Rounding out a busy Friday in Washington, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) spent time during its meeting yesterday reviewing the Federal government’s investment in modernizing the nation’s healthcare system. The discussion took place about 9 months after PCAST unveiled a report on health information technology, in which it argued for the need to “change the fact that health IT has historically been oriented toward administrative functions, not better care,” and emphasized the potential of real-time, real-world, comprehensive data in enhancing the way we deliver care to patients. Though yesterday’s discussion, much like the original PCAST report, did not focus on the research challenges in health IT — instead, […]

The Chief Information Officers Council (CIOC), working closely with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has just launched the Technology Fellows Program “to help the Federal government compete more effectively with the private sector for IT talent” and ultimately “increase the Federal government’s pool of qualified IT professionals.” From the official program announcement: The Chief Information Officers Council is recruiting the nation’s best and brightest IT and computer science professionals for the newly created Technology Fellows Program… aimed at cutting bureaucratic barriers to entering public service and providing access to unique career opportunities in Federal Agencies to highly talented technology professionals.   Through a competitive application process, recent graduates of top […]

The three men in the image on the right have something in common: Rush Holt, who defeated IBM’s Watson at Jeopardy! earlier this year, Bill Foster, and Vern Ehlers have all served in the United States Congress. That makes them a fairly unique bunch. But they also have one other thing in common: they’re all scientists (physicists to be exact). And that makes them especially unique. As a New York Times‘ article pointed out earlier this week, there aren’t very many researchers in public service: When asked to name a scientist, Americans are stumped. In one recent survey, the top choice, at 47 percent, was Einstein, who has been dead since 1955, […]

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report titled Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and Economy, calling for improved accounting of ecosystem services and greater protection of environmental capital. The report notes the importance of the nation’s ecosystems and biodiversity to the overall economy, and recommends that the Federal government institute and fund a Quadrennial Ecosystems Services Trends (QuEST) Assessment that draws upon existing monitoring programs as well as newly recommended activities to identify trends related to ecosystem sustainability and possible policy responses. Importantly, PCAST also recommends that we expand the use of evolving informatics technologies — drawing from another recent PCAST report about networking and information […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Henry Kautz, Chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. His research interests are in knowledge representation, satisfiability testing, pervasive computing, and assistive technology. He is currently President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). If you have comments on this essay, e-mail Henry or add an entry to the bottom of this blog post. Countless gallons of ink (real and virtual) have been spilled on the need to infuse the humanities into science and engineering education. For example, philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s recent book, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, passionately argues that […]

Back in mid-June, we noted the President’s announcement of a $70 million National Robotics Initiative (NRI) — a multi-agency investment spanning the NSF, NIH, NASA, and U.S. Department of Agriculture — to fund major research advances enabling next-generation robotics. This morning, the White House announced that the Department of Defense is now supporting the NRI as well. In a post on the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Blog, Tom Kalil, OSTP Deputy Director for Policy, and Chuck Thorpe, OSTP Assistant Director for Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, noted: