In conjunction with the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, we are pleased to announce that registration is now open for a Symposium on Visions on the Theory of Computing.  The Symposium will be held May 29-31 at the Simons Institute in Berkeley, California. This three-day symposium will bring together distinguished speakers and participants from the Bay Area and all over the world to celebrate both the excitement of fundamental research on the Theory of Computing, and the accomplishments and promise of computational research in effecting progress in other sciences — the two pillars of the Institute’s research agenda. For more information about the Symposium and to register, please […]

Computing Reviews (an ACM/ThinkLoud publication) has released the 2012 Best Reviews & Notable Books and Articles in Computer Science. The Best Review of 2012 is the review of The Universal Computer by George Hacken. Read the 18 nominated reviews here: http://www.computingreviews.com/recommend/bestof/bestreviews_2012.cfm In addition to Best Reviews, they have also compiled a list of notable books and articles in computing that were published in 2012. These 91 items were nominated by their reviewers, CR category editors, the editors in chief of journals they cover, and others in the computing community. The list of notable items in computing is available here: http://www.computingreviews.com/recommend/bestof/notableitems_2012.cfm and can also be downloaded as a PDF. We hope this provides a […]

Last week, there were great advancements in Supercomputing as two new facilities were officially opened to the research community. This week, supercomputers are making headlines for a totally different reason: The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Supercomputing Center in Wyoming has taken top prize in the 2013 Green Enterprise IT Awards.  The facility won first place in the “Facility Design Implementation” category for its sustainable approach in design and building.  This is only fitting, as the supercomputer at this facility is dedicated to Earth system science research. “Our goal is to meet the highest standards possible for sustainability in supercomputing while advancing scientific knowledge,” says Thomas Bogdan, president of the University […]

A recent article in the New York Times describes the newer generation of robots that are able to interact with and learn from humans. In the past, factories separated industrial robots from humans to in order to prevent potential injuries. But now, gentler industrial robots, designed to work and play well with others, are coming out from behind their protective fences to work shoulder-to-shoulder with people. It’s an advance made possible by sophisticated algorithms and improvements in sensing technologies like computer vision.   That is in contrast to earlier generations of robots that often required extensive programming to change the smallest details of their routine, said Henrik Christensen, director of the robotics […]

The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible, written by CCC Council and CRA board member, Lance Fortnow is now available. The inspiration for the book came in 2009 when Fortnow published an article on the P-NP problem for Communications of the ACM. With more than 200,000 downloads, the article is one of the website’s most popular, which signals that this is an issue that people are interested in exploring. The P-NP problem is the most important open problem in computer science because it attempts measure the limits of computation. The book is written to appeal to readers outside of computer science and shed light on the […]

This week, the National Science Foundation launched two new supercomputers.  Here’s what Farnam Jahanian, head of NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering has to say about the launch: Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to inform you that this week two NSF-supported advanced computational infrastructure facilities were formally declared open for use by the science and engineering research community at-large. Stampede at the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) was dedicated on Wednesday, March 27, 2013, and Blue Waters at the NationalCenter for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was dedicated on Thursday, March 28, 2013.  Read more about these dedications from the NSF […]