Recently, the world’s top leaders and thinkers gathered for the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland. In addition to the great variety of world issues discussed, there were a few discussions on how technology is impacting the economy, laws, and society. Margo Seltzer, a CRA Board Member, traveled to Switzerland for the conference and participated in a panel discussion, “New Cyber World Order,” organized by Harvard University. Since then, the discussion has attracted a lot of attention. While articles in  Digital Journal  and Daily Mail led with the dramatic headline, “Privacy is dead,” Seltzer emphasized to me that the main points conveyed during the session were more practical. Today we share an […]

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).  I had the opportunity to attend President Obama’s White House announcement of his “Precision Medicine Initiative” last Friday. The president was introduced by Elana Simon, a computer science major at Harvard University, who has conducted cancer research and was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer as a teenager. Obama’s $215 million request, included in his fiscal 2016 budget, would go toward research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NIH’s National Cancer Institute and the […]

A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal posted the article, “The Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2015: Gadgets and Ideas With the Best Chance of Making an Impact … and What You Can Do to Prepare for Them.” It offered predictions on cutting edge tech trends for the new year. Here are some of the highlights: Windows 10: Scheduled for release in the fall “The beloved Start menu is resurrected and modernized, and multiple virtual desktops will improve multitasking.…you may want to wait for the great assortment of new Windows 10 PCs that will appear in late 2015.” Apple Watch: Debuting in the coming months “It will undoubtedly […]

The new class of Fellows for TED2015 has recently been released, and among the 21 “game-changing thinkers” are Laura Boykin, a biologist and Jonathan Home, a physicist. We’ve chosen to highlight them here because even though they have very different backgrounds and goals, both use advanced computing techniques to transform the world.   Laura is a biologist who uses genomics and supercomputing to tackle food security in sub-Saharan Africa. She’s especially interested in figuring out what to do about whiteflies, which are devastating local cassava crops, a staple food in many countries.       Jonathan is a physicist working to build a quantum computer, attempting to achieve high-precision control of […]

Preparations for the third Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) are in full swing, and applications from young researchers to attend are now being accepted. HLF will once again bring together winners of the Abel Prize and Fields Medal (mathematics), as well as the Turing Award and Nevanlinna Prize (computer science) for an inspirational week. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation is looking for outstanding young mathematicians and computer scientists from all over the world who would like the chance to meet distinguished experts from both disciplines and find out how to become a leading scientist in their field. The third Forum will take place August 23 to 28, 2015 in Heidelberg, Germany. Applications will be […]

The following blog post was written by Dr. Stephanie Forrest, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Forrest recently completed a one year Jefferson Science Fellowship at the U.S. Department of State. Over the past decade it has become evident that computer science and the Internet are on a collision course with larger society. What was once an esoteric technical field, pursued by most of us for its intellectual beauty and engineering adventure, is now at the forefront of the U.S. economy, our social interactions, and foreign policy. When a U.S. President steps to the podium to discuss a software bug called Heartbleed and the U.S. policy on “zero day exploits,” something is up. Catalyzed by […]