A great piece about Big Data in today’s New York Times by technology reporter Steve Lohr: GOOD with numbers? Fascinated by data? The sound you hear is opportunity knocking.   Mo Zhou was snapped up by I.B.M. last summer, as a freshly minted Yale M.B.A., to join the technology company’s fast-growing ranks of data consultants. They help businesses make sense of an explosion of data — Web traffic and social network comments, as well as software and sensors that monitor shipments, suppliers and customers — to guide decisions, trim costs and lift sales. “I’ve always had a love of numbers,” says Ms. Zhou, whose job as a data analyst suits her skills.   […]

As part of the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) announced last summer, the Department of Energy (DoE), through its Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program, this week unveiled a new Predictive Theory and Modeling program, seeking “research [that] could lead to a theory/modeling design paradigm, validated through experiment, [that] could enhance the rate of discovery of new or vastly improved materials, material systems, and chemical processes.” What’s interesting is that this solicitation contains opportunities for computing researchers. According to the announcement: We envision the BES activities will include the development of new software tools and data standards that catalyze a fully integrated approach from material discovery to applications. BES also expects to support research to advance ab-initio methods […]

Just a week after announcing a Proposers Day for its new Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) has issued the official Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), soliciting proposals for innovative R&D in the area of embedded power efficient computing. As we’ve previously noted in this space, the goal for PERFECT is “to provide more effective embedded computing per watt of electrical power.” According to the DARPA BAA: The goal of the Power Efficiency Revolution For Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) program is to provide a power efficiency of 75 GFLOPS/w for embedded computing systems [more following the link].  

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced last week a new competition to fund pilot projects that accelerate progress toward “improved systems for interoperable, trusted online credentials that go beyond simple user IDs and passwords.” NIST expects to make available about $10 million for the first year of the new multi-year awards, anticipating funding five to 8 projects for up to two years at a rate of $1.25 million to $2 million per project per year. NIST will hold a proposers’ conference on February 15, and initial (“abbreviated”) proposals must be submitted by 5pm EST on March 7. According to the press release:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) yesterday released a report on its support for cloud computing, describing the outcomes of “investments in cloud computing research, recommendations for research focus and program improvements, and other related recommendations.” Emphasizing the role of cloud computing — “a vital area of national importance that requires further research and development” — the report highlights some of the 125 cloud computing research awards issued by NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate between 2009 and 2011, spanning areas of architecture, algorithms, big data, security and privacy, green computing, and so on. Among these are the set of awards enabled by a partnership between NSF and Microsoft over […]

Late last month, Children’s Hospital Boston announced the launch of the CLARITY Challenge — Children’s Leadership Award for the Reliable Interpretation and appropriate Transmission of Your genomic information — a “competition intended to advance standards for genomic analysis and interpretation and the reporting of clear, actionable results to clinicians and patients.” The winning research team will be announced in October and receive a $25,000 prize. According to the contest website: We are on the threshold of a revolution in patient care. With important insights emerging daily about the genetic basis of disease, and the cost of sequencing an individual’s genome plummeting from over $3 million to $5,000 in only the past decade, the […]