The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine have announced the 10th International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. The annual competition aims to celebrate the grand tradition of visualizations, in the spirit of communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. There’s a category all about Video Games & Apps — and last year’s winner was Foldit, an entry by University of Washington computer scientists Zoran Popović and Seth Cooper. Judges appointed by NSF and Science will select winners in five categories: Photography, Illustrations, Posters & Graphics, Video Games & Apps, and Videos. The winning entries will appear in a special section of Science (with one entry chosen for the front cover) and be hosted at ScienceMag.org and NSF.gov. In […]

Ahead of the Alan Turing Centenary next month, SD Times has published an interesting retrospective describing Turing’s influence on the field: Turing’s birthday — June 23, 1912 — will be marked by worldwide celebrations. The Association for Computing Machinery is hosting its Turing Centenary Celebration on June 15 and 16 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco…   The Turing Award, first given in 1966, is handed out each year to one or more individuals for their contributions of a technical nature to the computing community. The award also includes a US$250,000 prize.   In speaking with past winners of the Turing Award and others who have used his research as a starting point for their […]

Microsoft Research today announced its 2012 Faculty Fellows, recognizing 7 outstanding new faculty members — with diverse research interests spanning robotics, machine learning, human-computer interaction, and social networking, and representing “a selection of the best and brightest in their fields.” Among this year’s Fellows is one of our 2009 Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows), Miriah Meyer, who started in the fall as an assistant professor at the University of Utah. According to Microsoft’s announcement: Now in its eighth year, the Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship program has awarded nearly 50 innovative faculty members in order to stimulate and support creative research undertaken by promising researchers who have the potential to make a profound impact on […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Scott Aaronson and Robert Wood, the joint recipients of the 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award, visited the National Science Foundation (NSF) last week. In addition to presenting to the National Science Board (NSB) and chatting with NSF staff, they spent some time describing their research projects and experiences to local high school students, as part of an effort to engage and inspire students’ interest in computer science. Wood visited with about 100 students at Yorktown High School in Arlington, VA, while Aaronson spoke to about 150 students at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (“TJ”) in Alexandria, VA. At Yorktown, Wood […]

As part of a continuing series of interviews with thought leaders in computing, our friends at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) have published a podcast this week featuring 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award winner Judea Pearl: The interview reveals the fascinating role of philosophy and empirical science in Pearl’s work, which encompasses probability, causality, and counterfactual thinking. Pearl discusses the influence of education on his success and the challenges of educating future generations. He also illuminates his interests in cognitive science, computation, and physics as well as his work at RCA Research Laboratories, and the transition into academia.   [The interview also explores] how Judea’s attempt to filter out uncertainty and noisy […]

Scott Aaronson and Robert Wood, the two computer scientists who in March were named joint recipients of the 2012 Alan T. Waterman Award, will deliver half-hour presentations about their research to the National Science Board (NSB) later this morning. The presentations are scheduled to begin at 11am EDT, and they will be streamed live via the web as part of an open session during the Board’s meeting (more after the jump).