The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) announced nine research awards to 10 universities totaling nearly $4 million to develop Secure, Trustworthy, Assured, and Resilient Semiconductors and Systems (STARSS). The STARSS program is part of a $75 million cyber security effort by the NSF, aimed at making chips immune from being exploited by hackers who take advantage of hidden Trojan horses that are intentionally or unintentionally inserted into chips by intellectual property (IP).  The goal is to also make it easier to spot counterfeit chips, chips that have been tampered with, and used chips being passed off as new. For more information about this program and the nine […]

Popular Science has released their Top Ten of 2014 which honors the brightest young minds reshaping science, engineering, and the world. Computer scientists Prabal Dutta and Roxana Geambasu made the Top Ten! In Dr. Dutta’s lab at the University of Michigan, small wireless sensors keep tabs on energy usage, gathering data that could inform the next generation of smart buildings. They scavenge their own power from their surroundings, such as the slight magnetic field generated by an electrical wire.  Dutta’s other projects include a set of cameras only a few cubic millimeters in size and lapel pins that track how air temperature, humidity, and the distance between speakers affects the spread of flu.  Dutta […]

The MacArthur Foundation has named its 2014 class of MacArthur Fellows “Genius Grant”, recognizing 21 exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for significant contributions in the future. Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000, paid out over five years. The Fellowship comes with no stipulations or reporting requirements, and allows recipients maximum freedom to follow their own creative visions. One of the Fellows is Craig Gentry, a computer scientist with IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, who is fueling a revolution in cryptography and theoretical computer science through his elegant solutions to some of the discipline’s most challenging open problems. To read more about Dr. Gentry as […]

The following entry is a special contribution to this blog from Douglas H. Fisher, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. This year Doug and Carla Gomes (Cornell University) were co-chairs of the Computational Sustainability and Artificial Intelligence (AI) track at the Twenty-Seventh Conference on Artificial Intelligence on July 14-18, 2013 in Bellevue, Washington. In this entry, Doug highlights the best paper awards for this track, sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium. The Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-13) convened last month in Bellevue, Washington. For the third consecutive year there was a special track on Computational Sustainability, a nascent and growing field of computing that is concerned […]

Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Sir Tim Berners Lee, Marc Andreessen, and Louis Pouzin were awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering today at the Royal Academy of Engineering.  This new £1million global prize recognizes outstanding advances in engineering that have changed the world and benefited humanity – celebrating the best and also serving to illuminate the sheer excitement of modern engineering. The work of these five pioneers is recognized as revolutionary for changing the way we communicate. According to the article:  Some 330 petabytes of data are estimated to be carried across its servers each year-  that’s enough capacity to transfer every character ever written in every book ever published 20 […]

President Barack Obama, during his State of the Union address, discussed education and the revolution of industry, bringing it back to America. President Obama also discussed high school curriculum reform to better prepare students for tech jobs; in an effort to create more classes that focus on STEM, he mentioned rewarding schools which partner with higher education institutions and industry to create such classes. President Obama went on to discuss the importance of funding cyber-security research, especially regarding the security of our critical infrastructure. President Obama stated: We know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private e-mail. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies […]