A very impressive group of people came to CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center for the announcement of the Advanced Manufacturing Program by President Barack Obama. I saw among the group: College Presidents: CMU, MIT, Georgia Tech, U Michigan, and RPI; US Senator: Bob Casey, Jr. (Pennsylvania); Government officials: Directors of DARPA and NIST, and the CTO of NASA; and Participants in the CCC Robotics Visioning effort: Henrik Christensen, Helen Greiner, Rod Brooks, and Matt Mason. President Obama was given a tour highlighting four projects: An IED detection robot developed at CMU; A sewer inspection robot developed at Redzone Robotics, a CMU spinoff; A military vehicle created for DARPA by Local […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) In just a few minutes, President Obama will announce the launch of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) in a speech on U.S. innovation and competitiveness at Carnegie Mellon University, saying his administration will provide $500 million to encourage the Federal government, industry, and academia to work together to develop new technologies that spur high-tech manufacturing and boost job creation. (Watch the announcement live here.) A key pillar of this new initiative is a $70 million investment for major advances in robotics being made available today. According to advance press reports, the President will note that information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology are critical enablers — providing essential tools […]

In a Dear Colleague Letter issued earlier this month, the NSF’s Directorate for Geosciences and Office of Cyberinfrastructure call for “an open, adaptable, and sustainable framework (an ‘Earth-Cube’) to enable transformative research and education in Earth System Science”: In a new partnership, GEO and OCI recognize the multifaceted challenges of modern, data-intensive science and education and envision an environment where low adoption thresholds and new capabilities act together to greatly increase the productivity and capability of researchers and educators working at the frontiers of Earth system science.   With the new FY2012 NSF budget thrust, Cyberinfrastructure for the 21st century (CIF21), NSF places significant emphasis on computational and data-rich science […]

Late last month, DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O) issued a solicitation calling for research proposals that “investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.” Among the focus areas (emphasis added): Understand: Change is pervasive and accelerating throughout all aspects of human, world and military affairs, bringing with it both opportunities and threats. Examples of threats include emerging regional peer rivals, rogue and failed nation-states, insurgent groups, militant/radicalized populations, transnational terrorist organizations and criminal enterprises, and new classes of cyber-human-physical threats. Military success requires understanding threat capabilities, intentions, and activities as well as local human, social, cultural, and behavioral factors. I2O seeks to enable this understanding through […]

Remember the electronic reservation system that you used to book your summer vacation this year? Well, in all likelihood, it was powered by information technology from ITA Software — the 450-person, Cambridge, MA-based company that was recently bought by Google for $700 million. ITA Software’s innovative travel tool — QPX — powers some of the world’s leading travel websites, including those of Orbitz and Travelocity, as well as United, American, Southwest, and Alaska Airlines. At the recent “Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything” symposium commemorating MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration, ITA Software’s co-founder and President & CEO Jeremy Wertheimer described the history of travel technology, delving into the staggering complexity of finding and […]

A couple of very interesting prize-based competitions have been announced in the past week. The first — with Vint Cerf, U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, and former Congressman Tom Davis among the judges — calls for innovative ways for IT to improve government: The Merit Awards is a new innovation contest that challenges the world to come forth with ideas on how to use IT to improve the quality of government. Focused on incenting people to get involved in their government, the award offers a $50,000 prize for smart, new thinking. But the program is not only open to Americans. Innovation knows no borders — nor does it need a […]