National 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 […]

“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!)

Last week, the National Academies released a report chartered by Congress — “Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation’s Prosperity and Security” — assessing the competitive position of the nation’s research universities, and responding to the following question: What are the top 10 actions that Congress, the Federal government, state governments, research universities, and others can take to assure the ability of the American research university to maintain the excellence in research and doctoral education needed to help the United States compete, prosper, and achieve national goals for health, energy, the environment, and security in the global community of the 21st century? The report […]

Around this time every year, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) typically issue a joint guidance memo to Federal agencies describing the Administration’s R&D priorities for the next budget cycle. This year’s memo — specifying priorities for the FY 2014 budget — was released last week. It encourages agencies to focus on ambitious “grand challenges,” and directs agencies to prioritize research investments over development activities. Because of the crucial government role in supporting research, in general agencies should give priority to funding for research above funding for development activities. Within research portfolios, agencies are encouraged to identify and pursue “Grand Challenges” — ambitious goals […]

As we described in this space yesterday, this morning at an event at the White House, the Obama Administration will formally launch the US Ignite Broadband Initiative, an at-scale, nationwide innovation ecosystem for developing and deploying public sector applications and services on ultra-high-speed, software-defined networks. The announcement will be streamed live beginning at 9am EDT — and we’ll cover it below (more after the jump…).

(This post has been updated; scroll down for the latest.) At a White House event Thursday morning, the Administration will formally announce new steps to expand and improve access to next-generation broadband technologies and applications — including the launch of US Ignite, a new public-private partnership spanning more than 100 members that will seek to bring together computing researchers, software and application developers, broadband carriers, and broadband users so that they can take advantage of ultra-high-speed, programmable broadband networks. The US Ignite partnership is being largely convened by the National Science Foundation (NSF), with the support of other Federal agencies, industry, non-profits, and local communities. Its key mission will be to leverage NSF’s […]