The following is a blog post by Ran Libeskind-Hadas, R. Michael Shanahan Professor and Computer Science Department Chair at Harvey Mudd College, Co-Chair of CRA’s Education subcommittee (CRA-E), and former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member and Debra Richardson, founding Dean of the UC Irvine Bren School of Information and Computer Science and CCC Council Member. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week that every public school in New York City- elementary through high school – must offer computer science courses to all students within ten years. It is estimated that fewer than 10% of schools in New York City currently offer a CS course and only 1% of students take such a course. CS will not be required of […]

National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for the Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose has issued the following letter to the community describing CISE’s role in the White House Smart Cities Initiative.  Dear CISE Colleagues, I’m sending you this note about the new Smart Cities Initiative that was announced last Monday by the White House.  NSF CISE and our CISE community have already been playing a crucially important role in laying the foundation for this initiative, which creates enormous opportunities for unlocking “smart” new solutions to improve the quality of life in cities and communities throughout the Nation. Our community is also well positioned to continue to help […]

The U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has awarded $75 million to help a consortium of high-tech firms and researchers develop electronic systems packed with sensors. The group will work to advance the development and manufacture of so-called flexible hybrid electronics, which can be embedded with sensors and stretched, twisted and bent to fit aircraft or other platform where they will be used. The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory will manage the consortium and add $90 million in federal funds, along with some additional funding from the local governments, to boost the total five-year funding level to $171 million. Normally, the Pentagon would develop most of this technology itself, but the […]

The Anita Borg Institute (ABI), a non-profit organization focused on the advancement of women in computing, has announced the winners of the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) ABIE Awards. Each year, the GHC ABIE Awards recognize female leaders in the categories of technical leadership, social impact, innovative teaching practices, emerging leadership and international change agent.   The winners are nominated by their peers and chosen by a panel of fellow technologists and past ABIE Award winners based on their extraordinary achievements and commitment to excellence. This year’s GHC ABIE Awards and their winners, respectively, are: Technical Leadership ABIE Award  The Technical Leadership ABIE Award recognizes women technologists who demonstrate leadership through their contributions […]

The White House has kicked off the first ever Smart Cities Week (September 15-17, 2015) in Washington, DC, announcing new steps in support of a new National Smart Cities Initiative. The National Smart Cities Initiative will invest over $160 million in federal research and leverage more than 25 new technology collaborations to help local communities tackle key challenges such as reducing traffic congestion, fighting crime, fostering economic growth, managing the effects of a changing climate, and improving the delivery of city services. The Administration’s Smart Cities Initiative will begin with a focus on three key strategies creating test beds for “Internet of Things” applications and developing new multi-sector collaborative models, collaborating with the […]

Currently, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting a three-day forum:  Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum, focusing on new technologies and how they can change the future, in particular with respect to national security. Three early-career engineers and scientists, chosen from a pool of 54 candidates, were selected to share their ideas to the Forum Participants.  They are: Alexander Bataller, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Los Angeles …who studies dense microplasmas, a recently discovered form of matter… Anupama Lakshmanan, a graduate student in biology and biological engineering at the California Institute of Technology…focuses on adapting immune cells to provide non-invasive diagnosis, continuous monitoring and real-time treatment of […]