The following Great Innovative Idea is from Francesca Rossi of IBM Research and Nicholas Mattei of Tulane University. They were one of the Blue Sky Award winners at AAAI 2019 for their paper Building Ethically Bounded AI. The Idea The more AI agents are deployed in scenarios with possibly unexpected situations, the more they need to be flexible, adaptive, and creative in achieving the goal we have given them. Thus, a certain level of freedom to choose the best path to the goal is inherent in making AI robust and flexible enough. At the same time, however, the pervasive deployment of AI in our life, whether AI is autonomous or […]

Contributions to this post were graciously provided by CCC Director Ann Schwartz Drobnis and CCC Chair Mark Hill. Computer science is cool, but you already knew that. You are in this field because you find it cool, exciting, and limitless in its discovery potential. What about the rest of this country? What do they think of computer science? How do we, as proud stewards of this research area, get them equally excited about the potential of this field? I know. We (collective “we” meaning computing researchers) helped obtain the first image of a black hole, that is beyond cool—it’s really, really cold at 10-14 Kelvin or about −459.67 °F. Earlier […]

The following is a letter to the community from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).  Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce that the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has convened a search committee for the next Division Director for its Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS). As many of you know, Dr. Ken Calvert, who has served as the CNS Division Director since May 2016, will be completing his rotation and returning to his institution, the University of Kentucky, at the end of this calendar year.  While at NSF/CISE, Ken has provided outstanding leadership […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the 14th annual iConference, March 31- April 3, 2019 in Washington, DC. This special track for 2019 sought ideas and visions that stimulate the iSchool research community to pursue new directions. It was organized by Kevin Crowston from Syracuse University and John Leslie King from the University of Michigan. 1) Disrupting the Coming Robot Stampedes: Designing Resilient Information Ecologies Philip Gregory Feldman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and ASRC Federal; Aaron Dant, ASRC Federal; Wayne Lutters, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 2) Troubled Worlds: Bringing Bodies and the Environment into  Computing Research, Practice, and Pedagogy Megan Finn, University of […]

The Computing Research Association (CRA), in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has appointed seven new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council: Sujata Banerjee, VMware Elisa Bertino, Purdue University Tom Conte, Georgia Tech Maria Gini, University of Minnesota Chad Jenkins, University of Michigan Melanie Mitchell, Portland State University Katie Siek, Indiana University Beginning July 1, the new members will each serve three-year terms. The CCC Council is comprised of 20 members who have expertise in diverse areas of computing. They are instrumental in leading CCC’s visioning programs, which help catalyze and enable ideas for future computing research. Members serve staggered three-year terms that rotate every July. The CCC and CRA thank […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Barry Smyth, the Digital Chair of Computer Science at University College Dublin and the Director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. Dr. Smyth was one of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Blue Sky Track Conference Winners at AAAI-19 for his paper Recommender Systems: A Healthy Obsession. The Idea The idea of using AI and machine learning to help people to train more effectively for, and race in, marathons, and other endurance events. Impact I believe that it has the potential to change how people exercise, by helping them to train more efficiently and more safely. Other Research I work in the area […]