USAID is launching what it calls “an exciting and ambitious” program to engage universities and research institutes in novel ways to improve the agency’s (and larger development community’s) ability to define and solve large development challenges. Computing appears poised to play an important role here, as key goals of the program are “to advance evidence-based analysis and test new solutions, to champion and incubate creative approaches to accelerate solutions to traditional development challenges, and to encourage universities to assist in addressing development problems through sustainable, creative, and multidisciplinary approaches.” USAID has posted a draft request for applications describing the new development centers that it is aiming to fund through this program. […]

Verisign has announced its 2012 Internet Infrastructure Award Program, seeking proposals that pursue “research that has the potential to improve the availability and security of Internet access in all parts of the world.” Expanding on a program first launched in 2010, this year’s program seeks to emphasize research that “advances security and stability, encourages Internet deployment, and improves the Internet infrastructure overall.” Verisign will issue two $200,000 awards; each award will support two graduate students for one year, plus institutional overhead. According to the Verisign announcement: Verisign is pleased to declare that it will announce two $200,000 research awards on May 2012 to support research that has the potential to improve the availability […]

Over the last year, we’ve described many opportunities at the intersection of computing and healthcare as well as computing and sustainability — and there are a couple great examples in the press this week. Researchers at the University of Washington have engineered Raven II, a new surgical robot with wing-like arms predicated on an open source platform that can perform surgery on simulated patients — with the aims of speeding up procedures, reducing errors, and improving patient outcomes: The latest version of the Raven has mechanical wrists that hold tiny pincers. Coming soon is a piece that will allow research groups to attach the same tools used by commercial surgical […]

The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) — which recently posted a solicitation containing opportunities for computing researchers — is now out with a call for submissions to its 21st annual Text REtrieval Conference (TREC), “the premier experimental effort in the field to encourage research in information retrieval and related applications” by providing a large test collection, uniform scoring procedures, and a forum for organizations interested in comparing their results. TREC has the following goals: to encourage research in information retrieval based on large test collections; to increase communication among industry, academia, and government by creating an open forum for the exchange of research ideas; to speed the transfer of technology […]

The National Institute of General Medicine Sciences (NIGMS), an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supporting basic research and research training, announced earlier this month that it would establish two new divisions — including one focused on biomedical technology, bioinformatics, and computational biology — as part of a reorganization that includes the dissolution of the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) which has had a history of supporting scientific computing. According to the announcement: The new Division of Biomedical Technology, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology administers research and research training in areas that join biology with the computer sciences, engineering, mathematics and physics. It includes programs of the former […]

The National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) soliciting input into the deliberations of its newly established Working Group on Data and Informatics, which is seeking to investigate the management, integration, and analysis of large biomedical datasets. According to the announcement: The group will gather information from various sources, including internal and external data and informatics experts, and develop recommendations to present to the ACD and the NIH Director on policies regarding the management, integration, and analysis of research data and administrative data.   In its initial deliberations, the working group identified the following issues as important to consider when developing […]