Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $21.6 million to 34 institutions across the country through the foundation’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure-Network Infrastructure and Engineering (CC-NIE) program. The projects will seek to improve U.S. University and college computer networks that are necessary for movement of the large data sets required for data-intensive scientific research. The awards to the 34 institutions across 23 states support two categories of awards: Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards provide support of up to $1 million for up to two years.  These awards address the challenges of achieving end-user network performance across complex, distributed research and education environments.  They seek to integrate existing and new technologies with applied innovations by […]

Technology and society writer Katie Hafner published an article yesterday on the use of technology as clinical tools in The New York Times: Dr. Alvin Rajkomar was doing rounds with his team at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center when he came upon a puzzling case: a frail, elderly patient with a dangerously low sodium level.   As a third-year resident in internal medicine, Dr. Rajkomar was the senior member of the team, and the others looked to him for guidance. An infusion of saline was the answer, but the tricky part lay in the details. Concentration? Volume? Improper treatment could lead to brain swelling, seizures or even death.   Dr. Rajkomar had been on […]

Popular Mechanics, the American Magazine which features regular articles on science and technology, released their annual breakthrough awardees earlier this week.  These awards highlight innovations that have the potential to make the world smarter, safer and more efficient. A total of ten awards were announced and at least four of the awardees feature computer science research. Four of these projects are featured below, all awardees are listed on Popular Mechanics’ webpage.   MABEL, Teaching Robots to Walk – Jessy Grizzle, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Jonathan Hurst, Oregon State University Walking, that fundamental human activity, seems simple: Take one foot, put it in front of the other; repeat. But to […]

A few weeks ago, we blogged about our new “Computing Research in Action” series, which is an expanded version of our “Highlight of the Week” feature. We’ve received several entries so far and will announce our first winner later this month. As a reminder, selected research projects will receive a $1500 travel award from the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) to cover conference travel to present the featured work. If you are working on an exciting research project, and would like to submit an entry for consideration, it’s not too late! Please go to our Computing Research in Action website to fill out a short entry form.

Today at a briefing on Capitol Hill titled, “Big Data, Bigger Opportunities“, hosted by Tech America, The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced $15 million in funding for Big Data research. These awards come nearly six months after the Obama Administration released it’s substantial R&D initiative in March of this year. The initiative committed more than $200 million in new funding through six agencies and departments to improve the nation’s  “ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” Subra Suresh, Director of the National Science Foundation: “I am delighted to provide such a positive progress report just six months after fellow […]

The following is a contribution to this blog from Parisa Rashidi, Assistant Professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. In this blog entry, Dr. Rashidi describes a symposium being held in Arlington, Virginia, November 2-4 2012, titled AI for Gerontechnology, which she is co-chairing.  The aging population, the increasing cost of formal health care, caregiver burden and the importance that older adults place on living independently in their own homes motivate the need for the development of technologies (Gerontechnology) that promote safe independent living. These user-centric technologies need to address various aging related physical and cognitive health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, deterioration of physical function, […]