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 […]

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, […]