Lots of buzz this week about “Big Data,” and particularly the opportunities for government in this space. Our friend and colleague, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) President Rob Atkinson, has written a great blog post over on the Innovation Policy Blog arguing for the utility of “Big Data”/analytics in the public sector: Recently more attention has been drawn to the emergence of “Big Data” — large scale data sets that businesses and government are using to unlock new value using today’s computing and communications power. As a McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) study recently showed, Big Data offers a wide range of commercial opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy for the United States. […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down to see the latest.) At 11am EDT today, National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Subra Suresh — joined by numerous U.S. and international researchers, government officials, and National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone — will launch Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI), “an effort to facilitate collaboration among scientists, engineers and educators across the globe to better leverage taxpayer resources to spur innovation, enable discovery and help solve society’s most vexing problems.” According to the official NSF press release: Building on beneficial partnerships initiated by NSF-supported researchers, research institutes and universities, SAVI projects will address common challenges and serve as creative hubs for […]

Late last month, NASA announced that it plans to run an International Space Apps Challenge in 2012, bringing together officials from international space agencies, scientists, and citizens in an effort to use publicly-released scientific data to create, build, and invent new solutions that address challenges of global importance, from the impact of weather upon the global economy to the depletion of ocean resources. According to the Challenge website:

For the past two weeks, the National Mall in Washington, DC, has been transformed into a neighborhood of futuristic homes, with 20 teams from five countries spanning four continents competing in the U.S. Department of Energy’s annual Solar Decathlon — an award-winning program that challenges collegiate students from around the world “to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are affordable, highly energy efficient, attractive, and easy to live in.” Late Saturday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the winners — and the team from the University of Maryland took home first place, scoring 951.151 points out of a possible 1,000. The Maryland team’s home — called WaterShed — harvests, recycles, and reuses water, conserving and producing resources with the water […]

At an event in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) released results of its first Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR) — launched earlier this year at the recommendation of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to help the Department identify a set of priorities for its energy technology R&D activities. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu noted: Traditionally, the Department’s energy strategy has been organized along individual program lines and based on annual budgets. With this QTR, we bind together multiple energy technologies, as well as multiple DoE energy technology programs, in the common purpose of solving our energy challenges. In addition, this QTR provides a multi-year framework […]

(This post has been updated; please see below for the latest.) Updated at 5:11pm EDT: At 2pm EDT today, the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education will convened a hearing about the Federal government’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program (NITRD), seeking “to review the NITRD program to ensure U.S. leadership in networking and information technology and to discuss priorities for the future.” The hearing will included testimony from CCC Council Chair Ed Lazowska and member Bob Sproull, along with the director of the NITRD National Coordination Office (NCO) George Strawn and chair of ACM’s CS Education Policy Committee Bobby Schnabel. Watch the hearing live archived webcast here. And check […]