This is a guest blog post by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Past Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, with contributions from Eric Horvitz the Technical Fellow & Managing Director at Microsoft Research and a past president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). In a recent blog post, we summarized the report of an academic/industry roundtable, which, among other recommendations, advocated for mechanisms to support long-term, strategic, and sustained conversation between academics and industry representatives. Yesterday, one such mechanism came into being with the announcement of the Partnership on AI by a consortium consisting of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and IBM. From the press release: The objective of […]

To kick off the start of Smart Cities Week, the White House has announced that it is expanding its Smart Cities initiative, by adding over $80 million dollars in new federal investments and doubling the number of participating communities (to over 70 in total). The Community Community Consortium (CCC) held a Smart Cities panel and discussion at the Computing Research Symposium: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs. You can see the full discussion here. Some highlights from the White House Fact Sheet are below: Today, to kick off Smart Cities Week, the Administration is expanding this initiative, with over $80 million in new Federal investments and a doubling of the number of […]

The following is a guest blog post by Tracy Kimbrel, Program Director, Computing and Communication Foundations, Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation.  The National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) recently revised and released the Algorithms in the Field (AitF) program solicitation. AitF aims to promote collaboration between theory researchers and those in more applied areas. Bridging the gap between theory and practice in the design, analysis, implementation, and evaluation of algorithms can lead to new fields as well as broader cutting-edge applications. The premise is that by working jointly “in the field,” researchers from these different communities will continually inform each other, […]

Contributions to this post were made by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Past Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.  In June, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced a new Request for Information (RFI) on Artificial Intelligence (AI), to solicit feedback on how the United States can best prepare for the future of AI. According to the OSTP Blog, they “received 161 responses from a range of stakeholders, including individuals, academics and researchers, non-profit organizations, and industry.” All of the responses are now public and can be found here. The Computing Community Consoritum‘s (CCC) submitted a response, which can be found here, after […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) program is pleased to announce The BD2K Guide to the fundamentals of Data Science, a series of online lectures given by experts from across the country covering a range of diverse topics in data science. This course is an introductory overview that assumes no prior knowledge or understanding of data science. The series starts Friday, September 9th and will run all year once per week at 12noon-1pm ET. If you would like to join the meeting, please go to the BD2K Guide web page for the most up-to-date computer or mobile logins.  This is a joint effort of the BD2K Training Coordinating Center (TCC), the BD2K Centers Coordination Center […]

From September 11-17, 2016, data professionals and researchers from all disciplines and from across the globe will convene in Denver, Colorado for the first ever International Data Week (IDW). Organized by the Research Data Alliance (RDA), the Committee on Data for Science (CODATA), and the World Data System (WDS), IDW will take place at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel and comprise three complementary events: SciDataCon 2016 (11-13 September) International Data Forum (14 September) Research Data Alliance’s 8th Plenary Meeting (15-17 September) As part of the Reserach Data Alliance’s 8th Plenary Meeting, the West Big Data Innovation Hub (WBDIH), RDA, and Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) will be co-hosting a Data Hackathons: Lessons Learned […]