On October 20, as part of the rollout of the National Strategic Computing Initiative, the White House announced their nanotechnology-inspired grand challenge to develop transformational computing capabilities by combining innovations in multiple scientific disciplines. Create a new type of computer that can proactively interpret and learn from data, solve unfamiliar problems using what it has learned, and operate with the energy efficiency of the human brain. In support of this rollout, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has released a statement of support as well as a whitepaper on the Opportunities and Challenges for Next Generation Computing. This whitepaper articulates some opportunities and challenges for dramatic performance improvements of both personal to national […]

The White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop will be held next week in McLean, Virginia at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner. The workshop will take place from Tuesday, October 20, 2015, at 8:45 A.M. – 5:30 P.M. and Wednesday, October 21, 2015, at 9:00 A.M. – 3:30 P.M. The themes include convergence of data-intensive and numerically intensive computing, hardware technology for future HPC (beyond Moore’s law), and improving productivity in HPC application development and deployment and workforce development. The day one keynote speaker is Dr. Thomas Theis, on assignment from the IBM Corporation to serve as the Executive Director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) at the Semiconductor Research Corporation. The day two keynote speaker […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from the organizing committee of the National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop to Identify Interdisciplinary Data Science Approaches and Challenges to Enhance Understanding of Interactions of Food Systems with Energy and Water Systems — held during October 5-6, 2015 at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Waterfront Centre in Washington, DC. This article summarizes some of the highlights of the workshop. In the coming decades, the world population is projected to grow significantly resulting in increased strains on the world’s limited food, energy, water and other natural resources. Furthermore, these strains may be amplified due to the effects of global climate change and increasing […]

The U.S. Department of Commerce‘s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the next round of the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) at a White House Smart City Forum hosted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). See the White House Fact Sheet to read all the announcements made at the Forum. NIST announced that the kick-off conference for the next round of the Global City Teams Challenge will take place November 12-13, 2015 at NIST’s Campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Registration for the conference is now open. Please use this link to register. There is no registration fee. Pre-registration is required and closes November 5, 2015. The draft agenda can […]

The White House has kicked off the first ever Smart Cities Week (September 15-17, 2015) in Washington, DC, announcing new steps in support of a new National Smart Cities Initiative. The National Smart Cities Initiative will invest over $160 million in federal research and leverage more than 25 new technology collaborations to help local communities tackle key challenges such as reducing traffic congestion, fighting crime, fostering economic growth, managing the effects of a changing climate, and improving the delivery of city services. The Administration’s Smart Cities Initiative will begin with a focus on three key strategies creating test beds for “Internet of Things” applications and developing new multi-sector collaborative models, collaborating with the […]

Currently, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting a three-day forum:  Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum, focusing on new technologies and how they can change the future, in particular with respect to national security. Three early-career engineers and scientists, chosen from a pool of 54 candidates, were selected to share their ideas to the Forum Participants.  They are: Alexander Bataller, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Los Angeles …who studies dense microplasmas, a recently discovered form of matter… Anupama Lakshmanan, a graduate student in biology and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology…focuses on adapting immune cells to provide non-invasive diagnosis, continuous monitoring and real-time treatment of […]