The following Great Innovative Idea is from Yao-Yi Chiang from the University of Southern California. His Querying Historical Maps as a Unified, Structured, and Linked Spatiotemporal Source paper was the first place winner at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Blue Sky Ideas Track Competition at the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems 2015 (SIGSPATIAL 2015) in Seattle, Washington. The Innovative Idea Historical maps hold a great deal of detailed geographic information at various times in the past but finding relevant maps is difficult and the map content are not machine-readable. Using computer algorithms and geospatial technology applications, I am building the techniques to unlock historical information from maps. I envision a […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Cyrus Shahabi, Liyue Fan, and Luciano Nocera from the University of Southern California, Li Xiong from Emory University, and Ming Li from University of Arizona. Their Privacy-Preserving Inference of Social Relationships from Location Data paper was one of the winners at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Blue Sky Ideas Track Competition at the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems 2015 (SIGSPATIAL 2015) in Seattle, Washington. The Innovative Idea Social relationships between people, e.g., whether they are friends with each other, can be inferred by observing their behaviors in the real world. Thanks to the popularity of GPS-enabled mobile devices or online services, a large amount of high-resolution […]

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 […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Nikolaus Correll, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, about his paper with University of Colorado at Boulder doctoral student Andy McEvoy on Materials that couple sensing, actuation, computation, and communication.  The Innovative Idea Advances in polymers and miniaturization of computing devices allow us to tightly integrate sensing, actuation, computation and communication into composite materials. Such “robotic materials” can sense their environment at high-bandwidth, implement high-speed feedback control to change their shape or appearance, and solve tough computing problems using distributed algorithms. Examples of such materials include a skin that triangulates and classifies textures rubbed against it, smart glass that can […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from John Oberlin, Maria Meier, Tim Kraska, and Stefanie Tellex in the Computer Science Department at Brown University. Their Acquiring Object Experiences at Scale was one of the winners at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Blue Sky Ideas Track Competition at the AAAI-RSS Special Workshop on the 50th Anniversary of Shakey: The Role of AI to Harmonize Robots and Humans in Rome, Italy. It was a half day workshop on July 16th during the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2015 Conference. The Innovative Idea Baxter is a two armed manipulator robot which which is gaining popularity in the research and industrial communities. At […]