The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Council Member Ran Libeskind-Hadas and CRA Board Member Susanne Hambrusch, Co-Chairs of CRA-E. The CRA Education Committee’s (CRA-E) mission is to address society’s need for a continuous supply of talented and well-educated computing researchers.  The committee’s efforts include both research on the state of the “domestic student pipeline” and developing resources to maintain its health. The fraction of Ph.D. students who are domestic (U.S. citizens or Permanent Residents) has been in decline over the last several decades from around 70% in the mid-1980’s to under 50% in recent years.  A 2013 CRA-E report shows that a small number of departments have accounted […]

On August 20, 2014, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announced two new $10 million projects for cloud computing testbeds.  These new testbeds will enable academic researchers to develop and experiment with novel cloud architectures and pursue new, architecturally-enabled applications of cloud computing. In the spring of 2013, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) issued a call for White Papers on mid-scale infrastructure.  An overview of the white papers was presented to the CISE Advisory Committee and used to inform their discussions.  As a result of their recommendations, the Mid-Scale Infrastructure (NSFCloud) program was formed. These two projects, named “Chameleon” and “CloudLab” are part of Phase I of […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark Hill and workshop organizer Wade Shen of MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Recently DARPA ISAT organized a workshop on the future of Computer Aided Design tools called “Rethinking CAD”. The purpose of this workshop was to bring together industrial and academic experts from manufacturing and mechanical design fields to understand the limitations of current tools for exploration of design trade spaces for geometry, materials and microstructure in light of recent developments in 3D printing and additive manufacturing.  Here, we summarize the state of today’s technologies and the results of the DARPA ISAT workshop (full slides are available here). […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF)‘s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program has announced two Frontier-scale projects, part of a $74.5 million investment to support foundational cybersecurity research and education and address grand challenges in cybersecurity science and engineering. SaTC’s Frontier awards are part a diverse $74.5 million portfolio of more than 225 new projects in 39 states. These projects have the potential for broad economic and scientific impact. They are aimed at minimizing the misuses of cyber-technology, bolstering education and training in cybersecurity, establishing the science of security, and transitioning promising cybersecurity research into practice. The first of the Frontier awards helps establish the Center for Encrypted Functionalities (CEF). CEF’s goal is to use new […]

The University of Maryland’s Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR) has received five years of funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop the National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS). NDEWS system will scan social media and web platforms and collect data to identify new emerging illicit drug trends. These trends will be monitored by health experts so they can respond quickly to potential outbreaks.  From the NIH news release: “NDEWS will generate critically needed information about new drug trends in specific locations around the country so rapid, informed, and effective public health responses can be developed precisely where needed,” said NIDA […]

As the number and scale of West Coast wildfires continue to increase, threatened communities are struggling to figure out what to do. High winds can shift the direction of a fire causing emergency evacuations of communities. Until now, it has been hard to predict how fires will spread.  WIFIRE, a new cyberinfrastructure system can monitor, predict, and visualize where wildfires are headed.  Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), WIFIRE is led jointly by the University of California (UC), San Diego, and the University of Maryland. WIFIRE merges observations with computational techniques in order to monitor environmental conditions and predict where and how fast a wildfire will spread. As WIFIRE develops it […]