The June issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM) features the Viewpoint article “A Vision to Compute Like Nature: Thermodynamically.” Based on the Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) Thermodynamic Computing workshop, this article advocates for a novel, physically grounded, computational paradigm centered on thermodynamics that the authors call “Thermodynamic Computing” (TC). This Viewpoint was written by workshop co-organizers, Todd Hylton (UC San Diego), Tom Conte (Georgia Tech), and Mark D. Hill (Microsoft & U. Wisconsin). In the article, they lay out the premise of TC: “…living systems evolve energy-efficient, universal, self-healing, and complex computational capabilities that dramatically transcend our current technologies. Animals, plants, bacteria, and proteins solve problems by spontaneously […]

Created in the fall of 2020, the CRA-Industry standing committee will convene industry partners on computing research topics and connect them with CRA’s academic and government constituents. CRA-Industry recently announced a virtual round table series. The announcement can be found below:  By CRA-Industry Steering Committee   CRA-Industry, a standing committee of the CRA, was created in the Fall of 2020 with the goal of reaching out to industry partners involved in computing research and giving them new opportunities to convene and connect on topics of mutual interest. As a part of the CRA, CRA-Industry also facilitates the interaction between industry partners and other organizations deeply involved in computing research including […]

This month marks the 35th anniversary of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. CISE was founded on May 1, 1986, and it continues to support “investigator-initiated research and education in all areas of computer and information science and engineering,” including the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), which CISE funds through a cooperative agreement with the Computing Research Association.  Highlighted in their May newsletter, “One of CISE’s key early investments in information technology was the Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI). This initiative provided global, multilingual repositories of data, knowledge, sound, and images. Through the DLI, NSF supported a project that would ultimately result in the creation of Google.”    The National […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is sad to announce the retirement of CRA Executive Director Andrew Bernat. Bernat was instrumental in the development of the CCC — in October 2006, CRA responded to an NSF solicitation to establish a Computing Community Consortium. Bernat, working along with Daniel A Reed, Susan L Graham, Anita K Jones, and Edward D Lazowska submitted a proposal that was backed by explicit letters of support from 132 Ph.D.-granting academic programs, 16 leading corporations, 7 major national laboratories and research centers, and five professional societies in the field.  Since then, with Bernat working as an Ex-Officio member of the CCC’s Executive Committee, the CCC has grown into […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, May 3-7th, 2021, online.  The emphasis of this special track was on visionary ideas, long-term challenges, new research opportunities, and controversial debate. It served as an incubator for innovative, risky, and provocative ideas, and aimed to provide a forum for publishing and presenting these without being constrained by result-oriented standards. Best Paper Award: Diverse Auto-Curriculum is Critical for Successful Real-World Multiagent Learning Systems Yaodong Yang, University College London Jun Luo, Huawei Canada Ying Wen, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Oliver Slumbers, University College London Daniel Graves, Huawei Canada Haitham Bou Ammar, Huawei R&D […]

The Computing Research Association (CRA), in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has appointed five new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council:  Sven Koenig, University of Southern California  Chandra Krintz, University of California, Santa Barbara  William Regli, University of Maryland Mona Singh, Princeton University  Ufuk Topcu, University of Texas at Austin Beginning July 1, the new members will each serve three-year terms. The CCC Council is comprised of 20 members who have expertise in diverse areas of computing. They are instrumental in leading CCC’s visioning programs, which help catalyze and enable ideas for future computing research. Members serve staggered three-year terms that rotate every July. The CCC […]