The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored a sustainability award at CHI 2013, ACM’s premiere conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The conference was held in Paris, France April 27-May 2, at the Palais de Congrès de Paris. The best sustainability paper award promotes work at the intersection of computing and sustainability, on principles and applications that address environmental, economic, and societal needs in support of a more sustainable future. This year’s winning paper was: The Dubuque Electricity Portal: Evaluation of a City-Scale Residential Electricity Consumption Feedback System, authored by Tom Erickson (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA), M. Li, Y. Kim, A. Deshpande, S. Sahu, T. Chao, P. Sukaviriya, and […]

Each year MIT’s magazine, MIT Technology Review, publishes a list 10 of breakthrough technologies that are most likely to change the world by fixing intractable problems. These technologies are defined as “an advance that gives people powerful new ways to use technology.” View the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2013 below: Deep Learning  With massive amounts of computational power, machines can now recognize objects and translate speech in real time. Artificial intelligence is finally getting smart.   Ultra-Efficient Solar Power  Doubling the efficiency of solar devices would completely change the economics of renewable energy. Here is a design that just might make it possible.   Big Data from Cheap Phones  Collecting […]

The Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance is hosting it’s fourth annual Wireless Health conference on November 1-3, 2013 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The mission of the conference is to “provide the highest-quality academic health and industrial research forum to develop an international community that will accelerate the development and adoption of new technologies for improving health and lowering costs.” To support it’s mission, the organizers have issued a Call for Papers, Abstracts and Research demonstrations. From the call for submissions: To Submit a Paper for Review: The committee solicits original contributions in Health Technology, Engineering and Computer Science disciplines with applications in clinical practice and innovative applications of wireless health principles and […]

The CCC is sponsoring another in its series of “Challenges and Visions” tracks as a Robotics Challenges and Vision workshop at the 9th Robotics: Science and Systems conference June 24 – 28, 2013, Technische Universität Berlin. The Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference has been a venue for presentation of breakthrough results in robotics since its inception in 2005. RSS is the most selective annual venue for timely publication of revolutionary theories and techniques in robotics, achieved through development of novel algorithms and systems. Proceedings of RSS are citable and published both by the MIT press and online. The RSS community comprises most of the top leaders in the field, from […]

As we’ve previously blogged, The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is turning to the Computing Research community for their input on the needs and potential payoff for further investment in mid-scale infrastructure, investments over $4 million but under $100 million. Examples include GENI, PlanetLab, Orbit, FutureGrid, and Emulab, all of which have transformed computing. The CCC is looking to answer the following question. What sort of investment in mid-scale infrastructure can you envision that would drive computing forward? It is our intention to host a workshop where the white papers would be presented, and approach NSF and other funding agencies to act on the (pending) demand for mid-scale infrastructure research funding. White […]

Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Sir Tim Berners Lee, Marc Andreessen, and Louis Pouzin were awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering today at the Royal Academy of Engineering.  This new £1million global prize recognizes outstanding advances in engineering that have changed the world and benefited humanity – celebrating the best and also serving to illuminate the sheer excitement of modern engineering. The work of these five pioneers is recognized as revolutionary for changing the way we communicate. According to the article:  Some 330 petabytes of data are estimated to be carried across its servers each year-  that’s enough capacity to transfer every character ever written in every book ever published 20 […]