Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured the public’s imagination for over 60 years, but it has proceeded in fits and starts leading to what has become known as an “AI winter” – a long period of diminished research and funding activity. Until recently, the conventional wisdom has been that new algorithms were the limiting factor in making steady progress towards artificial intelligence. However, recent advances in machine learning, have established that historical algorithms in conjunction with high-performance computers can be used to achieve nearly human-level performance on diverse tasks such as image and speech recognition, language translation, and video game play. In each of these instances rapid progress was facilitated by the […]

The National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently published a Federal Register Notice for a national Pill Image Recognition Challenge. NLM seeks YOUR input in developing high-quality algorithms and software that rank known images of prescription pills in the NLM RxIMAGE database by similarity to consumer-quality images of unknown prescription pills. NLM plans to use the submissions in creating a future software system and Application Programming Interface (API) that can be used in identifying an unknown prescription pill from a photo taken of that pill by a smart phone. Parties wishing to participate in the Challenge are provided with a training data set. The submission […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2016 Annual Meeting this weekend, February 11-15, 2016 in Washington, DC. The AAAS Annual Meeting is interdisciplinary and inclusive. Each year, thousands of leading scientists, engineers, educators, policymakers, and journalists gather together to discuss recent developments in science and technology. The 2016 theme will focus on how the scientific enterprise can meet global challenges in need of innovation and international collaboration. CCC Chair Gregory Hager, from Johns Hopkins University, and CCC Director Ann Drobnis are co-organizing a symposium on Friday, February 12, 2016 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. on The Confluence of Computing and […]

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 80 new members and 22 foreign members. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,275 and the number of foreign members to 232. Many of the newly elected members work in fields related to computer science. Here are a few of them: Thomas E. Anderson, Warren Francis and Wilma Kolm Bradley Endowed Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle.  For contributions to the design of resilient and efficient distributed computer systems. Dan Boneh, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.  For contributions to the theory and practice of cryptography and computer security. Frederick R. Chang, director, […]

The following is a guest blog post by Thyaga Nandagopal, National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Director for Computer and Network Systems (CNS).  The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) will host a one-day workshop on CAREER Proposal Writing on April 4, 2016. This workshop will be held at the Westin Arlington. The goal of this workshop is to introduce junior CAREER-eligible faculty to the NSF CAREER program and help them to prepare their CAREER proposals to target CISE programs. Attendees will have the opportunity to improve their skills in proposal writing, as well as to interact with NSF program directors from different CISE divisions (ACI, CCF, CNS, and IIS) […]

The following is a guest post from CCC Council Member Kevin Fu, the Associate Professor of EECS at the University of Michigan and Chief Scientist of Virta Labs, Inc. Last month, the White House quietly convened a group of medical device security stakeholders and domain experts to discuss the cybersecurity challenges faced by healthcare delivery organizations and medical device manufacturers. There were actually multiple meetings. Here I summarize just one that I attended in my role as a professor leading the Archimedes Center for Medical Device Security at the University of Michigan, and in my role as a member of the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council. Convened by the […]