Last month, CCC council member Katie Siek, along with two PhD student collaborators, Zaidat Ibrahim and Alexander Hayes from Indiana University, released an article in the journal The Conversation about public concern regarding the use of period tracking apps.    Recently, many, including researchers and experts, have voiced apprehension over using period tracking applications since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, fearing that state and local governments may attempt to subpoena user’s period data from the owners of these apps. Some have even gone so far as to input false data into these period tracking apps, in the hopes that this “junk data” will confuse the applications’ algorithms, and cause […]

Quantum computing has exploded onto the scene and increasingly gained traction as the computing field moves toward the end of Moore’s Law. Viewed as a next step in improving the speed and efficiency of computing and tackling increasingly intricate problems, quantum computing uses quantum mechanical properties to express and manipulate information as quantum bits or qubits offering large potential speedups with processing. The capabilities and possibilities that quantum computing offers has garnered interest across many disciplines leading to a shortage in the quantum workforce. The University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the Chicago Quantum Exchange is working to close this gap with a new Certificate in Quantum […]

First announced at President Biden’s Summit for Democracy, the U.S./U.K. privacy-enhancing technologies prize challenges, are now open for registration. Co-sponsored by the National Institute for Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation, and planned in coordination with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and counterparts in the United Kingdom, the prize challenges seek to catalyze research to bring about solutions to financial crime and public health emergencies. Solutions to pressing global issues such as preventing financial cybercrime and enhancing pandemic response capabilities requires vast amount of high quality data. Privacy-enhancing technologies will enable the cultivation and analysis of large datasets without jeopardizing a citizens’ fundamental right […]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has made huge strides in the past decade. A large part of this progress can be attributed to large quantities of accessible datasets and computing resources. Recently many federal agencies have started to invest in leveraging commercial cloud computing resources to advance AI/ML research and development (R&D). The White House’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and AI Subcommittee just released a report on Lessons Learned from Federal Use of Cloud Computing to Support AI Research and Development summarizing lessons learned from Federal agencies on the use of cloud computing to further AI R&D. The report came about from another Federal Government’s Select Committee […]

Quantum Information Science (QIS) offers a new world of computational capabilities beyond the reach of today’s classical computing. At the same time, QIS threatens the cryptographic algorithms upon which modern digital security and privacy is built. The White House recently released the “National Security Memorandum on Promoting United States Leadership in Quantum Computing While Mitigating Risks to Vulnerable Cryptographic Systems”, or NSM-10.  The memorandum represents the Biden Administration’s plan to maintain the Nation’s competitive advantage in QIS without jeopardizing national security. The memorandum is split into four sections, each outlining specific steps towards achieving this balance. Sec 1. Policy Section 1 outlines the overarching policies of the administration: “(1) to […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is thrilled to announce that as of tomorrow, July 1, Daniel Lopresti will become the new Chair and Nadya T. Bliss will become the new Vice Chair. Both have been essential members of the Council for years and we look forward to their continued leadership in their new roles.  Lopresti has been CCC’s Vice Chair since July 1, 2020 and a member of the Council since July 1, 2015. In addition to being the Vice Chair, he has served the Council in many different capacities throughout his tenure, from leading task forces to authoring several quadrennial and white papers, and organizing visioning activities on broad […]