The next public President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) meeting will be this Tuesday, July 14, 2015 from 9:00 AM -12:00 PM ET at the National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC. Online registration for the meeting is now OPEN. While registration is not required to attend this meeting, seating is limited, and preference will be given to those who registered in advance online.  The meeting will also be webcast. This meeting is particularly important for the computer science community, as it includes the Review of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.  This presentation will be led by Eric Schmidt and J. […]

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) currently has a three month Technovisual: Art in the Age of Code exhibit on display at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. The exhibit showcases eight artists from across the U.S. who use computer programming and the science of computing to create new experiences and ask new questions. Artists, as intellectual pioneers, have embraced the unique aesthetic and creative possibilities of computing since the dawn of the Information Age and increasingly apply digital tools with the same fluency as physical ones. Please join the AAAS Arts Program tomorrow night, July 9th, from 6:30-8:30pm at AAAS for a “Coding and Creativity” panel discussion. Participants will discuss […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsors an initiative to bring special “Blue Sky Ideas” tracks to leading computer science research conferences. The goal of this initiative is to help conferences reach out beyond the usual research papers that present completed work and to seek out papers that present ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new directions. Conferences may request CCC sponsorship of such tracks along with a CCC grant that provides prize money for the top 3 papers (first prize $1000, second prize $750, and third prize $500), to be awarded as travel grants. Papers in a “Blue Sky Ideas” track should be open-ended, possibly “outrageous” or […]

The 2015 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit will be streamed live from Redmond, Washington on Wednesday, July 8 and Thursday, July 9. This free online event offers keynotes and selected presentations from the Faculty Summit on future trends in computer science research. This year’s event, which focuses on Artificial Intelligence, includes former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member and now Microsoft Research Managing Director, Eric Horvitz. Eric recently posted a CCC blog post on the Benefits and Risks of Artificial Intelligence. The Summit will feature three keynote speakers and a panel: July 8: Opening Keynote 8:30–9:15 A.M. PT (11:30 A.M.–12:15 P.M. ET): Jeannette Wing, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research Panel: Progress in AI: Myths, Realities […]

The next WATCH talk, called The CHERI Processor: Revisiting the Hardware-Software Interface for Security is Monday July 6, 2015 from Noon-1pm EST. The presenter is Dr Robert N.M. Watson. Robert is a University Lecturer in Systems, Security, and Architecture at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. He has a strong interests in open-source software, is on the board of directors of the FreeBSD Foundation, and was founder of the FreeBSD Project. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge. Abstract   The last five years, supported by DARPA’s CRASH and MRC research programmes, SRI International and the University of Cambridge have been engaged in a project to revisit the fundamentals […]

In May, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) commissioned members of the research community to generate white papers to help guide strategic thinking in autonomous systems in a number of different domain specific areas, including Aerial Earth Science, Construction, Defense, Disaster Management, Healthcare, Paths Towards Autonomy, Service Robots, and Transportation Systems. The CCC has released eight white papers. The Toward a Science of Autonomy for Physical Systems white paper frames both the opportunities and challenges posed by autonomous physical systems in general. We contend that, in most cases, the potential human and economic toll of not exploring and understanding automation science in a timely and thoughtful manner far outweighs the costs or risks. The associated […]