The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is broadening its commitment to young scientists through a new Information Innovation Office (I2O) PostDoc Fellowship Program focused on postdoctoral researchers in the field of computer science with grants sized to support each fellow for up to two years.  Participation is open to individuals who are U.S. Citizens or U.S. Permanent Residents (1) who received a PhD degree no earlier than June 2019; or (2) will receive a PhD prior to the start date of this award; and (3) will be appointed to a postdoctoral position at a U.S. institution of higher education during the 2021-22 academic year. This I2O RA is specifically […]

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence (AI) just released a new report that provides Recommendations for Leveraging Cloud Computing Resources for Federally Funded Artificial Intelligence Research and Development. The report provides recommendations on better enabling the use of cloud computing resources for federally funded AI Research and Development (R&D). See a summary of those recommendations below.  Recommendation 1: Launch and support pilot projects to identify and explore the advantages and challenges associated with the use of commercial clouds in conducting federally funded AI research. Recommendation 2: Improve education and training opportunities to help researchers better leverage cloud resources for AI R&D. Recommendation 3: Catalog best […]

Recently, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) released a white paper called Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience, by Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado Boulder), Madhav Marathe (University of Virginia), Melanie Moses (The University of New Mexico), William D Gropp (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University). It is part of the series of white papers called Quadrennial Papers that explore areas and issues around computing research with potential to address national priorities.  The Pandemic Informatics paper outlines an effective strategy to reduce the national and global burden of pandemics. It includes (i) detect timing and location of occurrence, taking into account the many interdependent driving […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has released a white paper titled Evolving Methods for Evaluating and Disseminating Computing Research. This white paper was written by Future of the Research Enterprise (FRE) task force members Ben Zorn (Microsoft Research), Tom Conte (Georgia Tech), Keith Marzullo (University of Maryland), and Suresh Venkatasubramanian (University of Utah).  The FRE task force was assembled in 2019 to study the evolution of the computing research ecosystem, including topics such as the impact of academia-industry relations, the peer review process, and the future of open source projects. Based on interviews with members of the computing research community, the task force wrote the Evolving Methods for Evaluating and […]

The following is a guest blog from CCC Member Tom Conte of Georgia Tech. A recent article in SCIENCE, authored by Charles E. Leiserson, Neil Thompson, Joel Emer, Bradley Kuszmaul, Butler Lampson, Daniel Sanchez and Tao Schardl,  entitled “There’s plenty of room at the Top: What will drive computer performance after Moore’s law?” discusses the way forward after the end of technology scaling.  (The title is a play on Richard Feynman’s 1959 address to the American Physical Society, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” wherein Feynman observed that miniaturization would lead to what we now call Moore’s Law.)  So, what comes after Moore’s Law?  The article discusses improvements in […]

In March 2020, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the first ten recipients of the NSF Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence in Collaboration with Amazon (FAI).  From the solicitation: NSF and Amazon are partnering to jointly support computational research focused on fairness in AI, with the goal of contributing to trustworthy AI systems that are readily accepted and deployed to tackle grand challenges facing society. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to transparency, explainability, accountability, potential adverse biases and effects, mitigation strategies, algorithmic advances, fairness objectives, validation of fairness, and advances in broad accessibility and utility. Funded projects will enable broadened acceptance of AI systems, helping […]