At 10am EST this morning, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — together with its Australian counterpart AusAID, World Vision U.S., and World Vision Australia, and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) — will launch a $20 million initiative to “focus global attention on finding ground-breaking, scalable innovations that improve early grade reading outcomes for all children in poor countries during the first three years of primary education.” Called “All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development,” the program will provide catalytic seed grant funding through a competitive selection process to support “pioneering thinking that offers sustainable and scalable solutions for early grade reading.” The initiative will focus on groundbreaking solutions for two […]

Last Monday, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) — together with the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Government Affairs Committee — ran its first-ever Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI). Thirty-five computing researchers from around the country came to Washington to learn about U.S. science policy. Here, one of the participants — Peter Stone, an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin — shares his experiences in the daylong workshop. Scientists and politicians comprise two very different, usually mutually independent cultures.  The analytical mindset that is central to the scientific process is not as pervasive in politics, where compromise and deal-making rule the day. As a result, scientists are often reluctant to engage in […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Following on the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new, interdisciplinary Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) program, we thought this would be an appropriate time to highlight a series of articles about health IT R&D in the September/October 2011 issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems. From the abstract: In light of such overwhelming interest from governments and academia in adopting and advancing IT for effective healthcare, there are great opportunities for researchers and practitioners alike to invest efforts in conducting innovative and high-impact healthcare IT research. This IEEE Intelligent Systems Trends and Controversies (T&C) Department hopes to raise awareness and highlight selected recent research that helps […]

On Monday, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) — together with the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Government Affairs Committee — ran its first-ever Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI). Thirty-five computing researchers from around the country came to Washington to learn about U.S. science policy. Here, one of the participants — Beki Grinter, an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech — shares her experiences in the daylong workshop. This past Monday I participated in the first CCC/CRA Leadership in Science Policy Institute in Washington, DC. The day was broken out into different sessions focused on how the Federal budgeting process works, how to connect to agencies like the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting broad public input about “the long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of Federally-funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Some background: OSTP has established two interagency policy groups under the National Science and Technology Council — the Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications and the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data — to identify the specific objectives and public interests that need to be addressed by any policies in these two areas. The groups will take […]

Moments ago in downtown Washington, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) convened its inaugural Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), a daylong workshop intended to educate a small cadre of computing researchers about U.S. science policy. Throughout the day, the 35 participants — selected through an open nomination process earlier this year — will be attending a series of presentations and discussions with science policy experts, current and former Hill staff, and relevant agency and Administration officials about mechanics of the legislative process, interacting with agencies, advisory committees, and so on. Among the speakers and topics planned: