The following blog was written by CCC Vice Chair Mark D. Hill from the University of Wisconsin and CCC Cybersecurity Task Force Chair Kevin Fu from the University of Michigan. In recent days, several sources—listed below—have reported on two security design flaws in computer hardware that involve undesirable interactions between processor speculative execution and memory protection, but whose implications are still emerging. With speculative execution, a processor core uses heuristics to guess the next step for execution. Programs execute faster when the guess is correct. When speculation picks an incorrect direction, a core should hide any learned information from user-level software. With these newly disclosed flaws, incorrect outcomes from speculation […]

The following is a statement from U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., on advancing new digital health policies to encourage innovation, bring efficiency, and modernization to regulation. It was released on December 7th, 2017. Today we’re announcing three new, significant policy documents to advance the FDA’s approach to the development and proper oversight of innovative digital health tools. We know that consumers and health care providers are increasingly embracing digital health technologies to inform everyday decisions. From fitness trackers to mobile applications tracking insulin administration, these digital tools can provide consumers with a wealth of valuable health information. Further, clinical evidence demonstrates that consumers who are better informed […]

The following is a letter to the community from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) about CSEdWeek.  Dear CISE Colleagues, This year’s CSEdWeek is underway—with students, parents, teachers, school officials, and out-of-school providers focused on showing kids—all kids—that computing can be creative, fun, and empowering. And thanks to so many of you, computer science (CS) education is becoming mainstream! At CISE, we see CS K-12 education as an integral part of our longstanding efforts to ensure the development of a diverse workforce that understands foundational concepts of computing and information science and engineering, knows how to effectively […]

Recently, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been looking to highlight the value of convergence. The deep integration of multiple disciplines in order to advance scientific discovery and innovation. As a result, they have announced their first set of convergence awards. The 23 newly awarded projects will foster convergence to address grand challenges in the context of five of NSF’s “10 Big Ideas for Future NSF Investments,” a set of cutting-edge research agendas uniquely suited for NSF’s broad portfolio of investments. One of these five ideas is work in the human technology frontier space. This is also, quintessentially, one of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) 2017-2018 task forces. The Human Technology Frontier task force focuses on the […]

The following is a guest blog post from CCC Council Member and Cybersecurity Task Force Chair Kevin Fu from the University of Michigan. “From pacemakers to autonomous vehicles, national computing research and education initiatives for embedded security will lay a crucial foundation for the Internet of Everything era,” says Fu. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the first major recall of a medical device because of a cybersecurity risk. Nearly half a million pacemakers were recalled for a software update that clinicians will apply during a patient’s in-clinic visit. Our team has spent a decade analyzing security problems and solutions in pacemakers and other medical devices. While […]

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded $38.5 million to 33 research and development (R&D) projects aimed at advancing broadband communications technologies for first responders. The multiyear grants are intended to help modernize public safety communications and operations by supporting the migration of data, video and voice communications from mobile radio to a nationwide public safety broadband network, as well as accelerating critical technologies related to indoor location tracking and public safety analytics. NIST reviewed 162 proposals from a diverse pool of national and international applicants across industry, academia and public safety organizations. The 33 selected projects span five key technology areas that have […]