CCC Chair Beth Mynatt has contributed to this blog. As computing has grown even more essential to day to day life, the capacity of computing research to effect societal change and address the needs of society has subsequently increased. In convening the Computing Research Symposium, our goal was to grow awareness and enthusiasm for the role that computing research plays in addressing timely and critical societal needs. How can we use artificial intelligence to amplify human abilities? How can intelligent infrastructure strengthen our communities? How do security and privacy promote democracy? How can big data and algorithms ensure fairness? To help answer these questions and more, we held the second […]

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is pleased to present the 2017 Fall Symposium Series, to be held Thursday through Saturday, November 9-11, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia. One of the symposia is on Cognitive Assistance in Government and Public Sector Applications. Cognitive Assistance is an important focus area for AI. While it has several facets and still lacks a precise definition (one of the reasons for this Symposium!), it has been called Augmented Intelligence, the automation of knowledge work, intelligence amplification, cognitive prostheses, and cognitive analytics in the past. It is generally agreed that even while fully automated AI is still being developed, there […]

This post features contributions from the upcoming Computing Research Symposium Intelligent Infrastructure for our Cities and Communities and Data, Algorithms, and Fairness panel members. On October 23-24, 2017, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will hold the Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium in order to address the current and future contribution of computing and its role in addressing societal needs. The two days are organized around four main themes: Intelligent Infrastructure for our Cities and Communities: Intelligent infrastructure is already transforming our nation’s cities and communities, but the technological revolution is just now beginning. This session will highlight some of the major advances taking place now, while at the same time emphasizing […]

US Ignite, a nonprofit whose mission is to push the creation of next-generation applications and services that utilize networking technologies to build smart communities, recently released a video showcase of select US Ignite Smart Gigabit Community application teams from their 2017 US Ignite Application Summit. The videos include: Compute for Cancer: Compute for Cancer is where the Internet of things meets distributed computing. The world is full of unused or underutilized computing power. Using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure Network Computing, these application developers are working to collect idle computing power from any device such as a phone, computer or data center and donate it to cancer research supercomputers. 
Watch the video or learn more. […]

The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its 2017 MacArthur Fellows – 24 individuals whose achievements show “exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.” The MacArthur Fellows program grants each recipient a no-strings attached stipend of $625,000 in order to support his or her own creative and professional ambitions. The program features scientists, artists, historians, and writers. The 2017 Fellows class features two computer scientists: Regina Barzilay, Delta Electronics professor and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stefan Savage, professor of computer science […]

On October 23-24, 2017, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will hold the Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium in order to address the current and future contribution of computing and its role in addressing societal needs. The two days are organized around four main themes: Intelligent Infrastructure for our Cities and Communities: Intelligent infrastructure is already transforming our nation’s cities and communities, but the technological revolution is just now beginning. This session will highlight some of the major advances taking place now, while at the same time emphasizing the substantial body of research, much of it crossing disciplinary boundaries, that still needs to be done. Security and Privacy for Democracy:Computing research […]