Steve Lohr from the New York Times published an article today titled, “The Seeds That Federal Money Can Plant,” which explains the importance of federal funding to scientific research and development. The article highlights Luis Von Ahn‘s online service Duolingo. Duolingo, which has over 100,000 users, allows individuals to learn languages via crowdsourcing and seeks to “…translate the entire web into every major language”. The service, which has attracted $15 million in venture capital, was initially supported by a five-year $120,000 per year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The article mentions findings in a report published earlier this year by the National Research Council (NRC): That pattern has been repeated countless times […]

The following is a contribution to this blog from Robin Murphy, Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University. Back in April, Robin co-organized a visioning workshop about the role of computing in disaster management (including preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery). In this blog entry, Robin describes her participation at a workshop held last week in DC on Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management.  I participated in the Wilson Center’s workshop on Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management last week where I briefed 60 physical and 150 remote participants on the NSF/CCC Workshop on Computing for Disaster Management and the subsequent […]

Earlier this month, Columbia University computer science professor Steven Bellovin was named the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) chief technologist, taking over for Princeton’s Ed Felten following the conclusion of his successful two-year term. In his first post on the Tech@FTC Blog, Bellovin wrote: I’m delighted to succeed Ed Felten as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission. He’s a hard act to follow! But what does the FTC do, and what is the role of a technologist?   The FTC polices the online marketplace. While that often involves addressing complex issues, one essential requirement is that companies must keep the promises they make to consumers. If an organization’s privacy policy says that […]

The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) announcing its intent to establish a new Mobile Health Public-Private Partnership (mHealth PPP) that would “facilitate research and evidence collection to enable the appropriate use of wireless devices to improve health in both the domestic and global environment” through collaboration among government, academic, non-profit, philanthropic, and private sector organizations. In particular, the RFI seeks to identify organizations that could serve as managing partner and/or participants for the mHealth PPP. According to the RFI (following the link):

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT have posted an interesting entry to the Harvard Business Review Blog about big data and corporate management: Big data has the potential to revolutionize management. Simply put, because of big data, managers can measure, and hence know, radically more about their businesses, and directly translate that knowledge into improved decision making and performance. Of course, companies such as Google and Amazon are already doing this. After all, we expect companies that were born digital to accomplish things that business executives could only dream of a generation ago. But in fact the use of big data has the potential to transform traditional businesses as well.   […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an organizational realignment last week, including plans to integrate the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) beginning Oct. 1. This afternoon, CISE Assistant Director Farnam Jahanian and OCI Office Director Alan Blatecky issued a letter to the science and engineering community describing the realignment (following the link):