The National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience, which held their inaugural meeting last April, met again last week in Washington, DC. At the open session, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Julie Brill spoke about Security, Privacy, and the Internet of Things. The mission of the FTC is to “prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers; to enhance informed consumer choice and public understanding of the competitive process; and to accomplish this without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.” In terms of privacy and data security, Commissioner Brill stated that, at this point in time, the FTC has already handled 40 privacy cases and 60 security cases, including the Fandango and Credit Karma cases in […]

In December 2010 and then again in December 2012, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) conducted an extensive review of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program – the $4B coordinated multi-agency IT R&D program. PCAST has just released a 2015 follow-up report on the progress of the NITRD program, which was conducted by co-chairs of the PCAST NITRD Working Group Susan Graham (PCAST Member and UC Berkeley) and Greg Hager (Johns Hopkins University and the Computing Community Consortium Chair). Other PCAST NITRD Working Group Members included, William J. Dally (Stanford University), Eric Horvitz (Microsoft Research), Sara Kiesler (Carnegie-Mellon University), Michael McQuade (United Technologies […]

In May, The White House Office of Science Technology Policy, Department of Commerce and the Arnold Foundation approached the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), as a community organization of computer science researchers, to lead a conversation for law enforcement to learn about the state of the art in video analysis techniques and how they may be applicable to analyze and improve law enforcement practice. This was a timely opportunity to provide input to a burgeoning application space: police body worn cameras. The CCC brought together a panel of computer vision experts and law enforcement personnel. Their subsequent discussions resulted in the recently released Video Analysis for Body-worn Cameras in Law Enforcement whitepaper. The whitepaper […]

President Obama has issued an Executive Order establishing the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which is an effort to create a cohesive, multi-agency strategic vision, and Federal investment strategy in high-performance computing (HPC). HPC systems, through their high levels of computing power and large amounts of storage capacity, are essential to economic competitiveness, scientific discovery, and national security. The NSCI will ensure that the United States continues leading in this field over the coming decades. As the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has concluded, high-performance computing “must now assume a broader meaning, encompassing not only flops, but also the ability, for example, to efficiently manipulate vast and rapidly increasing […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Big Data to Knowledge initiative (BD2K) has announced the release of an Request for Applications (RFA) for software and methods development in biomedical big data science: “Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Development of Software Tools and Methods for Biomedical Big Data in Targeted Areas of High Need (U01)“. This opportunity targets three topic areas of high need for researchers working with biomedical Big Data: Data privacy is one of the fundamental challenges of our age. To take full advantage of the power of big data to drive biomedical discovery, researchers must work with data from disparate sources and with differing privacy policies and protections. How do we integrate […]

The last President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) meeting was held on Tuesday, July 14th at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. The presentations as well as the webcast videos have all been posted. You can see the full agenda here. Charles Bolden and William Gerstenmaier, Administrator and Associate Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Garrett Reisman, Director of Crew Operations, SpaceX John Elbon, Vice President and General Manager, Space Exploration, The Boeing Company Gregory Hager, Professor and Former Chair of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University Seth Sternberg, CEO and Co-Founder, Honor Kai Stinchombe, Founder and CEO, True Link Financial For more information, please see the past […]