The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced its Young Faculty Award (YFA) program for 2012, seeking to “identify and engage rising stars in junior faculty positions [i.e., untenured Assistant or Associate Professors within five years of appointment to a tenure-track position] in academia and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs.” Among the core technical topic areas — exactly one of which must be specified in any proposal — are quantum science and technology; mathematics; predictive materials science; advanced electronics; MEMS/NEMS; digital direct manufacturing; neuroscience (including brain-machine interfaces); computational and quantitative social, decision, and behavioral sciences; and robotics. From DARPA’s official Research Announcement (RA):

An excellent example of how novel data-driven methods can advance science and society: In February 2012, the journal Nature Climate Change will publish a paper on rainfall extremes in India by principal investigator Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota’s computer science and engineering department and co-principal investigator Auroop Ganguly of the civil and environmental engineering department at Northeastern University in Boston, members of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) [Expeditions in Computing] project team…   “This Expeditions in Computing project brings together interdisciplinary researchers from multiple institutions to pursue a bold, ambitious, research agenda by building reliable predictive models from climate data that could potentially transform how we understand and respond to climate change,” explains Vasant Honavar … program manager in NSF’s Division of Information and Intelligent […]

In the New York Times’ Sunday Review, technology writer Steve Lohr pens a story all about the “Internet of Things,” noting how “low-cost sensors, clever software, and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care, and food distribution.” From the article: The concept has been around for years, sometimes called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Yet it takes time for the economics and engineering to catch up with the predictions. And that moment is upon us.   “We’re going to put the digital ‘smarts’ into everything,” said Edward D. Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington [and CCC Council chair]. These abundant smart […]

In addition to Tuesday’s special Science Times describing the future of computing, The New York Times has featured several other articles this week about cutting-edge work in the field. For instance, yesterday, the Times covered University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Professor Oren Etzioni’s electronics price prediction startup Decide — which utilizes data mining and machine learning over electronics prices to help consumers determine when it’s best to buy the electronics gadgets on their wish lists: If only shopping for electronics were as easy as buying a car.   There was a time not so long ago that buying a car was one of the worst shopping experiences. As you drove off the dealer’s lot, you couldn’t […]

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Science Times in yesterday’s New York Times — devoted entirely to “the future of computing”: What’s next? If we had a supercomputer that could predict the future, we would tell you. Then again, if the past is any guide, the predictions would certainly be wrong. This special issue takes a many-faceted look at a set of technologies that are changing the world in more ways than could ever have been foreseen… In addition to Times‘ science and technology writers John Markoff and Steve Lohr, several computing researchers have authored short essays about recent innovations — and future potential — within computing(after […]

Earlier today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a new report — Trustworthy Cyberspace: Strategic Plan for the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Program — specifying an agenda for game-changing cybersecurity R&D. As U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt noted in a blog post, the report provides “a roadmap to ensuring long-term reliability and trustworthiness of the digital communications network that is increasingly at the heart of American economic growth and global competitiveness.” In particular, the plan defines four strategic thrusts (after the jump):