Tom Malone and Luis von Ahn — with funding from the NSF’s CISE Directorate — are organizing an interdisciplinary conference that seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of fields relevant to understanding and designing collective intelligence of many types. This first-ever conference — Collective Intelligence 2012 — will take place in Cambridge, MA, on April 18-20, 2012, and comprise invited talks, oral paper presentations, and poster sessions. From the official call for papers:

A new National Science and Technology Council report released Monday — titled A Policy Framework for 21st Century Grid — describes ways to speed development of a smart grid that reduces energy consumption, efficiently delivers power from renewable sources, and decreases the frequency and length of blackouts. What’s most interesting — to us, anyway — is how the report calls attention to the need for fundamental research in several areas of computer science. Notably, “the four essential pillars that will enable the U.S. to transition to a smarter grid” all feature aspects of IT R&D prominently: Enable Cost-Effective Smart Grid Investments: Smart grid technology can drive improvements in system efficiency, resiliency, and […]

Following up on an article about rising enrollments in computer science this past Saturday, The New York Times has just published a fabulous Room for Debate essay series titled “Computer Science’s ‘Sputnik Moment’?“: Computer science is a hot major again. It had been in the doldrums after the dot-com bust a decade ago, but with the social media gold rush and the success of “The Social Network,” computer science departments are transforming themselves to meet the demand. At Harvard, the size of the introductory computer science class has nearly quadrupled in five years.   The spike has raised hopes of a ripple effect throughout the American education system — so much so […]

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued several solicitations in recent weeks focused on health information technology R&D. AHRQ appears to be taking a fairly broad view of health IT: Health IT is broadly defined as the use of information and communication technology in health care to support the delivery of patient or population care or to support patient self-management.  Health IT can support patient care related activities such as order communications, results reporting, care planning and clinical or health documentation (Shortliffe EH and JJ Cimino, “Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine.” Third Edition. 2006).  […]

Updated Friday, June 17, 9:03am EDT: NPR has picked up this story, reporting on today’s “Morning Edition” how the research being pursued by Michael Zink et al. at UMass-Amherst could lead to advanced warning systems that reduce the numbers of deaths arising from severe weather outbreaks. Check out the NPR feature (which includes audio): “Advanced Tornado Technology Could Reduce Deaths.” The original blog entry from earlier this week appears below… … There’s a very timely story in today’s Boston Globe featuring the work of Michael Zink and his colleagues at UMass-Amherst, who are developing — with funding from the NSF — a better severe weather warning system that gives geographically […]

I’m just back from a great workshop on US Ignite and GigU, held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland this week. I sat in on the US Ignite track — and got to hear many excellent presentations from folks with exciting ideas (and teams at the ready!) for developing gigabit applications. Each team summarized the novelty of their idea(s), how ultra-broadband connectivity is key to success, feasibility, benefits, and metrics for evaluation. In many cases, the ideas and teams emerged from a brainstorming session that took place during the first US Ignite workshop held in Washington, DC, on May 16 — just under a month ago. Areas of particular emphasis […]