This message was brought to you by the National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. The Broadening Participation in Computing program (BPC) aims to significantly increase the number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents receiving post-secondary degrees in the computer and information science and engineering (CISE) disciplines, and to encourage participation of other groups underrepresented in the CISE disciplines. PIs with active Medium and Large CISE Core programs awards funded in the last three years (specifically pursuant to solicitations NSF 20-591, 19-589. 18-569, 18-568, and 18-570) are invited to submit supplemental funding requests to engage more members of the CISE research community in significant BPC efforts […]

Sunipa Dev began her CIFellowship in January 2021 after  receiving her PhD from University of Utah in Fall of 2020. Dev is at the University of California, Los Angeles  (UCLA) working with Kai-Wei Chang, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UCLA. Dev recently co-presented a tutorial at AAAI 2021 which highlights using an interactive, visual tool, how language representations carry social biases and the ways in which we can mitigate the same. Details can be found here. She is also organizing a workshop on Responsible AI at KDD 2021. Current Project Language representations are ubiquitously used in language processing and generation tasks, which in turn are key in a variety of […]

The Computing Research Association (CRA) and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) are pleased to announce a new Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) cohort for 2021. This program recognizes the continued disruption to hiring in academic institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As before, this program aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be PhD graduates in computing to support maintaining the computing research pipeline.  The Computing Innovation Fellows Program is open to researchers whose work falls under the umbrella of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. This includes PhD graduates who are planning a career in academia either as a research scientist or […]

In October 2020, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) released more than a dozen white papers exploring areas and issues around computing research with the potential to address national priorities over the next four years. Called “Quadrennial Papers,” the white papers attempt to portray a broad picture of computing research detailing potential research directions, challenges, and recommendations for policymakers and the computing research community. As a continuation of our 2020 series, we are delighted to release two more papers titled: “Taking Stock of the Present and Future of Smart Technologies for Older Adults and Caregivers” and “Imagine All the People: Citizen Science, Artificial Intelligence, and […]

Richard Canevez began his CIFellowship in January 2021 after receiving his PhD from Pennsylvania State University this past October. Canevez is currently at the University of Hawaii at Manoa under the mentorship of Professor and Communication Information Science Graduate Chair, Jenifer Sunrise Winter. Current Project: Advocate’s Toolbox As an American, none of us need to look very far to see evidence of the deeply set injustices in our system: racism, sexism, and economic oppression permeate our collective existence. We have seen in the past year the need for activism and protest to fulfill the potential of this nation, by speaking truth to power. We have also more recently seen the danger […]

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters recently announced the award of the 2021 Abel Prize going to matematician László Lovász (Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics and Eötvös Loránd University) and computer scientist Avi Wigderson (Princeton University) “for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics.”   Starting in 2003, the Abel Prize is a distinguished award given to members of the scientific community to recognize outstanding work and contributions to the field of mathematics. Nominations are reviewed by the ‘Abel Committee’ consisting of five mathematicians to determine a winner. Lovász and Wigderson’s award-winning work […]