Misinformation during a national emergency is not new. In this current health crisis, the “coronavirus pandemic is generating a tidal wave of information—some of it accurate, some not so much—that has saturated social and traditional media,” as was stated in Science Magazine last week.  The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently held a session at AAAS called Detecting, Combating, and Identifying Dis and Mis-information. One of the speakers was Emma Spiro (University of Washington), who spoke on Misinformation in the Context of Emergencies and Disaster Events. Rumors, defined by Spiro as a “story that is unverified at the time of communication,” are widely spread during crisis events as people seek out […]

In two weeks you are hosting 1,800 scientists, engineers, designers, and other experts at a five day conference but then the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suddenly encourages Americans to practice “social distancing” measures to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. What do you do?  You move it online.  That is what the IEEE VR conference chairs decided to do last month, led by Blair MacIntyre, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing and IEEE VR conference co-chair, and Kyle Johnsen, an associate professor in the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering, when they transitioned the IEEE VR 2020 Conference to an all-virtual event. Working non-stop […]

By Cherri Pancake, ACM President As the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic continues, we at ACM would like to do what we can to help support the computing community. Many computing researchers and practitioners are now working remotely. In addition, teaching and learning have also moved online as more and more campuses close. We believe that ACM can help support research, discovery and learning during this time of crisis by opening the ACM Digital Library to all. For the next three months, there will be no fees assessed for accessing or downloading work published by ACM. We hope this will help researchers, practitioners and students maintain access to our publications as well as increasing visibility […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is delighted to welcome Maddy Hunter! The Computing Research Association (CRA) recently hired Maddy as a Program Associate for the CCC subcommittee. In this role, she provides support for the CCC by handling administrative and logistical matters, such as planning for meetings, visioning workshops, outreach activities, and committee support. Maddy will also interact with key constituents, including members of the research community, and policymakers, to further enrich the awareness of CRA, its committees, its mission, and its services. “CCC is thrilled to have Maddy Hunter join us as a Program Associate. Her experience in management, logistics, and writing should further enhance CCC in its mission […]

The National Science Foundation‘s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) established the Expeditions in Computing (Expeditions) program more than a decade ago “to build on past successes and provide the CISE research and education community with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, fundamental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information.” Funded at levels up to $15 million for seven years, “Expeditions projects represent some of the largest single investments currently made by the CISE directorate. Together with the Science and Technology Centers and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes that CISE supports, Expeditions projects form the centerpiece of the directorate’s center-scale award portfolio.” “For over 10 […]

From the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for immediate release. Today, The White House announced the launch of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium to provide COVID-19 researchers worldwide with access to the world’s most powerful high performance computing resources that can significantly advance the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus. This unique public-private consortium, spearheaded by The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, IBM, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation, includes the following government, industry, and academic leaders who have volunteered free compute time and resources on their machines: Industry IBM Amazon Web Services Google Cloud Microsoft […]