The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be sponsoring a Blue Sky Ideas track at the upcoming international conference SEMANTiCS, taking place September 15-17, 2026 in Ghent, Belgium. We hope to award several winners with a travel grant to showcase their visions for the future of semantic web and knowledge graph research.   Call for Papers: SEMANTiCS 2026 Blue Sky Ideas Track   Event: SEMANTiCS 2026   Track: Blue Sky Ideas   Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 – Thursday, September 17, 2026   Location: Ghent, Belgium   Website: https://2026-eu.semantics.cc/   Aims and Scope   The Blue Sky Ideas Track at SEMANTiCS 2026 seeks visionary ideas addressing long-term challenges and […]

The buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) is undeniable, with daily headlines touting its revolutionary potential. But for AI to truly transform science and society, we need to look beyond the impressive demos and massive models and ensure we achieve the desired impacts in a deliberate, responsible, secure way. Last week at the AAAS 2026 Annual Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, a panel organized by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) titled “Shaping the Future of AI’s Impact on Society” captivated a crowded room of researchers and media representatives. Manish Parashar (University of Utah) moderated the panel, and the speakers were Rayid Ghani (Carnegie Mellon University), Carla P. Gomes (Cornell University), and Elham Tabassi […]

CCC is pleased to announce we are sponsoring another Blue Sky Ideas track at the ACM SIGKDD 2025 Health Day conference on August 5 in Toronto, Canada, and submissions are open until Friday, June 27. If you are interested in submitting a paper, please see the submission details below or check out the conference website for more information.   Call for Papers: ACM SIGKDD 2025 Health Day Blue Sky Ideas Track Event: KDD 2025 Health Day Track: Blue Sky Ideas Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2025 Location: Toronto, Canada Website: https://kdd2025.kdd.org/special-days/ Aims and Scope The Blue Sky Ideas Track at KDD 2025 Health Day seeks bold, visionary contributions at the frontier […]

  In our previous post, “From Science Fiction to Science Fact: Beth Mynatt Traces the Multi-Trillion Dollar Impact of Computing Innovation in the U.S.”, we explored how Beth Mynatt, Dean of the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, highlighted the profound impact of federally funded computing research in her May keynote speech at the CCC Computing Futures Symposium, held in Washington, D.C.  While her keynote expertly mapped out the “tire tracks” of innovation — tracing ideas back and forth between university labs and companies, eventually contributing to trillion-dollar industries — a critical question lingers: In an era dominated by tech giants, why does government funding for academic research […]

  Beth Mynatt, Dean of the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, recently delivered a compelling keynote at the CCC Computing Futures Symposium that underscored the often-overlooked yet profound impact of federally funded computer science research. She began with thought-provoking “what if” scenarios, inviting us to imagine a world without key computational advancements rooted in decades of federal investments. What if the internet hadn’t emerged from US-backed research? If computational innovations hadn’t driven a significant reduction in cancer mortality, saving millions of lives and trillions in economic impact? Or if IT-driven innovations hadn’t revolutionized agriculture and today’s crop yields were 50 percent lower across the world? These hypotheticals […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) spoke with council member Michela Taufer who will be moderating a panel discussion at the 2024 Supercomputing Conference on the future sustainability of computing.  Here’s what she had to say. How do you see the current trends in HPC influencing the future of this topic? High-Performance Computing (HPC) and artificial Intelligence (AI) are increasingly pivotal for tackling urgent global issues, like predicting climate and health crises. However, AI’s energy demands are escalating, potentially conflicting with sustainability goals. The rapid pace of AI and HPC expansion challenges our infrastructure, especially the power grid, to keep up. These trends underscore a critical question: Can HPC and AI […]