“On the Edge — The Future of Computing Research” was the title of a plenary session at the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) biennial Conference at Snowbird last month. And it’s a consistent theme of CRA’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC). Here’s the pitch: Our field has exhibited an ever-changing balance of “technology push” and “demand pull” over the years. Many currently sense a movement of the pendulum in the “demand pull” direction. I’d like to argue that this is fantastic — it’s great news for our field, great news for society, and great news for the future (read more following the link…).

Eminent computer scientist Bill Wulf, who has been a leader by example for so many years in so many ways, has resigned from the University of Virginia to protest the recent conduct of the UVa Board of Visitors in removing President Teresa Sullivan. Wulf’s letter to newly-appointed Interim President Carl P. Zeithaml, reported in the Washington Post, states: “By this email I am submitting my resignation, effective immediately  …  A BOV that so poorly understands UVa, and academic culture more generally, is going to make a lot more dumb decisions  …  frankly, I think you should be ashamed to be party to this debacle! “I urge my fellow faculty to […]

On November 15, seven University of Washington faculty members from Biology, Bioengineering, and Computer Science & Engineering were privileged to share a 2-hour breakfast in Seattle with DARPA Director Regina Dugan, Deputy Director Ken Gabriel, IIO Office Director Dan Kaufman, IIO Program Manager Ben Cutler, and U.S. Marines Operational Liaison Col. Robert Durkin. One message that came through loud and clear:  DARPA leadership is intently focused on understanding how well DARPA is working in the eyes of the academic research community.  There were many probing questions exploring the details of interactions and relationships. Talk to your DARPA Program Manager was emphasized repeatedly.  For example, in order to allow headquarters staff […]

A superb talk by Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, at TED ’11. “The mobility model that we have today simply will not work tomorrow … We need an integrated system that uses real-time data to optimize personal mobility on a massive scale.” Start at 8:10 after the jump…

… and a shout-out early in Stephen Colbert’s hilarious commencement address. Congratulations Barbara!  Watch Colbert’s remarks here.

It’s unusual for computing research to be featured in an editorial in the New York Times, but it happened today:   An editorial in today’s New York Times follows up on an article ten days ago describing an end-to-end analysis of the spam value chain which determined that 95% of spam-advertised pharmaceutical, replica and software products are monetized using merchant services from just a handful of banks. The New York Times editorial states:  “The Times’s John Markoff reported that computer scientists at two University of California campuses have found another vulnerability:  spammers’ banks.  To track the flow of information, the researchers made hundreds of purchases.  Buying Viagra from the Pharmacy Express […]