A couple of very interesting prize-based competitions have been announced in the past week. The first — with Vint Cerf, U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, and former Congressman Tom Davis among the judges — calls for innovative ways for IT to improve government: The Merit Awards is a new innovation contest that challenges the world to come forth with ideas on how to use IT to improve the quality of government. Focused on incenting people to get involved in their government, the award offers a $50,000 prize for smart, new thinking. But the program is not only open to Americans. Innovation knows no borders — nor does it need a […]

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued several solicitations in recent weeks focused on health information technology R&D. AHRQ appears to be taking a fairly broad view of health IT: Health IT is broadly defined as the use of information and communication technology in health care to support the delivery of patient or population care or to support patient self-management.  Health IT can support patient care related activities such as order communications, results reporting, care planning and clinical or health documentation (Shortliffe EH and JJ Cimino, “Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine.” Third Edition. 2006).  […]

The NSF’s CISE Directorate and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) are co-sponsoring a pair of workshops on US Ignite and GigU — initiatives we’ve covered in this space before — at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, today and tomorrow. For those interested, you can watch live webcasts of the plenary sessions here (note the timings): – Today 1-2pm EDT (right now!): Kickoff panel with Jim Baller (PSGW), Blair Levin (GigU), and Suzi Iacono (NSF/CISE) – Friday 11:30am-12:30pm EDT: Closing panel with Jim Baller (PSGW), Blair Levin (GigU), and Suzi Iacono (NSF/CISE) (Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division on Research on Learning (DRL) has announced its intent to fund up to 24 Connecting Researchers and Public Audiences (CRPA) awards in the coming year, enabling the research community to share NSF research (outcomes) with the public through informal learning approaches. Researchers from all disciplines — including computer science — are encouraged to apply. Proposals may be submitted at any time, and each award will be up to $150,000 for up to two years. CRPA — now housed within the DRL’s Informal Science Education (ISE) program — has a history of funding “active researchers to share with the public key features of their research such as […]

The NSF’s CISE and Biological Sciences (BIO) directorates have joined forces to seek interdisciplinary proposals that further the frontiers of both fields. In a recent Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) for Biological and Computing Shared Principles: The [BIO and CISE directorates] invite proposals that advance research focused on principles shared between the two disciplines. Proposals that include sustained, synergistic collaborations, leading to new advances in both disciplines, will be the most competitive. Proposals should address shared principles that contribute to conceptual advances in both biology and computing. We recognize that new ideas are emerging rapidly at the crossroads of the biological sciences and computing, and we encourage investigators to pursue novel focus […]

The U.S. Department of Energy — together with the Government of India — recently established a Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) “designed to promote clean energy innovation by teams of scientists and engineers from India and the United States.” DoE is committing $25 million to the Center over the next five years. The first JCERDC solicitation was issued earlier this month, with a focus on three priority areas. At least one of these — building energy efficiency — specifically aligns with computing research: The objective is to contribute to dramatic improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings (commercial or residential) in the United States and India. Recommended topics include: building […]