On April 2, 2013, President Obama launched the Brain Research though Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative as a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders. The initiative is a joint program with funding through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). In December 2014, in conjunction with the NSF, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) held a workshop to bring together the Neuroscience and Computer Science communities to help create breakthrough technologies as a part of the BRAIN Initiative. Then in January of 2016, the CCC was […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Convergence of Data and Computing Task Force, led by CCC Council Members Vasant G. Honavar from Pennsylvania State University, Mark D. Hill from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Katherine Yelick from University of California at Berkeley, has just released another community white paper called Accelerating Science: A Computing Research Agenda. This white paper seeks to articulate a research agenda for developing cognitive tools that can augment human intellect and partner with humans on the scientific process. The recent advances in sensing, measurement, storage and communication technologies and the resulting emergence of “big data” offer unprecedented opportunities for not only accelerating scientific advances, but also enabling new modes of discovery. However, there is a huge gap […]

President Obama has named 105 researchers recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. This is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Awardees are selected for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach. Some of the awardees in computer science include Pieter Abbeel, from University of California, Berkeley, Aaron Roth, from University of Pennsylvania, Sayeef Salahuddin, from University of California, Berkeley, Jakita Thomas, from Spelman College, and CCC council member Shwetak Patel, from the […]

The Global City Teams Challenge Tech Jam date has been set! It will take place at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Gaithersburg, MD on March 22-23, 2016. The Tech Jam will provide opportunities for existing Action Clusters to present their project plans, discuss project measurements, and identify additional Action Cluster partners. NIST is also establishing an international technical public working group to help develop an “IoT-Enabled Smart City Framework” that will identify pivotal points of interoperability across the many existing and deployed architectures. This international group will be holding initial workshops immediately following the GCTC Tech Jam in the United States (March 24-25, 2016) and in […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured the public’s imagination for over 60 years, but it has proceeded in fits and starts leading to what has become known as an “AI winter” – a long period of diminished research and funding activity. Until recently, the conventional wisdom has been that new algorithms were the limiting factor in making steady progress towards artificial intelligence. However, recent advances in machine learning, have established that historical algorithms in conjunction with high-performance computers can be used to achieve nearly human-level performance on diverse tasks such as image and speech recognition, language translation, and video game play. In each of these instances rapid progress was facilitated by the […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France A. Córdova outlined President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget request to Congress for NSF. The FY17 request calls for $8 billion for NSF, an increase of 6.7 percent or about $500 million over the enacted FY16 budget. Funding priorities for FY2017 include research that addresses issues of major scientific and societal importance. For example: Clean Energy Technologies would receive $512 million, an increase of $141 million over FY2016. Understanding the Brain would receive $142 million in FY2017. Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems (INFEWS) would receive $62 million. Risk and Resilience would receive $43 million. This is a research portfolio […]