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 Forbes 30 Under 30, is a tally of the brightest stars in 20 different fields under the age of 30. What these young men and women have accomplished in their lifetime is astonishing. Now is the time to be young and ambitious! Here are just a few examples: Sophie Milam, 26, Chief Engineer at HI-SEAS, designs control systems for so-called tensegrity robots (held together by tension).   Elizabeth Beattie, 24, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science, designed the Titan Arm, an exoskeleton that gives the wearer an extra forty pounds of bicep strength.   John Mittermeier, 29, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford University, is applying […]

The Global City Teams Challenge, an initiative by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and US Ignite, is designed to advance the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within a smart city / smart community environment around the world. More than 30 teams are pursuing projects related to sectors including public safety, energy and transportation. Participants in the Global City Teams Challenge are working to deploy an emerging technology within a cyber physical system (CPS) by June 2015. On February 12-13, 2015, NIST and US Ignite will host a Tech Jam that will provide existing teams with an opportunity to present their project plans and identify additional project […]

  The following is a guest blog post by Sharoda Paul, former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) CI Fellow now Collaboration Researcher at GE Global Research.  In 2011, GE embarked on a multibillion-dollar initiative called the Industrial Internet. Their vision was to augment industrial assets with sensors and connect them to a common platform that would leverage advanced analytics for efficiency gains. While it’s easy to focus on the power of big iron and big data when thinking about the Industrial Internet, the people who work on industrial assets are equally critical to delivering results. Just as intelligent machines can deliver the right information to the right people at the right […]

Yesterday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France A. Córdova outlined President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget request to Congress for NSF. The FY16 request calls for $7.7 billion for NSF, an increase of $379 million over FY15, which is an increase of 5.2 percent. The budget request includes support for new approaches to research on sustainability, global climate, the food-energy-water nexus, cognitive science and neurosciences, and risk and resilience. It promotes advanced manufacturing research and clean energy activities and sustains investments in cybersecurity research. It also supports a range of investments in developing the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce, including new efforts to broaden participation in STEM […]

The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) is pleased to announce the release of a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot Deployment Program, Phase 1: Concept Development. From the solicitation: Connected vehicle research is being sponsored by the USDOT and others to leverage the potentially transformative capabilities of wireless technology to make surface transportation safer, smarter, and greener. These efforts have resulted in a considerable body of research that is now in hand to support pilot deployments. Building on the collective body of connected vehicle research, the Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program seeks operational deployments of connected vehicle applications that synergistically capture and utilize new forms […]