Forty-five people met today in Newport Beach, CA for the first day of a three-day workshop supported by the CCC on Free/Open Source Software.  For more background information, see http://www.cra.org/ccc/foss.php  (Note that about five participants who were supposed to come were snowed in by the big storms in the east, and couldn’t make it.) Today’s discussion was structured around four perspectives on FOSS, with moderators, main presenters, and discussants: Users/Producers: Moderator — Greg Madey (Notre Dame University); Main Presenter — Ralph Morelli (Trinity College); Discussants — Stormy Peters (GNOME Foundation), John Wallin (George Mason University). Human-Centered Computing: Moderator — Walt Scacchi (UC Irvine); Main Presenter: Chris Kelty (UCLA); Discussants — […]

The New York Times reports that President Obama’s proposed budget includes substantial increases for science research, including an 8% increase for the National Science Foundation from last year’s budget, rising to $7.4 billion.  The Department of Education is also targeted for an increased discretionary budget to $49.7 billion from $46.2 billion in 2010.

Every second year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics provides a ten-year forecast of job growth in all fields of employment.  The most recent forecast, released in November 2009 and covering the period 2008-2018, may be found here (pdf).  Among the highlights: Among the 10 major BLS occupational groups, the “Professional and related” category (which includes computer science occupations) is projected to grow by the largest percentage between now and 2018 — by 16.8%.  (The average growth projected across all occupations is 10.1%.) Focusing in on the “Professional and related” occupations, of the 8 occupational clusters that are included, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are projected to grow by the largest […]

There are many reasons for research funding agencies (DARPA, NSF, etc.) to invest in the education of students. Producing the next generation of innovators is the most obvious one. In addition, though, there are an impressive number of instances in our field in which undergraduate and graduate students have made truly game-changing contributions in the course of their studies. The inspiring list in the attached PDF was compiled by the following individuals and their colleagues: Bill Bonvillian (MIT), Susan Graham (Berkeley), Anita Jones (University of Virginia), Ed Lazowska (University of Washington), Pat Lincoln (SRI), Fred Schneider (Cornell), and Victor Zue (MIT). We solicit your suggestions for additional student contributions of […]

At this week’s GENI Engineering Conference in Seattle, Ellen Zegura rolled out the Network Science & Engineering (NetSE) Research Agenda, an extensive effort of CCC’s NetSE Council, which Ellen chaired. Over the past forty years, computer networks, and especially the Internet, have gone from research curiosity to fundamental infrastructure. However, this is no time to rest on the successes of the past. To meet society’s future requirements and expectations the Internet will need to be better: more secure, more accessible, more predictable and more reliable. In 2008, the Computing Community Consortium charged the NetSE Council with developing a comprehensive research agenda that would support the development of a better Internet. […]

Less than six weeks ago we launched the Computing Innovation Fellows Project.  In that short time, more than 1,200 people announced their interest in hosting a CIFellow on our mentor website, and 526 applications for CIFellowships were completed and forwarded to the Selection Committee for review. The website for submitting applications was taken down on schedule at midnight on June 9, and the reviewing process commenced two days later. We’ve been very busy reviewing ever since, assigning each application to multiple reviewers, to guarantee a minimum of three reviews for each awardee. We are targeting July 10 for completing the review and decision process. The 526 applications come from 415 […]