(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Moments ago at the White House, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Deputy Director Tom Kalil, Congressman John Yarmouth (D-Ky.), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a bright young 11-year-old from New York City launched Digital Promise — a new national center created by Congress and supported with funds from the Department of Education, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation — to advance technologies to transform learning and education. As part of the announcement, National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Farnam Jahanian, […]

As we noted in this space yesterday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) published a special report on disaster research last week, as part of National Preparedness Month and the events surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The report highlights the fundamental research impacting and enabling policymakers and disaster responders to better predict, prepare for, and respond to significant hazards affecting life, property, societal infrastructure, and natural assets. What’s noteworthy is the critical role for computing research in this space — to include communications systems, rescue robotics, predictive modeling, game theory, etc. For example, at a related showcase of 30 research projects on Capitol Hill last week — attended by members of Congress, Federal agencies, and the media […]

The Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Foundation’s 2011 Conference (NIPS 2011) has announced a special two-day workshop on parallel and large-scale machine learning called Big Learning: Algorithms, Systems, and Tools for Learning at Scale. The workshop, collocated with NIPS 2011 in Granada, Spain, aims “to bring together parallel system builders in industry and academia, machine learning algorithms experts, and end users to identify the key challenges, opportunities, and myths of Big Learning.” There will be a focus on practical case studies, demos, benchmarks, and lessons-learned papers. From the official call for papers:

Sam Madden, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), delivered a great talk about “The Rise of Mobile Data” at the “Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything” symposium commemorating MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration earlier this year. Madden described his work in the area of sensor data analytics — specifically location analytics — which seeks to understand, make sense of, and process the wealth of data our smartphones are generating, all the while providing users control over privacy. [There are] going to be five billion cellphones in service in the world in 2011. That’s a pretty staggering number… there’s something like 6.8 billion people […]

Next month, a little more than a year after the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program, 100 researchers will gather in Palo Alto, CA, to discuss the progress in “content-centric networking” (CCN) — a new direction for organizing Internet traffic that aims to provide greater security and faster connectivity. Content-centric networking represents a shift from today’s focus on using network addresses to find content. Instead it proposes a protocol that specifically defines and tracks content. Backers say it represents an evolutionary change similar to IP forwarding.   “We think it’s definitely a concept that will change how people design high performance hardware,” said Jim Thornton, a principal engineer […]

As part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative funded by DARPA and involving academic collaborators, Dharmendra Modha and his colleagues at IBM Research – Almaden have designed an experimental computer chip that emulates the brain’s cognitive powers. It’s a revelation that’s got the popular press abuzz today. From the IBM press release: In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM’s first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing.   Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips won’t be […]