The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the 33rd Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19), January 27- February 1, 2019, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The purpose of this conference was to promote research in artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific exchange among AI researchers, practitioners, scientists, and engineers in affiliated disciplines. The goal of this track was to present ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new directions, such as new problems, new application domains, or new methodologies. First place: Pat Langley (Institute for the Study of Learning and Expertise) Explainable, Normative, and Justified Agency Second Place: Francesca Rossi (IBM Research & University of Padova) and Nicholas Mattei […]

This is a blog post by CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  As readers on the CCC blog know, the Meltdown and Spectre microprocessor design flaws revealed in early 2018 made clear that many, if not most, computer systems can leak sensitive information via implementation timing “channel.” Fortuitously and concurrent with this revelation, the US National Science Foundation had commissioned a March 2018 workshop on “Side and Covert Channels in Computing Systems” led by Guru Prasadh Venkataramani of George Washington University and Patrick Schaumont of Virginia Tech. The report has just been issued. It provides too many research recommendations to summarize here, but let me whet […]

The Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) Industry Working Group has released their Evolving Academia/Industry Relations in Computing Research: Interim Report. In 2015, the CCC sponsored an industry round table that produced the report “The Future of Computing Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations”. Since then, several important trends in computing research have emerged such as the dramatic increase in undergraduate computer science enrollment, the increased availability of information technology, and the rising level of interactions between professors and companies, which has led to the sharing of critical industry resources (such as cloud computing and data). This report considers how these trends impact the interaction between academia and industry in computing fields. The interim report […]

The following blog post is from CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kelvin Droegemeier recently gave his first speech as the Head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) 2019 annual meeting in Washington, DC. He is a meteorologist who has done substantial computer modeling and the first non-Physicist to lead OSTP. See the 42-minute video of his talk here. He called for all of us to continue our quest regarding Science’s “Endless Frontier” from Vannevar Bush’s eponymous 1945 report, beginning with a “portfolio analysis” of the US’s tremendous scientific strengths. For those of us […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a webinar on Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI). The webinar will take place March 13th from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and will provide an overview of the QLCI program. The QLCIs are a part of the Quantum Leap, one of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas. The Quantum Leap focuses on “exploiting quantum mechanics to observe, manipulate, and control the behavior of particles and energy at atomic and subatomic scales, resulting in next-generation technologies for sensing, computing, modeling, and communicating.” NSF will invest $30 million in Quantum Leap through various programs, including the QLCIs, in 2019. Overview Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI) […]

Four years ago the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) launched the Postdoc Best Practice Program (Postdoc BP), designed to develop, implement and institutionalize the implementation of best practices for supporting postdocs. The Postdoc BP program was initiated due to a 157% rise[1] in computing postdocs between 2005 and 2010, which demanded attention from the computing community. A Steering Committee, led by Anita Jones (University of Virginia), was assembled to choose a set of institutions or consortia to design and investigate potential best practices for these postdocs. Ultimately, the CCC awarded grants to three institutions/consortia: The University of Washington, led by Brian Curless and David Rispoli; Arizona’s Foundational Model for Postdoctoral Programs […]