The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Convergence of Data and Computing Task Force, led by CCC Council Members Vasant G. Honavar from Pennsylvania State University, Mark D. Hill from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Katherine Yelick from University of California at Berkeley, has just released another community white paper called Accelerating Science: A Computing Research Agenda. This white paper seeks to articulate a research agenda for developing cognitive tools that can augment human intellect and partner with humans on the scientific process. The recent advances in sensing, measurement, storage and communication technologies and the resulting emergence of “big data” offer unprecedented opportunities for not only accelerating scientific advances, but also enabling new modes of discovery. However, there is a huge gap […]

The time is now for computer science education! With the shifting economy, educators are increasingly recognizing computer science as a new basic requirement. In his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that “helping students learn to write computer code” is among his goals for the year ahead. Jim Kurose, the Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) released a letter to the community acknowledging the excitement in the community but also noting to “please stay tuned as the Administration announces new steps in the coming weeks to support efforts to expand access to computer science education across the Nation.” White House Office of Science Technology Policy U.S. Chief Technology […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Computing in the Physical World Task Force has just released another community whitepaper on Smart Communities Internet of Things.  The Task Force, led by CCC Council Member Ben Zorn from Microsoft Research and Shwetak Patel from University of Washington, is looking at core research challenges that the Internet of Things (IoT) presents. This whitepaper, led by Klara Nahnahrstedt from the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, highlights the benefits and challenges of cyber-technologies within “Smart Cities”, especially the IoT for smart communities, which means considering the benefits and challenges of IoT cyber-technologies on joint smart cities physical infrastructures and their human stakeholders. Their recommendations are summarized below: There is a major […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. To do so, the CCC needs truly visionary leaders — people with great ideas, sound judgment, and the willingness to work hard to see things to completion. Please help the computing community by nominating such people for the Council. Established in 2006 through a cooperative agreement between the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Computing Research Association (CRA) — representing over 220 North American academic departments, industrial research labs, and professional societies with computing research interests, the CCC provides a voice for the national computing […]

The following post was co-authored by Andrew Lan, a PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University. Andrew recently attended the Computing Community Consortium Computer-Aided Personalized Education Workshop in Washington, DC.  The demand for education in STEM fields is exploding, and universities and colleges are straining to satisfy this demand. In the case of Computer Science, for example, the number of US students enrolled in introductory courses has grown three-fold in the past decade. Recently massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been promoted as a way to ease this strain, but scaling traditional models of teaching to MOOCs poses many of the same challenges observed in the overflowing classrooms, […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Philip J. Guo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. Philip recently attended the Computing Community Consortium Computer-Aided Personalized Education Workshop in Washington, DC and presented his work on Python Tutor. The Innovative Idea One of the most fundamental skills to develop when learning computer programming is forming a mental model of how the computer executes a piece of code step-by-step. Instructors often draw diagrams to help learners form these mental models. But what if no instructor is available? I have developed a Web-based tool called Python Tutor (http://pythontutor.com/) that can automatically draw these diagrams for learners. As its […]