The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the formal appointment of Dr. Philip E. Bourne as the First Associate Director for Data Science at the Institutes.  Francis S. Collins, Director of NIH said, Phil will lead an NIH-wide priority initiative to take better advantage of the exponential growth of biomedical research datasets, which is an area of critical importance to biomedical research. The era of ‘Big Data’ has arrived, and it is vital that the NIH play a major role in coordinating access to and analysis of many different data types that make up this revolution in biological information. This appointment is very exciting for the computing community, as it signals […]

Today, December 9, 2013,  is Grace Murray Hopper’s Birthday (she would be 107 years old) and the beginning of Computer Science Education Week.  These events are being commemorated and celebrated in many ways throughout the country.  Even President Obama is getting involved with his own video.  As he says, Don’t just buy a new videogame, make one.  Don’t just download the latest app, help design it.  Don’t just play on your phone, program it. Hadi Partovi is the founder of Code.org, the organization bringing us The Hour of Code, a way to engage every student in the country in computer science for one hour this week.  He says, If you […]

On December 5, 2013, the computer science department at Cornell University, along with Google and Microsoft, sponsored the Fred B. Schneider Symposium on Trustworthiness.  This was a day focused on issues of computing systems for trustworthiness.  It is fitting to honor Fred in this way, as much of the research in his academic career has been on issues of trustworthiness, from his work on concurrency, distributed systems, and fault tolerance, to formal methods and logic and later security. The day opened with a session on Cybersecurity, with talks from Jeannette Wing, Farnam Jahanian and Keith Marzullo.  Next was a session on Methodology, with talks from Barbara Liskov and Cliff Jones. […]

Computer Science Education Week is an annual program designed to show students of all ages the importance of computer science.  It is observed each year, in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906).  This year, CSEdWeek is December 9-15, 2013. As reported in a previous blog post, Code.org is taking the lead this year and promoting the Hour of Code to bring computing to ALL students!  There are many ways to participate and to bring computing to others, through the online tutorials written for students of all levels to creating your own local event, with guidance here. To kickoff the week, Code.org is hosting Classroom Video Chats […]

This blog is a special contribution from Sitaram Asur, a Computing Innovation Fellow from 2009-2010.  When I graduated with my PhD from the Ohio State University in June 2009, it was a very disappointing job market. The economy was at its lowest ebb and most companies that I was interested in had established a freeze on their hiring. I was keen on an industrial research position but there were very few suitable opportunities available. I am very thankful to the CIFellows project for providing opportunities for fresh graduates like myself to stay in the research pipeline. My dissertation research focused on data mining on dynamic interaction networks. During my PhD, […]

On April 2, 2013, President Obama launched the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative as a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders.  The Initiative is a joint program with funding through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). In mid-November, DARPA announced two programs as a part of this Initiative: SUBNETS (Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies) and RAM (Restoring Active Memory). The SUBNETS program asks researchers to develop novel, wireless devices, such as deep brain stimulators, that can cure neurological disorders.  From […]