July 31, 2014 marks Farnam Jahanian’s final day as Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this position, which he has held since February 1, 2011, Farnam has been a indefatigable champion for the computer science research community.  He led the launch of three Presidential Initiatives: the National Robotics Initiative, the Big Data Research and Development Initiative, and US Ignite.  He led the Directorate through the creation of 25 new solicitations, many of which were cross-directorate, and he spearheaded the expansion of interagency and international collaborations: Smart and Connected Health with NIH; Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience with NIH, Israel, France and […]

We are proud to announce the launch of a new brand for CRA and its committees. As the impact of CRA’s activities are becoming more widely recognized and valued across our industry, we decided to develop a new brand identity that reinforces and amplifies our mission, objectives and programs.  Our new brand is part of our larger effort to create a comprehensive communications strategy for CRA and its many activities. After updating our mission statement, last fall we began developing a brand that positions CRA as dynamic and collaborative, while preserving the unique identities of CRA’s distinct committees. The new CRA symbol is designed to represent great minds coming together. […]

The biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird took place last week for Chairs, Department Heads, and Lab Directors from across North America.  Nearly 300 people gathered to participate in sessions ranging in topics from issues in government surveillance using the Internet to creating a diverse Computer Science research community.  The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) led a variety of sessions throughout the conference.  Excitement was high for the programs being put on by the CCC: Computing Visions 2025: The Visions 2025 initiative was created to inspire the computing community to envision future trends and opportunities in computing research. Where is the computing field going over the next 10-15 years? What are potential […]

Below is a Letter from Dr. Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. Dear CISE Community, I am delighted to announce that Dr. Keith Marzullo has been reappointed to the position of the Director of the Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) at NSF, effective July 2014. Dr. Marzullo has been an exemplary member of the CISE senior management team for the past several years, and we are thrilled that he will continue in his current position. Dr. Marzullo has brought significant broad scientific expertise to CISE and CNS research areas and will continue to provide strong leadership in cybersecurity, networking and distributed systems, cyber physical systems, and other areas in […]

The next WATCH Talk is scheduled for July 17 at noon EDT. Crispin Cowan will reflect on decades of defending imperfect software. Dr. Cowan works for Microsoft adding security to existing operating systems, including the recent Windows 8.1 release. He is especially interested in usable security and effective sandboxing.  Abstract:  “Perfect” (bug-free) software is impractically expensive and slow to produce, and so the vast bulk of consumer and enterprise software products are shipped when they are “good enough” but far from bug-free. As a consequence, there has been a constant struggle to keep attackers from exploiting these chronically inevitable bugs. Much of that attention has been on memory corruption attacks against […]

  We often hear about the dearth of women in computer science and engineering fields. Many organizations are working hard to attract and retain women in these fields. In an article titled 22 Most Powerful Women Engineers In the World, Business Insider showcases powerful women engineers.  From the article: There’s a huge push these days to encourage more girls to learn to code and to hire more women engineers once they graduate. The tech industry knows it can’t fill all the jobs it has while discouraging half the population from joining the industry. It also knows that it can’t do a good job of designing new tech products for women if women aren’t part of the […]