Heads-up, Hollywood writers: We need an “L.A. Law” series that injects some high glamor into high tech. Just as the 80s-era legal drama burnished the appeal of high-stakes litigation, a well-written tech series might draw young people, particularly women, into computer science, said Dr. Margo Seltzer, the Cheriton Family Chair in Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and former CCC Council member.   “When you think of a computer scientist,” Professor Seltzer said in a 2012 interview with Txnologist, you think of a “nerdy guy with no social skills and all he ever wants to do is program.” She hasn’t seen a great deal […]

Ann Schwartz, who has dedicated 11 years to the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC)–most recently as the Director of Research Community Initiatives–is now embarking on an exciting new opportunity with The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy In her new role, Dr. Schwartz will act as the inaugural Program Manager for the Pilot Office of the National Strategic Computing Reserve (NSCR). As described in the blueprint report of the National Science and Technology Council, the NSCR is envisioned as a coalition of resource providers that can be called up in times of urgent national needs to provide critical cyberinfrastructure capabilities and services to […]

CCC Council Members David Jensen (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Brian LaMacchia (Farcaster Consulting Group, LLC), Ufuk Topcu (University of Texas Austin), and Pamela Wisniewski (Vanderbilt University), wrote a white paper titled “Algorithmic Robustness,” that has just been published on the CCC Website. The group was part of the Socio-technical Resilience Task Force in 2022-23. Computational systems are pervasive throughout every sector of society, and the authors emphasize the need for such systems to be robust. Robustness is the “sustained performance of a computational system in the face of change in the nature of the environment in which that system operates or in the task that the system is meant to […]

In September 2023, the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a request for information on Open-Source Software Security: Areas of Long-Term Focus and Prioritization. The RFI invited public comments on areas of long-term focus and prioritization on open-source software security. Open-source software is crucial for national security, the economy, and technological innovation. Vulnerabilities in this software can lead to widespread negative impacts, especially since open-source software is extensively used in federal government and critical infrastructure. In 2021, the ONCD launched the Open-Source […]

During the 10th Heidelberg Laureate Forum last week, I had the opportunity to interview several of the laureates to hear their perspectives on current and future challenges in computing. Two of these laureates that I was fortunate enough to sit down with were Dr. Avi Wigderson and Dr. Yael Tauman Kalai (short bios are at the end of this blog).   With access to two leading experts in cryptography, I asked them both about the new era of cryptography we are entering, post-quantum cryptography (PQC).    RSA encryption, the most commonly used form of encryption today, was invented in 1977 by Ron Rivet, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman at MIT. […]

Former CCC Council member, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, was recently featured in Fast Company article “How Suresh Venkatasubramanian helped write the White House’s framework for AI governance”. In 2021, Venkatasubramanian joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as its assistant director for science and justice to think through all the risks that automation poses and limits that should be imposed on the technology. As part of his job, Venkatasubramanian coauthored the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, a broad framework for protecting people’s rights in the world of AI. Released last October, the Blueprint has had tangible effects on White House actions. Earlier this year, one section of […]