As our colleagues on CRA’s Policy Blog have just noted, it appears Arati Prabhakar has been named the next director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Quoting a memo to DARPA staff: Dr. Prabhakar has spent her career advancing technology in support of both national security and the private sector, from early research and development through production. Dr. Prabhakar served from 1986 to 1993 at DARPA, first as program manager and then as founding director of the Microelectronics Technology Office. In 1993, President Clinton appointed Dr. Prabhakar as the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she led the 3,000-person organization in its work with companies […]
Computing Community Consortium Blog
The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.
Archive for the ‘policy’ category
NITRD Steering Group to Host Third Workshop on Wireless Spectrum R&D
July 10th, 2012 / in policy, research horizons, resources, workshop reports / by Erwin GianchandaniThe National Coordination Office (NCO) for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program — the Federal program that provides a framework and mechanisms for coordination among 15 Federal agencies collectively investing over $4 billion annually in networking and information technology research and development — has announced plans to hold the third in a series of workshops to bring together experts from academia and industry to help “create and implement a plan to facilitate research, development, experimentation, and testing by researchers to explore innovative spectrum-sharing technologies, including those that are secure and resilient.” The workshop will take place on July 24, 2012, in Boulder, Colorado. According to the announcement (following the […]
NSF: Significant Surge in CS Postdocs in Last Decade
July 7th, 2012 / in pipeline, policy / by Erwin Gianchandani(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Last December, we blogged about changes in the number of new Ph.D.s in computer science — a slight increase between 2009 and 2010, but the “fastest growth” of all science and engineering disciplines during the 10-year period ending in 2010, according to data from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) annual Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). Well, NSF is now out with more data, this time describing trends among graduate students and postdoctoral fellows — and the numbers are quite striking for computing (details after the jump).
If Digital, Then Tracking: Big Data Analytics in Practice — And What it Means
June 29th, 2012 / in big science, policy, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniYesterday we blogged in this space about a ‘big data’ briefing held in downtown Washington, DC, earlier this week, one that emphasized the exponential growth in data that we are witnessing with each passing day. IBM Research’s David McQueeney noted how corporations recognize there are huge opportunities if they can “master the tsunami of data.” Well, what about something as simple as one’s e-reader? We can assume these days that if a device is digital, then it is tracking and storing information about its user. So how can an e-reader help businesses grow — and what are the consequences for consumers? The Wall Street Journal has published an interesting article — “Your E-Book is […]
NIH Director Describes “Real Promise of Mobile Health Apps”
June 24th, 2012 / in big science, policy, research horizons, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniNational Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis S. Collins has penned a guest forum in the July issue of Scientific American magazine. In it, he describes the promise of mobile health apps, noting that mobile device have the potential to become powerful medical tools, and calling attention to some of the myriad interdisciplinary research opportunities in this space: As a volunteer in a trial of mobile health technology, I can attest that it’s incredibly cool to pick up your iPhone, fire up an application to monitor your heart rate and rhythm, and then beam your ECG reading to a cardiologist halfway around the globe. As a physician-scientist, I also know that cool […]
NIST’s BIG DATA Workshop:
Too Much Data, Not Enough Solutions
June 21st, 2012 /
in big science, policy, research horizons, resources, workshop reports /
by
Erwin Gianchandani
“How is the general population of researchers and institutions to meet [the needs of] ‘Big Data’?” That was the question posed last week by Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute at Argonne National Laboratory, before a packed auditorium at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just outside Washington, DC. Foster was delivering one of the keynotes at NIST’s BIG DATA Workshop, a two-event that assembled leading experts from academia, industry, and government to explore key topics in support of the Federal government’s recently-announced $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative. Foster’s answer? (Follow the link to find out!)
