The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate are co-hosting the 2018 kickoff conference for the GCTC – Smart and Secure Cities and Communities Challenge (SC3) on February 6-7, 2018 in Washington, DC. The GCTC-SC3 conference will be immediately followed by IES-City Framework Release Workshop on Feb 8. GCTC community members may choose to stay one more day and join the IES-City Workshop as well. The agenda of GCTC-SC3 kickoff conference will be made available in a few weeks. The goal of kickoff conference is to encourage smart community/city and Internet of Things (IoT) stakeholders to build teams to address shared issues in various sectors […]

National Library of Medicine Director Patti Brennan spoke at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI) this morning and strongly urged computer scientists to respond to this Request for Information (RFI) to Help Shape the Future of Data Science!  The deadline has been extended to November 20th, 2017! On behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) seeks community input on new data science research initiatives that could address key challenges currently faced by researchers, clinicians, administrators, and others, in all areas of biomedical, social/behavioral and health-related research. The field of data science is broad in scope, encompassing approaches for […]

CCC Chair Beth Mynatt has contributed to this blog. As computing has grown even more essential to day to day life, the capacity of computing research to effect societal change and address the needs of society has subsequently increased. In convening the Computing Research Symposium, our goal was to grow awareness and enthusiasm for the role that computing research plays in addressing timely and critical societal needs. How can we use artificial intelligence to amplify human abilities? How can intelligent infrastructure strengthen our communities? How do security and privacy promote democracy? How can big data and algorithms ensure fairness? To help answer these questions and more, we held the second […]

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is pleased to present the 2017 Fall Symposium Series, to be held Thursday through Saturday, November 9-11, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia. One of the symposia is on Cognitive Assistance in Government and Public Sector Applications. Cognitive Assistance is an important focus area for AI. While it has several facets and still lacks a precise definition (one of the reasons for this Symposium!), it has been called Augmented Intelligence, the automation of knowledge work, intelligence amplification, cognitive prostheses, and cognitive analytics in the past. It is generally agreed that even while fully automated AI is still being developed, there […]

So far the 2017 hurricane season has been disastrous, however, as we learned today at Day 1 of the Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium, it could have been even more disruptive if not for current computing research. Plenary speaker Michael Dunaway, from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, explained that hurricane tracks have been very accurate this year. This is because computational models have gotten very good at predicting the direction of the hurricane at the upper atmosphere level. As a result of better predictions, officials decided not to evacuate the city of New Orleans for Hurricane Nate on October 4th because they could trust the predicted track of the storm. This ended up saving the city millions […]

The following is a guest blog post from CCC Council Member and Cybersecurity Task Force Member Nadya Bliss from Arizona State University. “Massive breach of databases containing personal information. Millions of records exposed.” This seems to be an almost daily headline these days. One of the most serious events in recent memory is the breach of the Equifax databases, potentially compromising 143 million records with personal information such as name, social security number, and credit history. While the Equifax breach garnered much attention, it is just the latest in a string of serious breaches. These events have highlighted the need for a forward-looking research agenda in support of regulatory frameworks and discourse […]