of Minnesota. Cyber-Earth, a web-based geo-referenced representation of our changing planet, is a powerful tool for communication among citizens, policy makers, and scientists. In the last decade, billions have enjoyed Google Earth, which provides geo-imagery describing a recent state of the entire planet. It is a scalable tool to share geo-imagery (e.g., aftermath of Hurricane Katarina) with citizens and policy makers. It also allows citizens to contribute geo-spatial information to improve map quality and coverage as envisaged in the 1998 speech by Vice President Al Gore on […]

The National Science Foundation recently featured University of Missouri computer scientist Marjorie Skubic in a Science360 radio episode. Skubic is engineering high speed networks that can remotely monitor movement and vital signs. The goal is to help provide independent living for the elderly. In this photo at the Smart America Expo, Skubic is showing sensors that are placed under a mattress to monitor vital signs. As part of the Closed Loop Healthcare team at the Expo, Skubic worked to connect the technologies she’s created with those developed by other teams with similar health care goals. Marjorie Skubic was a recent participant at the CCC Aging in Place Workshop. Aging in Place was a trans-NIH/interagency […]

Data sets are growing rapidly. Yahoo, Google, and Amazon, work with data sets that consist of billions of items. The size and scale of data, which can be overwhelming today, will only increase as the Internet of Things matures. Data sets are also increasingly complex.  It is becoming more important to increase the pool of qualified scientists and engineers who can find the value from the large amount of big data. The National Academies released a report on training students to extract value from big data based on a Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics (CATS) workshop that occurred in April 2014. From the report: Training students to be capable in exploiting big data requires experience […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) issued a new call for proposals for workshops that will catalyze and enable innovative research at the frontiers of computing.  The CCC encourages creative ideas from all segments of the computing research community on topics ranging from the formulation of new basic research to the use of existing research ideas and technologies to address important scientific or societal challenges. From the solicitation: Workshop organizers are expected to bring together a group of scientists and practitioners in the area of interest, and to formulate a program that encourages new ideas, innovative thinking, and broad discussion. Workshops can be of varying sizes, typically ranging from 20 to 100 participants.  It is important that […]

Could robots really aid in the Ebola fight? On November 7th, robotics researchers from around the country will come together to try to answer that question. They will see if robots can prevent the spread of Ebola by possibly decontaminating infected equipment and or even burying victims. Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University and former CCC council member, is helping to set up this Safety Robotics for Ebola Workers workshop. The workshop will bring together health care workers, relief workers and roboticists. It is co-hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Texas A&M, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. The goal of the workshop is […]