The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored another track in its Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track series at the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), November 16-22, 2014 in Hong Kong. FSE is an internationally renowned forum for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, and challenges in software engineering. The goal of this track was to emphasize visionary ideas, long term challenges, and opportunities in software engineering research that are outside of current mainstream topics of the field. This year’s winning papers were: First Prize Methodology and Culture: Drivers of Mediocrity in Software Engineering? Marian Petre and Daniela Damian (Open University, UK; University of Victoria, […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and National Science Foundation (NSF) are sponsoring a workshop on the Research Interfaces between Brain Science and Computer Science.  Top researchers in computer science, cognitive science and neuroscience are stepping out of their comfort zones to engage in conversations on topics ranging from the varying levels of brain mapping to the need for studying graph algorithms for weighted large brain graphs. Plenary talks and panel discussions are being livestreamed. Tonight (December 4) at 7:30 pm EST, you can see Turing Award Winner Leslie Valiant talk on Can Models of Computation in Neuroscience be Experimentally Validated?   Tomorrow (December 5) there will be a Panel Discussion at […]

The following blog post was written by Dr. Martin Wiener, AAAS Fellow Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation (NSF).   Comparisons of the brain to a computer have been around since Alan Turing first described the Automatic Computing Engine in 1936. However, decades of research have now shown that the brain is nothing like a computer; at least, nothing like one that currently exists. Plasticity, flexibility and redundancy in neural circuits have led us to understand that the human brain operates with greater efficiency than the most powerful supercomputers today. However, as the field of neuroscience advances, the field of […]

Computer science and brain science share deep intellectual roots. Today, understanding the structure and function of the human brain is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our generation. Decades of study and continued progress in our knowledge of neural function and brain architecture have led to important advances in brain science, but a comprehensive understanding of the brain still lies well beyond the horizon. How might computer science and brain science benefit from one another? The CCC BRAIN two-day workshop, sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and National Science Foundation (NSF), brings together brain researchers and computer scientists for a scientific dialogue aimed at exposing new opportunities for joint […]

Periodically, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will highlight research projects that are nominated by the public. Research highlights are meant to inform the computing community about interesting research going on in the field. The most recent research highlight featured Dr. Rajeev Alur from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Alur leads the NSF Expeditions in Computer Augmented Program Engineering (ExCAPE). The goal of ExCAPE is to change the way programmers develop software by advancing the theory and practice of software synthesis.  ExCAPE develops synthesis tools that can assist expert programmers in discovering difficult code and meet challenges in multicore programming. To read more, see the full research highlight. To submit a research highlight for inclusion […]

This is a guest post, written by David W. McDonald, Chair and Associate Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of Washington. Designing a good application is hard. Designing a good computer system is harder. Designing a good system that accounts for the vagaries of people, their motivations, and their flaws is even harder. Yet that is the challenge that designers of social computing systems must solve. The difficulties of designing social computing systems derive from both the complexity of the software and hardware configurations, and the fact that some participants in a social computing system will not behave with positive goals or intent. That […]