Calling all developers! Late this afternoon, the White House and Department of Labor announced the Summer Jobs+ Code Sprint, “challenging the developer community to build apps that reach kids throughout the nation on their browsers, Facebook, Android, iOS, SMS or any other platform.” The Labor Department released an API that opens access to thousands of summer internship, mentorship, and other training opportunities through the Summer Jobs+ Bank — which seeks to provide low-income and disconnected youth access to these opportunities. This is the first ever White House Code Sprint and we’re excited to see what innovative apps you build over the next seven days. There is no ideal app, but keep in mind that our […]

As we’ve covered extensively, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), together with six Federal agencies, rolled out the Big Data R&D Initiative on Thursday afternoon, providing $200 million in funding to improve our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. Highlights included a $25 million solicitation supporting foundational research, including core techniques and technologies, spanning all directorates and offices within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and 7 institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); a $250 million “Data to Decisions” investment by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering [ASD(R&E)], constituting a major push in data to decision, autonomy, and human systems; and a […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) The Obama Administration this morning unveiled details about its Big Data R&D Initiative, committing more than $200 million in new funding through six agencies and departments to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The effort, spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science, and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), seeks to “advance state-of-the-art core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share huge quantities of data; harness these technologies to accelerate […]

Updated Thursday, March 29, at 10:55am: OSTP and the agencies have announced the Big Data R&D Initiative. See the latest details here. *** As we noted on Tuesday, the Obama Administration is announcing a new, multi-agency Big Data R&D Initiative today. An event — to be streamed live via the web — is scheduled for 2pm EDT. New York Times’ technology writer Steve Lohr has the early details in today’s paper: The federal government is beginning a major research initiative in big data computing. The effort, which will be announced on Thursday, involves several government agencies and departments, and commitments for the programs total $200 million.   Administration officials compare the initiative to past government research […]

Mario Bergés (CMU) and Computing Innovation Fellow Zico Kolter (MIT) are co-organizing the first International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring, to be held on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University on May 7th. With support from Bosch Research, the workshop will provide a forum to unite researchers working on the topic of energy disaggregation, particularly on sensing and/or algorithms aspects. The workshop will review the main types of approaches that have been explored to date, and discuss possible paths forward. Key foci will include the growing need for standardized datasets and performance metrics that can allow the field to move forward, as well as possible areas of collaboration among research groups from multiple […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today launched a new blog — Tech @ FTC — focused on technology and consumer issues. Through the blog, the FTC aims to provide a vehicle for the agency’s Chief Technologist to communicate about technology issues to both technology experts and the broader public. Ed Felten, on leave from Princeton University (where he’s Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs) to serve as the first Chief Technologist at the FTC, wrote in his first post: …As the nation’s consumer protection agency, the FTC works on technology issues every day. You’ll see lots of discussion of technology in our reports, cases, speeches and testimonies, not to mention the consumer […]