In light of the tornadoes that have devastated parts of the Midwest and South over the past several weeks, Robin Murphy — the Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University (and a member of the CCC Council) — was asked by The Washington Post to participate in a live web chat on Wednesday to describe how robots can assist in search and rescue missions. Murphy noted that robots can help detect signs of life in otherwise inaccessible or dangerous disaster environments — ranging from deep, dark crevasses created by piles of debris to site that are submerged under water: We try to match the best robots for the responders’ […]

There’s a great article in today’s New York Times describing a 2007 persuasive technology course at Stanford University — and how it became a laboratory for start-ups making simple products aimed at attracting large numbers of users (emphasis added): All right, class, here’s your homework assignment: Devise an app. Get people to use it. Repeat.   That was the task for some Stanford students in the fall of 2007, in what became known here as the “Facebook Class.”   No one expected what happened next.   The students ended up getting millions of users for free apps that they designed to run on Facebook. And, as advertising rolled in, some of those […]

Yesterday, CNBC.com published a slideshow of 10 products and companies that have changed the world. Calling them “game-changing disruptions,” CNBC.com reported: It takes a lot to shift the course of an industry. For every truly disruptive company, there are dozens that try and fail — and plenty of copycats that follow, but fall short of the new model.   Being disruptive doesn’t always mean being first to the market with an idea. It’s about executing it better than any competitor — and staying ahead of the curve from there. And, it turns out, being disruptive is often also about doing computer science! Nine of the top 10 products and companies […]

Are you working on a really exciting research project? Do you have a cool finding? Well, how about making a short video describing it — and getting paid in the process? Following up on our successful Computing Research Highlights of the Week, the CCC is announcing today a call for short videos describing exciting research and results in computer science: Many undergraduates don’t have a clear sense of what computer science research is all about. A common misconception is that it must be all about writing really big and complicated programs. The CCC would like to have a collection of short videos that provide undergraduates with some concrete examples of […]

The NSF’s CISE Directorate signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft in February 2010, facilitating free access to the Windows Azure cloud computing platform for select research teams. Today, CISE and Microsoft are announcing 13 cloud computing research projects funded for the next two years through this partnership.  The objective is “to make simple yet powerful tools readily available to researchers to extract insights [throughout science] by mining and combining diverse data sets.” From the official NSF press release: Microsoft will provide the 13 cloud computing research projects identified by NSF through its rigorous peer review process with access to Windows Azure–a cloud computing platform that provides on-demand computing and storage to […]

Presidents, performers, athletes, public servants — and now “Philliebot”? That’s right — a one-armed, three-wheeled robot that can control the speed and direction of its “pitches” will enter the ranks of preeminence today when it throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a Phillies-Brewers baseball game at 1:05pm EDT. It will be the highlight of a series of activities that are part of Philadelphia’s Science Day at the Ballpark. The robot was designed by engineering students Jordan Brindza and Jamie Gewirtz at the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. From yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer: You might think PhillieBot does the same thing as those machines that spit out baseballs at […]