Only day two of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum and the term machine learning or “ML” has been popping up throughout talks and in conversations with young researchers and the laureates. Machine learning uses statistical techniques to give computers the ability to learn without them having to be explicitly programmed. The goal is for a program to learn by itself without any human intervention. In a discussion with Jeffrey A. Dean, the winner of ACM’s 2012 Prize in Computing and the current head of Google’s AI Division, he repeatedly mentioned and stressed the importance of machine learning. Google AI currently has an open source machine learning platform called TensorFlow which Dean said […]

Is your 2-year-old smarter than your computer? Yes, simply because she is human. While she might not know how to read or do simple addition, she has the uniquely human ability to rationalize. She can take a small piece of information and abstract it. That is what makes her smarter than a computer. And that is what we need to train computers to do. This was one of the big topics of discussion on the first day of the 6th Heidelberg Laureate Forum. John E. Hopcroft, from Cornell University, presented a talked called “An Introduction to AI and Deep Learning.” Hopcroft started with a simple example. He recalls reading a […]

I‘ve been blogging for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) for over four years, but I‘ve never actually written in first person. So, hello. I’m Helen Wright, a biologist by training, but I’ve been working in computer science and science policy for over six years. I’m passionate about science communication and informing the scientific community about computing and how it can impact national priorities, cool research, and upcoming events. This fall, I’ve been given the unique opportunity to be a part of the upcoming Heidelberg Laureate Forum’s (HLF) international blog team. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum is an annual event held in Heidelberg Germany. Currently, in its 6th year, the HLF is […]

Do you want to automatically identify biomarkers reported within the scientific literature that are related to a particular disease? Do you have a large collection of text-based documents (e.g., articles, webpages, reports, catalogs) from which you want to create a database of experimentally derived parameters, like P53 concentration levels or tissue stiffness? Do you want to analyze clinical notes to extract patient-reported functional capabilities related to a given treatment? The Mobilize Center, an NIH Big Data to Knowledge Center of Excellence, invites you to participate in their upcoming workshop on rapidly creating biomedical knowledge bases from unstructured data. You will learn how to use a tool called Snorkel to automatically extract information from data sources, […]

The following is a letter to the community from James Kurose, Assistant Director, and Erwin Gianchandani, Deputy Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).   Dear CISE Community, As the 2018-2019 academic year begins, we wanted to take a moment to highlight an important expansion of our broadening participation in computing (BPC) efforts. As a preface, let’s begin, though, by reflecting on the great strides that our community has made in improving access to computer science education at the K-12 level.  Just two years ago, The College Board launched a new Advanced Placement® (AP®) exam, Computer Science Principles (CSP).  Over 50,000 students took the exam […]

The following is a letter to the community from Erwin Gianchandani, Acting Assistant Director, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).   August 9, 2018 Dear Colleagues: The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is notifying members of the research community about the addition of a core program, called Foundations of Emerging Technologies (FET), within its Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF). FET aims to enable radical innovations across all areas traditionally supported by CCF, through research in emerging computing and communication paradigms at the intersection of computing and biological systems, nanoscale science and engineering, quantum information science, and other nascent, yet […]