The Computing Community Consortium is cohosting Code 8.7: Using Computation Science and AI to End Modern Slavery on February 19-20, 2019 at the United Nations in New York City with the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, The Alan Turing Institute, Tech Against Trafficking, University of Nottingham Rights Lab, and Arizona State University Global Security Initiative. Code 8.7 is a two-day conference that brings the computational research and artificial intelligence (AI) communities together with those working to achieve Target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals. With Target 8.7, 193 countries agreed to take immediate and effective measures to end forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking by 2030, and the worst forms of child labour […]

Who wants to spend a week in beautiful Heidelberg Germany surrounded by the recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award and the ACM Prize in Computing? I do! In September, I had the unique opportunity to participate as part of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) international blog team. I got to watch 200 students from around the world have personal conversations about their research with some of the biggest names in our field. The evenings were spent dining in beautiful venues such as the Technik Museum Speyer and the Heidelberg Castle. Now it is YOUR chance (or your student’s chance) to come to the seventh HLF on September 22 to 27, 2019. ACM encourages young computer […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. Established in 2006 through a cooperative agreement between the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Computing Research Association (CRA), the CCC provides a voice for the national computing research community, and facilitates the development of a bold, multi-themed vision for computing research, and communicates that vision to a wide range of major stakeholders. To fulfill its mission, the CCC needs truly visionary leaders — people with great ideas, sound judgment, and the willingness to work hard to see things to completion. The Council is comprised of 20 diverse researchers from across […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Ehsan Hoque, Asaro-Biggar (’92) Family assistant professor of Computer Science and interim Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science at the University of Rochester. Hoque was a participant and presented a poster at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Early Career Researcher Symposium, August 1-2, 2018. The Idea Imagine a future where computers can mediate a conversation toward more respectfulness and productivity, help a worker hone their job interview skills or assist a patient diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease by monitoring their symptoms. Our research focuses on developing AI to ethically augment and enhance humanity’s potential. In particular, my group applies machine learning techniques to model the synergy and ambiguity that language, facial […]

CCC Executive Council member Daniel Lopresti from Lehigh University and CCC Council member Sampath Kannan from the University of Pennsylvania provided contributions to this post. There is a conundrum between statistical access to data and privacy. The computing community has been working on this problem for years and came up with differential privacy as a solution, which is being implemented in the 2020 census, as described in this Computing Community Consortium (CCC) white paper on Privacy-Preserving Data Analysis for the Federal Statistical Agencies, and this recent NY Times article.  The CCC is now working on similar issues in fairness with a workshop on Fair Representations and Fair Interactive Learning. See the […]

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) just announced their 2018 ACM Fellows. The ACM Fellows award is ACM’s “most prestigious member grade,” which “recognizes the top 1% of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community.” The 2018 list honors 56 members of ACM for their contributions to computing. Among the 2018 Fellows is Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member David Parkes (Harvard University), recognized for his “contributions to computational markets, including novel mechanism design and incentive engineering methods.” David joined the CCC this year and is a member of the Artificial Intelligence Working Group that is […]