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).

Calling data “a transformative new currency for science, engineering, education, and commerce,” National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Farnam Jahanian kicked off a briefing about ‘Big Data’ on Capitol Hill earlier today. Organized by TechAmerica, the briefing sought to bring together a panel of leaders from government and industry to discuss the opportunities for innovation arising from the collection, storage, analysis, and visualization of large, heterogeneous data sets, all the while taking into consideration the non-trivial security and privacy implications. Jahanian noted how “Big Data is characterized not only by the enormous volume of data but also by the diversity and heterogeneity of the data and the […]

This morning, the University of California, Berkeley, announced a $60 million grant from the Simons Foundation — which seeks “to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences” — to establish the new Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. The goal is to have “computer theorists and researchers from around the globe … converge to explore the mathematical foundations of computer science and extend them to tackle challenges in fields as diverse as mathematics, health care, climate modeling, astrophysics, genetics, economics and business.” The New York Times‘ John Markoff has the details in today’s paper (following the link):

Late last month, the Administration unveiled a $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative, committing new funding to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The initiative includes a joint solicitation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), providing up to $25 million for Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science and Engineering (BIGDATA). Now NSF and NIH have announced a webinar “to describe the goals and focus of the BIGDATA solicitation, help investigators understand its scope, and answer any questions potential Principal Investigators (PIs) may have.” The webinar will take place next week — on Tuesday, May 8th, from 11am to […]

Researchers from multiple disciplines spanning computer science, mathematics, the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, and biology gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week for the first-ever Collective Intelligence conference. Organized by Tom Malone (MIT) and Luis von Ahn (Carnegie Mellon University), the conference sought papers about behavior that is both collective (spanning groups of individual actors, including people, computational agents, and organizations) and intelligent (the collective behavior of the group exhibits characteristics such as perception, learning, judgment, or problem solving). Over 100 papers were submitted for consideration, and 18 were selected for presentation (following the link):

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Elizabeth L. Grossman, a member of Microsoft Corporation’s Technology Policy Group. Yesterday, Microsoft’s Innovation & Policy Center, in Washington, DC, hosted a panel discussion on “21st Century Cities” as part of the @Microsoft Conversations series. The panel explored the technology and policy opportunities and challenges around making our cities smarter and more energy efficient, such as how information technology (IT) can link people, transportation, and buildings. This blog post provides information about some of the Microsoft sustainability activities in this area — particularly how we use our campus and facilities as a living lab — and future directions in computing […]