Your faithful correspondent recently participated in the European Computer Science Summit 2009, the annual meeting of Informatics Europe (Paris, 8-9 October; http://www.informatics-europe.org/). Informatics Europe was created five years ago as a European version of CRA (which is a North American association by charter). A recurring theme at this meeting was the concern that the European scientific research community still does not fully appreciate computing as an intellectually vibrant research discipline in its own right; instead the field is often viewed as an enabler of research in other disciplines. A number of discussions centered on ways in which the computing community can do a better job in explaining the field to […]

The ninth Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing took place in Tucson, Arizona from September 30-October 3.   For those who attended the 1600-person, sold-out conference, it is difficult to believe gender equity in computer science is not right around the corner.  Every year The Grace Hopper Celebration packs an astounding amount of talent and enthusiasm into a single conference.    Keynote speakers Megan Smith, Vice President of New Business Development and General Manager of Google.Org, and Fran Berman, Vice President for Research and Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, illustrated what it means to lead in this information-centric world.    Invited talks showcased research from top computer scientists.   The […]

The awarding of the $1 million Netflix Prize this week reopens an interesting bigger question:  Are prizes a viable mechanism for encouraging research in the computing fields?  From Netflix’s perspective, the answer is almost certainly yes.  Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is quoted telling the New York Times (probably tongue-in-cheek) “You’re getting Ph.D.’s for a dollar an hour.” Could prizes be useful to the broader computing community in advancing research?  The Clay Mathematics Institute established the Millenium Prizes in 2000, offering $1 million for the solutions to each of seven famous open problems, including the question of whether P=NP.  It’s hard to imagine that many researchers have decided to shape their […]

Twenty researchers met in Brighton, England July 4th and 5th for the Forum to Envision the Future of Learning.  This forum was part of the CCC’s Global Resources for On-line Education (GROE) initiative.  The meeting was held to coincide with the AI in Education meeting, also held in Brighton.  A list of participants is found on the GROE page on the CCC web site http://www.cra.org/ccc/groe.php. Under the leadership of Beverly Woolf, head of the GROE initiative, the group discussed the results of the April workshop held in Tempe, Arizona, as well as the next steps for research involving the “road map” that came out of that workshop. This meeting provided […]