The following Great Innovative Idea is from Tamraparni Dasu, Yaron Kanza, and Divesh Srivastava of AT&T Labs-Research. They were one of the Blue Sky Award winners at ACM SIGSPATIAL ’18 for their paper Geofences in the Sky: Herding Drones with Blockchains and 5G. The Idea Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), typically also referred to as drones, are gaining popularity and becoming ubiquitous. As the number of drones in the sky rapidly grows, managing the expected high-volume air traffic is becoming a critical challenge. It is essential to prevent collisions, and to protect the public from nuisances like noise or invasion of privacy, and shield from hazards like falling debris. Currently, in many countries drones are required to be within line of sight […]

The following is by CCC Director Ann Drobnis.  The Thirty-Third Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference is taking place this week in Honolulu, Hawaii. The purpose of this conference is to promote research in artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific exchange among AI researchers, practitioners, scientists, and engineers in affiliated disciplines, making it an ideal place to present the AI Roadmap to the community, seeking input and feedback as the Roadmap is being written. Yolanda Gil and Bart Selman, Co-Chairs of the AI Roadmap were accompanied by workshop co-chairs Marie desJardins, Ken Forbus (Integrated Intelligence Workshop), Dan Weld (Interaction Workshop), and Tom Dietterich (Self Aware Learning Workshop) to […]

The following is a letter to the community from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).  Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community, The National Science Foundation (NSF) is once again open for business, operating under a three-week continuing resolution (CR) through February 15, 2019, following the 35-day lapse in appropriations (lapse) that began December 22, 2018, and concluded this past Friday.  Many people have been impacted by the lapse, both personally and professionally, including our own NSF staff as well as all of you – our broader community.  Unfortunately, the lapse resulted in numerous […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Josep Torrellas of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and co-author of the report discussed below.  All too many of us have experienced how academia’s reward structure seems to favor small projects led by one principal investigator in the jurisdiction of a sub-discipline within a larger discipline. Moreover, the current stability of universities tends to slow the formation of new departments for new disciplines. In contrast, the problems and opportunities that our society faces in education, commerce, science, and government do not respect academia’s boundaries and can require expertise and progress from many aspects […]

The Computing Community Consortium is cohosting Code 8.7: Using Computation Science and AI to End Modern Slavery on February 19-20, 2019 at the United Nations in New York City with the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, The Alan Turing Institute, Tech Against Trafficking, University of Nottingham Rights Lab, and Arizona State University Global Security Initiative. Code 8.7 is a two-day conference that brings the computational research and artificial intelligence (AI) communities together with those working to achieve Target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals. With Target 8.7, 193 countries agreed to take immediate and effective measures to end forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking by 2030, and the worst forms of child labour […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Quantum Computing (QC) is attracting considerable attention, including the National Quantum Initiative Act, The National Academies report on Quantum Computing Progress and Prospects, and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Next Steps in Quantum Computing: Computer Science’s Role workshop report. QC has great potential especially for problems that have vast complex search spaces with positive implications like designing better chemical catalysts and negative implication like breaking public-key encryption. QC, however, is hard to understand in large part because it relies on quantum mechanics whose behavior defies the common sense that we humans have developed […]