The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi (Assistant Director) and Erwin Gianchandani (Deputy Assistant Director) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). CRA/CCC announced the CIFellows 2020 project last week and highlighted the upcoming 5/26 webinar earlier this week.  Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community: Words like “unprecedented” and “challenging” have been widely used to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives and on our research and educational communities, and yet they seem insufficient to capture the totality of the situation. Recognizing COVID-19’s significant impact on research hiring, the National Science Foundation’s CISE directorate […]

Last week the Computing Research Association (CRA) and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announced the new Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) Program for 2020. This program recognizes the significant disruption to the academic job search caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic uncertainty and aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be PhD graduates in computing.  Awards will support an individual for 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow (“CIFellow”) at a host institution of their choosing. CRA will issue subawards to the Host Institution to cover an annual postdoc salary of $75,000, plus fringe and indirect costs (capped at 35%). Fellows will have the ability to select a […]

The Computing Research Association (CRA), in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has appointed six new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council:  Kathleen Fisher, Tufts University William D. Gropp, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Brian LaMacchia, Microsoft Research Melanie Moses, University of New Mexico Helen Nissenbaum, Cornell Tech Holly Yanco, UMass Lowell Beginning July 1, the new members will each serve three-year terms. The CCC Council is comprised of 20 members who have expertise in diverse areas of computing. They are instrumental in leading CCC’s visioning programs, which help catalyze and enable ideas for future computing research. Members serve staggered three-year terms that rotate every July. The CCC […]

The following is an upcoming webinar on how AI is being used in the fight against COVID-19, hosted by NSF, Axios, and the British Embassy. Artificial Intelligence is poised to transform the modern world. In the short term, AI is being deployed like never before to combat COVID-19 as governments, businesses, and health organizations leverage the technology in unprecedented ways to respond to the pandemic. In the long term, AI will represent a step change for the economy, how we live and work, and society at large. If widely adopted, AI could add $330 billion to the UK economy alone by 2030 as it optimizes existing sectors and generates entirely […]

In March 2020, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the first ten recipients of the NSF Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence in Collaboration with Amazon (FAI).  From the solicitation: NSF and Amazon are partnering to jointly support computational research focused on fairness in AI, with the goal of contributing to trustworthy AI systems that are readily accepted and deployed to tackle grand challenges facing society. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to transparency, explainability, accountability, potential adverse biases and effects, mitigation strategies, algorithmic advances, fairness objectives, validation of fairness, and advances in broad accessibility and utility. Funded projects will enable broadened acceptance of AI systems, helping […]

The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) and Anne Kinney Assistant Director of the NSF Directorate Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). Dear Colleagues: The field of quantum computing has seen substantial progress in recent years, with the development of next-generation quantum processors in the 50- to 100-qubit range. Realizing the promise of such processors requires significant capacity-building to prepare the next generation of quantum discoverers. In light of the quantum-computing developments in the private sector as well as the opportunity for further innovation in the academic setting, the National Science Foundation and […]