Former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member and Professor of Computer Science &  Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, Shwetak Patel, was just anointed to the Georgia Tech College of Computing’s Hall of Fame and Business Insider’s list of “30 leaders under 40” who are changing healthcare. He is being recognized for a broad scope of work ranging from home energy monitoring (Zensi) to a mobile health company (Senosis Health). Along with being a professor and head of Ubicomp Lab, Patel holds the Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professorship; is the Director of health technologies at Google Health and FitBit Research; was the recipient of […]

A recent CNN article titled “Black or ‘Other’? Doctors may be relying on race to make decisions about your health,” discusses how race has both historically affected and currently impacts the medical decisions that doctor’s make and the subsequent care that patients receive. Among the examples it covers is the controversial eGFR (Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate), which is used to measure kidney function. eGFR is calculated through a formula that includes your blood creatinine level (creatinine is a waste product that is filtered from your blood by your kidneys) as well as other variables such as age, sex, and race. However, as CNN states, “When it comes to race, doctors […]

A new episode of Catalyzing Computing, the Computing Community Consortium‘s (CCC) official podcast, is now available. This episode is part two of Khari Douglas‘ (CCC Senior Program Associate) interview with Dr. Katie Siek, a professor in Informatics and the Chair of Informatics at Indiana University – Bloomington. Dr. Siek is interested in integrating pervasive technologies in health and wellness environments to study how technology affects interventions. Her research interests include human computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and health informatics. In this episode, Katie discusses health disparities and how computing technologies can play a role in their reduction, as well as the challenges to doing health informatics research in the field. Listen to […]

A new episode of the Computing Community Consortium‘s (CCC) official podcast, Catalyzing Computing, is now available. In this episode, Khari Douglas (CCC Senior Program Associate) interviews Dr. Katie Siek, a professor in Informatics and the Chair of Informatics at Indiana University – Bloomington. Dr. Siek is interested in integrating pervasive technologies in health and wellness environments to study how technology affects interventions. Her research interests include human computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and health informatics. In this episode, Katie discusses health informatics, fitness trackers, data ownership, and aging in place. Listen to the episode here. Below is a transcription from part of the discussion about aging in place. It is lightly edited for […]

Contributions to this post were provided by Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado Boulder), Madhav Marathe (University of Virginia), Melanie Moses (The University of New Mexico), William D Gropp (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University).  In Fall 2020, the Computing Research Association (CRA) released a series of planned white papers produced through its subcommittees (including the Computing Community Consortium (CCC)), exploring areas and issues around computing research with the potential to address national priorities over the next four years. Called Quadrennial Papers, the white papers attempt to portray a broad picture of computing research detailing potential research directions, challenges, and recommendations for policymakers and the computing research community.  […]

Melanie Mitchell, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member and Professor at the  Santa Fe Institute and Portland State University was recently interviewed on the Medscape podcast, Medicine and the Machine in an episode titled ‘Can AI Exist in Medicine Without Human Oversight?. The podcast, led by Medscape editor-in-chief Eric Topol and Abraham Verghese from Stanford, explores critical questions and discussions on artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on modern medicine. While it was acknowledged that AI has made great strides in the past decade on accomplishing narrow tasks, the episode highlights that the technology still lacks the ability to work autonomously in the field of medicine. Making this a possibility would require […]