The following is a guest blog by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.  Computing has become a powerful tool for productivity and connectivity — it powers companies, it fuels scientific research, and it delivers entertainment and social engagement for billions. Could research-based innovations in computing also become a catalyst for addressing compelling societal problems? To explore this question, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) organized a two-day Symposium on Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs. This meeting brought together over 130 in-person participants and over 1000 online viewers to raise the visibility of work that connects […]

The National Research Council (NRC) Research Associateship Programs (RAP) promote excellence in scientific and technological research conducted by the U.S. government through the administration of programs offering graduate, postdoctoral, and senior level research opportunities at sponsoring federal laboratories and affiliated institutions. Prospective applicants select a research project from among a large group of research opportunities available through this website. One of the current research projects available is with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) examining road user behavior with virtual and augmented reality in McLean, VA. Description of the project: Over 90% of traffic incidents can be attributed to road user/driver errors. As the transportation sector continues to introduce various new technologies/countermeasures […]

The National Security Agency is seeking nominations for its Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition. The 4th competition is open for nominations until March 31st, 2016 for any peer reviewed paper published in 2015. Entries are judged on scientific merit, the strength and significance of the work reported, and the degree to which the papers exemplify how to perform and report scientific research in cybersecurity. This year’s nominations will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished experts including: ·         Dr. Whitfield Diffie, 2016 Turing Award Winner ·         Dr. Dan Geer, In-Q-Tel ·         Dr. John McLean, Naval Research Laboratory ·         Professor Angela Sasse, University College London ·         Professor Fred Schneider, Cornell […]

Contributions to this post were made by Jenn Wortman Vaughan, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and a member of the workshop’s organizing committee.   The organizing committee for the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored Theoretical Foundations for Social Computing Workshop have released their workshop report. Social computing encompasses the mechanisms through which people interact with computational systems. It has blossomed into a rich research area of its own, with contributions from diverse disciplines including computer science, economics, and other social sciences. Yet a broad mathematical foundation for social computing is yet to be established, with a plethora of under-explored opportunities for mathematical research to impact social computing. This workshop, held in June 2015, brought together roughly […]

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 Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsors an initiative to bring special “Blue Sky Ideas” tracks to leading computer science research conferences. The goal of this initiative is to help conferences reach out beyond the usual research papers that present completed work and to seek out papers that present ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new directions. Conferences may request CCC sponsorship of such tracks along with a CCC grant that provides prize money for the top 3 papers (first prize $1000, second prize $750, and third prize $500), to be awarded as travel grants. Papers in a “Blue Sky Ideas” track should be open-ended, possibly “outrageous” or […]