The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently released a toolkit that describes NSF’s investment in fundamental research. It has infographics, fact sheets, brochures, and a video on NSF’s merit review process.  One of the infographics highlights a “Day in the Life”-how your daily activities intersect with NSF supported efforts. The following is from the NSF Press Release. “NSF’s toolkit offers a range of information about the vital work of the Foundation in a compelling way using modern communications methods,” said NSF’s Office of Legislative and Public Affairs Director Judith Gan. “We encourage the NSF community and the general public to explore the materials we’re releasing today to learn more about […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by by CCC Executive Council Member Mark Hill and workshop organizers Luis Ceze, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, and James Larus, Full Professor and Head of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.  Luis Ceze and Jim Larus organized a DARPA ISAT workshop on Approximate Computing in February, 2014. The goal was to discuss how to obtain 10-100x performance and similar improvements in MIPS/watt out of future hardware by carefully trading off accuracy of a com putation for these other goals. The focus was not the underlying […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is releasing its third segment in the Computing Research in Action Series.   This segment features the Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) research lab, led by Professor Shwetak Patel, at the University of Washington. The UbiComp lab, which consists of an interdisciplinary team of students (CS, EE, CE, ME), focuses on solving interesting and socially meaningful problems using a mix of hardware and software applications. The UbiComp lab focuses on four areas of ubiquitous computing: Novel interaction techniques: With the growing number of computers around us embedded into the environment, there is a need to interact with these computers beyond the traditional keyboard and mouse. Sustainability  sensing: Using computer science, machine learning and signal processing […]

President Barack Obama, during his State of the Union address, discussed education and the revolution of industry, bringing it back to America. President Obama also discussed high school curriculum reform to better prepare students for tech jobs; in an effort to create more classes that focus on STEM, he mentioned rewarding schools which partner with higher education institutions and industry to create such classes. President Obama went on to discuss the importance of funding cyber-security research, especially regarding the security of our critical infrastructure. President Obama stated: We know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private e-mail. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a new solicitation – Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) – that aims to address some of the most complicated and pressing scientific problems that lie at the intersection of traditional disciplines. It is intended to encourage investigators to submit bold, exceptional proposals that some may consider to be at a disadvantage in a standard NSF review process, and is appropriate for any proposal that do not fit existing award mechanisms.  Applications are now being sought for Track 1 awards under this solicitation. Proposals that are responsive to this track will be eligible for awards of up to $1,000,000 without requiring […]

DARPA is envisioning a 100-Gigabit per second Radio Frequency communications link between airborne and ground assets. Currently, fiber optic cables provide the core backbone for military and civilian networks, enabling high speed Internet, phone, video and other data transfer. A major challenge to providing 100 Gb/s from an airborne asset to the ground is cloud cover. Free-space optical links won’t propagate through the cloud layer, which means RF is the only option. The system will be designed to provide all-weather capability enabling tactically relevant data throughput and link ranges through clouds, fog or rain. Technical advances in modulation of millimeter-wave frequencies open the door to achieving 100G’s goals. “Providing fiber-optic-equivalent […]