The following is a Request for Information (RFI) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  The Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO), within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, announces an RFI seeking feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders regarding research opportunities associated with applying machine learning techniques toward challenges in the geosciences that are relevant to geothermal energy. With respect to the overall goals of establishing the practice of machine learning in the geothermal industry and maximizing the value of the rich datasets available to the geosciences, GTO is seeking input in three areas: Identifying […]

The Cybersecurity Taskforce of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will host a leadership workshop to envision the future of embedded security research on August 13th in Baltimore, Maryland. Embedded systems such as pacemakers, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things often have real-time constraints and electromechanical components that lead to different vulnerabilities and solutions from traditional computing systems. Embedded security is the study of physical properties, computational properties, and human factors that protect embedded systems from attack. The workshop, co-chaired by Wayne Burleson (UMass Amherst), Kevin Fu (CCC Cybersecurity Taskforce Chair, University of Michigan), and Farinaz Koushanfar (UC San Diego), will be co-located with the 27th USENIX Security Symposium. It will begin with a reception on the evening of […]

In July, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Manuela Veloso will join JPMorgan Chase & Co. as head of artificial-intelligence research. She is currently the head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. From the J.P. Morgan Press Release: J.P. Morgan has already started to apply machine learning technology across its businesses and functions, and this expanded effort will be aimed at identifying further opportunities. A.I. is among the areas of investment within the bank’s annual technology budget of $10.8 billion, with more than half earmarked for new investments. Veloso is a Past President of AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence), and the co-founder and a Past President of […]

Shwetak Patel, from the University of Washington, contributed to this post.  Would you like to know how much energy your living room TV is using when it is running? What about when how much it uses while still plugged in and turned “off”? How about checking to see if your newborn baby has jaundice using your smartphone? Would that be helpful? All these practical applications are now possible using a smart sensor in the home and on your phone. The National Science Foundation Science Nation recently went to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council member Shwetak Patel’s lab to learn how to use smart sensors to create a breakdown of […]

CCC Council member Maja Mataric from the University of Southern California provided contributions to this post. If we train Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do our work for us it will still need to be periodically checked for errors and random noise. This detailed human oversight is not something we can skip. As AI has more and more power, it will also have more responsibility and the decisions it makes could be deadly if incorrect. We still have so much to learn about building machines that could potentially make life-altering decisions, and we cannot predict what kinds of serious engineering flaws will occur in the future. Michael I. Jordan from the […]

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) will hold a webinar on sociotechnical interventions for health disparity reduction on Wednesday, May 16th at 1pm ET. During the webinar, Katie Siek (Indiana) and Tiffany Veinot (Michigan) will discuss the conclusions from the recent Computing Community Consortium (CCC) workshop of the same name. On April 9-10, 2018, the CCC held a visioning workshop on Sociotechnical Interventions for Health Disparity Reduction, co-located with the Society for Behavioral Medicine 39th Annual Meeting in New Orleans, in order to examine the opportunities and challenges facing sociotechnical interventions designed to improve the health of disadvantaged populations and reduce health disparities within them. Health disparities are the differences in […]