Over the past few weeks, we’ve been highlighting on this blog several of the excellent talks from the “Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything” symposium held at MIT earlier this year. The symposium — part of MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration — described how computer science is changing the world. This week, we showcase another talk, this one by Tom Leighton, the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Akamai Technologies — a global leader in web acceleration and performance — and a Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT. Leighton described the history of theoretical computer science, including key advances like the RSA encryption protocol, the Viterbi algorithm (which is used today in cell phones, digital TVs, etc., and […]

David Ferrucci’s official title is “IBM Fellow and Leader of the Semantic Analysis and Integration Department at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center.” But to the world, he’s the genius behind Watson, the question-answering supercomputer system that bested two humans in a nationally televised broadcast of the popular game show Jeopardy! earlier this year. And not just any two humans, but the two very best players in the show’s 27-year history. On Monday, Ferrucci delivered a fantastic keynote at the ACM’s 2011 Federated Computing Research Conference in San Jose, CA. Ferrucci walked the audience — nearly 2,000 computer scientists from around the country — through the creation of Watson, from its initial conception […]

As we’ve noted in this space before, MIT — as part of its 150th anniversary celebration — recently sponsored a series of symposia exploring key interdisciplinary research questions and directions. One that’s of particular interest was titled “Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything,” and touched on how computer science is changing the world: Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything traced the evolution of the information age and celebrate MIT’s role in it. The event brought together early and recent pioneers from a variety of fields to review the role computation has played in the past and present and to explore frontiers that lie ahead. We’ve created a webpage linking to […]

“How do you get people to buy more? That’s the $1 million question — literally.” RichRelevance and Overstock.com have partnered to offer the first-ever RecLab Prize on Overstock.com — up to $1 million in cash to the person or team capable of building the most powerful online product recommendation engine: The Prize provides a cash award totaling up to $1 million to the researcher or research team who can achieve a measurable lift over existing product recommendations in a wide variety of shopping contexts on Overstock.com. The RecLab Prize rewards the highest performing individual or team based on the results they are able to deliver within a defined judging period (up […]

As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, MIT sponsored a series of symposia this spring exploring key interdisciplinary research questions and directions. One of these, titled “Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything,” took place April 11-12, and features over two dozen phenomenal talks about how computer science is changing the world: Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything traced the evolution of the information age and celebrate MIT’s role in it. The event brought together early and recent pioneers from a variety of fields to review the role computation has played in the past and present and to explore frontiers that lie ahead. We’ll be featuring many of these […]

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) has announced a new funding opportunity in “transformational computing for aerospace science and engineering” — and particularly high-risk/high-payoff multidisciplinary approaches that may transform computing in the aerospace community. Awards are expected to span up to five years, with an annual investment of $1.5 million. The deadline for receipt of proposals is June 10, 2011. The wide-ranging and highly successful United States Air Force [AF] basic research program that exists today was borne out of the need to address a long standing shortfall in military basic research. While numerous advances have been made over the years, there are still many complex problems confronting the AF in […]