The following is a guest blog post from Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and Founding Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (2007-2013).  The 2016 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job projections have recently been released, covering the decade 2014-2024. As in all recent BLS projections, computing occupations dominate STEM: computing occupations are projected to account for 73% of all newly-created STEM jobs during the decade (488,500 jobs), and 55% of all available STEM jobs, whether newly-created or available due to retirements (1,083,800 jobs over the decade). Of course, there are asterisks associated with any projection. And there are double asterisks associated […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A key driver behind the amazing progress in computer performance and computer cost-performance has been Moore’s Law (doubling transistors per chip every two years) and Dennard Scaling (doing so at roughly constant power). Many have been warning that there are challenges with both and that new action is need to use transistors more efficiently. See for example the National Academies 2011 report “The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level?” and the Computer Community Consortium 2012 white paper “21st Century Computer Architecture”. Intel has long been a contrarian […]

Contributions to this post were made by Elizabeth Mynatt, CCC Vice Chair and Executive Director of the Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech. Dr. Mynatt was a member of the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) working group on aging and technology and led the Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) Aging in Place workshop. Recently, the New York Times published an article on A Push for Less Expensive Hearing Aids. The article highlighted the findings in a recent PCAST report on aging and technology. The report stated that almost two-thirds of Americans over the age of 70 have some kind of hearing loss, however many of them […]

The following is a guest blog post by Beth Mynatt, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Vice Chair and professor of Interactive Computing and the executive director of Georgia Tech‘s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).  The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Pioneers Project draws attention to HCI trail-blazers by describing their backgrounds and contributions. Ben Shneiderman, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, started the personal photo journal as a tribute to these individuals and as a celebration of their contributions to HCI. He hopes to make the pioneer’s projects more visible to a wider audience by featuring them on the website. Ben always had his camera with him at major conferences and […]

On April 2, 2013, President Obama launched the Brain Research though Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative as a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders. The initiative is a joint program with funding through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). In December 2014, in conjunction with the NSF, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) held a workshop to bring together the Neuroscience and Computer Science communities to help create breakthrough technologies as a part of the BRAIN Initiative. Then in January of 2016, the CCC was […]

Last week we reported that the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) would be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2016 Annual Meeting, February 11-15, 2016, in Washington, DC.  CCC Vice Chair Elizabeth Mynatt, from Georgia Institute of Technology, Kentaro Toyama, from University of Michigan, and CCC Chair Gregory Hager, from Johns Hopkins University, presented on The Confluence of Computing and Society: Emerging Themes in Socio-Technical Systems to a standing-room-only crowd of around 80 participants. The growing importance of computing drives us to understand the interaction between computing and sociotechnical systems, we need to think about how we want to frame technological approaches in the context of societal needs or larger social systems. The three different talks went into […]