Contributions to the following blog were made by former CCC Chair Gregory Hager and CCC Director Ann Drobnis.  We all know there is a lot of data out there, and the amount of data is growing rapidly – 2500 petabyes a day by some estimates. For data-driven fields such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the availability of massive amounts of data and vast advances in computing power have now brought us to a unique and exciting phase where the availability of data is a major factor shaping the evolution of AI research. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) recently released report called 10 Steps Congress Can Take to Accelerate Data […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Brian Logan (University of Nottingham), John Thangarajah (RMIT University), and Neil Yorke-Smith (American University of Beirut). Their paper called Progressing Intention Progression: A Call for a Goal-Plan Tree Contest was the Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track winner at the Sixteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MutliAgent Systems (AAMAS), May 8-12, 2017 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Idea A key problem for an agent with multiple, possibly inconsistent, goals is: “what should I do next”? What to do next can be formalized as the intention progression problem (IPP): what means (i.e., plan) to use to achieve a given goal, and which of the currently adopted plans (i.e., intentions) to progress at the current […]

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the release of a draft Special Publication (SP) on Securing Wireless Infusion Pumps in Healthcare Delivery Organizations, which is now available for public comment. This is an important area that Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Kevin Fu from the University of Michigan has been working in for many years. In February 2016, Fu attended the White House meeting of medical device security stakeholders and domain experts to discuss the cybersecurity challenges faced by healthcare delivery organizations and medical device manufacturers. In March 2017, the New York Times released an article called It’s Possible to Hack a Phone With Sound Waves, Researchers Show, which highlights Fu’s […]

Contributions to the blog were made by Rahul Mangharam from the University of Pennsylvania and past CCC Chair Gregory Hager from Johns Hopkins University. How should we invest in transportation infrastructure and technology to protect our national security and our country’s economic growth? Recently, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) in collaboration with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) released eight white papers describing a collective research agenda for intelligent infrastructure. We will be blogging about each paper over the next few weeks. Today, we highlight the MOBILITY21: Strategic Investments for Transportation Infrastructure & Technology paper. This paper outlines critical needs for our transportation infrastructure, identifies new technology drivers and proposes strategic investments for […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Amulya Yadav, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California (USC). Yadav was a co-organizer of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) AAAI Symposium on AI for Social Good on March 27-29, 2017. The Idea HIV-AIDS kills 2 million people worldwide every year. In USA alone, AIDS kills around 10,000 people per annum. This dangerous disease has an extremely high incidence among homeless youth, as they are more likely to engage in high HIV-risk behaviors (e.g., unprotected sexual activity, injection drug use) than other sub-populations. In fact, previous studies show that homeless youth are at 10X greater risk […]

The following is a letter to the community from Jim Kurose, Assistant Director (AD) and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy AD of the National Science Foundation‘s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) regarding the FY2018 Budget Request that was released yesterday.  Dear CISE Community, Each year, the President transmits to Congress a budget request for the Executive Branch of the Federal government, including a request for the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Today, the President officially submitted that request for fiscal year (FY) 2018, which begins October 1, 2017, and continues through September 30, 2018.  The President’s FY 2018 Budget Request proposes $6.6 billion for NSF (a decrease of 11.1% from […]