The following is a guest blog post by Mitra Basu, Program Director in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation. The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently issued a new program solicitation, Semiconductor Synthetic Biology for Information Processing and Storage Technologies (SemiSynBio), aiming to support transformative research that will advance information processing and storage through the integration of synthetic biology concepts with semiconductor technologies. The program is a partnership among NSF’s Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO), Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), and Engineering (ENG), with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). The program synopsis reads as […]

The next WATCH talk, called Secure Hardware and Cryptography: Contrasts, Synergies and Challenges is Thursday, May 18th, from 12 PM-1 PM ET. The presenter is Srini Devadas, the Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Devadas’s research interests span Computer-Aided Design (CAD), computer security, and computer architecture. He has received the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement award, the 2015 ACM/IEEE Richard Newton technical impact award, and the 2017 IEEE Wallace McDowell award for his research. Devadas is a MacVicar Faculty Fellow and an Everett Moore Baker teaching award recipient, considered MIT’s two highest undergraduate teaching honors. Abstract Numerous cryptographic protocols and mechanisms […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has just published the job description for the open Division Director position in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) in the CISE Directorate.  IIS supports the study of the interrelated roles of people, computers, and information. IIS-funded activities 1) develop new knowledge about the role of people in the design and use of information technology; 2) increase our capability to create, manage, and understand data and information in circumstances ranging from personal computers to globally-distributed systems; and 3) advance our understanding of how computational systems can exhibit the hallmark of intelligence. The IIS Division Director has managerial and oversight responsibilities for the division, which comprises […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate‘s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program has awarded 156 early career engineering faculty with at least $500,000 for their plan to make advances in engineering. The CAREER program, which extends across all of the agency’s science and engineering directorates, allows promising junior faculty to pursue outstanding research and excellence in education while integrating both. Awardees have the flexibility to explore unexpected new terrain uncovered in the course of their research. A number of these CAREER winners have ties to computer science: CAREER: Integrated Research and Education on Delta-Sigma Based Digital Signal Processing Circuits for Low-Power Intelligent Sensors Principal Investigator: Wei Tang, New Mexico State University From […]

The next WATCH talk, called The Jekyll and Hyde of Smart Contracts is Thursday, April 20th, from 12 – 1 PM ET. The presenter is Ari Juels, a Professor of Computer Science at the Jacobs Institute at Cornell Tech in New York City. He is also Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He was previously Chief Scientist at RSA, and received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1996. Abstract Smart contracts are autonomous programs that run on and inherit the properties of blockchains. They may be viewed as emulating trusted third parties, in that they enforce fair play between parties without preexisting trust relationships. This capability promises to […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is pleased to announce a distinguished lecture on Wednesday, March 29, 2017 at 2:00 PM EDT by Russell Poldrack, from Stanford University, called Improving the Reproducibility of Computational Research. Russell A. Poldrack is the Albert Ray Lang Professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience.  His research uses neuroimaging to understand the brain systems underlying decision making and executive function.  His lab is also engaged in the development of neuroinformatics tools to help improve the reproducibility and transparency of neuroscience, including the OpenfMRI.org and Neurovault.org data sharing projects and the Cognitive Atlas ontology. Abstract: As the […]