The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering(CISE) will hold a one-day CAREER proposal writing workshop March 31, 2014 in Arlington, VA.  In addition to past programs that accepted CAREER proposals, this year, the STEM-CP: CE21 program is also accepting CAREER proposals. The goal of this workshop is to enable junior CAREER-eligible faculty to prepare competitive proposals for the NSF CAREER program.  Faculty members will have the opportunity to improve their skills in proposal writing, experience mock panel reviews, and interact with NSF program directors from the CISE divisions (ACI, CCF, CNS, and IIS), as well as with recent NSF CAREER awardees. The workshop is being hosted by the Computer […]

The CCC is charged with catalyzing and empowering the U.S. computing research community to articulate and advance major research directions for the field. To do so, the CCC needs truly visionary leaders — people with great ideas, sound judgment, and the willingness to work hard to see things to completion. Please help the computing community by nominating such people for the Council. For more information about the CCC, please visit http://cra.org/ccc and https://cccblog.org. The CCC is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under a cooperative agreement with the Computing Research Association (CRA). The work of the CCC is carried out by an active and engaged Council, currently led by Susan Graham (University of California- Berkeley) as chair and Greg […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the launch of the Big Mechanism program to develop automated technologies that will help explain the causes and effects that drive complicated systems. Paul Cohen, DARPA Program Manager says, Having big data about complicated economic, biological, neural and climate systems isn’t the same as understanding the dense webs of causes and effects—what we call the big mechanisms—in these systems. Unfortunately, what we know about big mechanisms is contained in enormous, fragmentary and sometimes contradictory literatures and databases, so no single human can understand a really complicated system in its entirety. Computers must help us. … Indeed, the Big Mechanism program might herald new ways to understand complicated […]

Recently The Atlantic published an article, “The Joy of Teaching Computer Science in the Age of Facebook.” The article has a Q&A with Mehran Sahami, a professor and Associate Chair for Education in Computer Science at Stanford University. Sahami gives his perspective on how the field has evolved over the past few decades. Twenty-five years ago, most people didn’t own home computers, these days they are an integral part of everyday activities. Technology is in increasing part of people’s lives, so everyone should have a better understanding of it.  Sahami has seen general awareness of computing increase and many more sub-areas develop.  Sahami was always interested in being a professor, however after earning his Ph.D. […]

On February 20 at 12:00pm EST, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will host it’s next Washington Area Trustworthy Computing Hour (WATCH) talk.  Deanna Caputo of the MITRE Corporation will give a talk titled Going Spear Phishing: Exploring Embedded Training and Awareness.  Caputo is currently a Principal Behavioral Psychologist supporting the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities.  Previously, she worked for the Department of Defense as a senior human factors intelligence analyst.  She holds a Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from Cornell University, with specialization in Judgment and Decision-making and Psychology and Law.   Abstract To explore the effectiveness of embedded training, we conducted a large-scale experiment that tracked workers’ reactions […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Ran Libeskind-Hadas, R. Michael Shanahan Professor and Department Chair of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College, currently on sabbatical at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Ran is a member of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council and Co-Chair of the Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E).  I’m on sabbatical this year and have been visiting computer science departments at colleges and universities, small and large.  One of the recurring stories that I hear is that a growing number of non-majors are choosing to take introductory CS courses.  And, some of these students get so excited that they choose to take a second CS course.  […]