The Congressional Robotics Caucus held a briefing this morning on the Robotics Roadmap 2.0(PDF), a follow up report to the CCC-led Robotics Roadmap(PDF) published in 2009. Click here to view the CRA Policy Blog summary of the briefing.  

The Computing Community Consortium is seeking community input to better understand the potential needs and payoff for additional investments in mid-scale infrastructure for computing research. NSF spends significantly less on shared research infrastructure for computing research than it does for many other fields. By “shared research infrastructure” we mean experimental hardware and/or software and associated instrumentation that serves a significant portion of the research community (versus a small set of investigators). In other fields, such shared research infrastructure includes equipment such as telescopes, ocean observatories, supercomputers, and field stations. We specifically are interested in “mid-scale” infrastructure investments, defined as investments of over $4 million but under $100 million. GENI, PlanetLab, […]

On Wednesday, March 20, a new Robotics roadmap will be presented to the Congressional Caucus on Robotics. The presentation program will include: • Overview – Henrik Christensen • Manufacturing – Rethink Robotics – Rodney Brooks • Logistics – KIVA Systems/Amazon – Pete Wurman • Healthcare – Eksos Bionics – Nathan Harding The new Robotics roadmap, organized by the Robotics Virtual Organization, includes updates to the sections on manufacturing, healthcare/medical robotics, and services. In addition it has two new sections on defense and space applications in recognition of the important role that space and defense robotics has both to R&D but also as early adopters. The new report is a follow-up […]

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali, are recipients of the 2012 A.M. Turing Award. Their innovations became the gold standard for enabling secure internet transactions. The Turing award is widely considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” and carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc. According to the ACM press release, “Working together, they pioneered the field of provable security, which laid the mathematical foundations that made modern cryptography possible. By formalizing the concept that cryptographic security had to be computational rather than absolute, they created mathematical structures that turned cryptography from an art into a science. Their […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently announced the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) program solicitation. “The goal of the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) Program is to accelerate the development and use of innovative approaches that would support the much needed transformation of healthcare from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive, proactive, evidence-based, person-centered and focused on well-being rather than disease. … The need for a significant healthcare transformation has been recognized by numerous organizations including the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), National Research Council (NRC), Institute of Medicine (IOM), Computing Community Consortium (CCC), and the National Academy of Engineering.” The NSF solicitation also cited the […]

Yesterday we posted a link to a terrific new video by code.org extolling the virtues of learning to program. Despite the “learn to code” rhetoric, code.org is really about “computer science is cool” and “let’s make AP computer science universally available.”  “Coding” is used as a proxy for this.  And indeed, “coding” is a critical component of computer science / computational thinking, and it’s also the “hands-on inquiry-based vehicle” for teaching computer science / computational thinking.  But it’s not the entire story:  computer science / computational thinking is much more than coding. What’s your best analogy?  For example: Coding is to computer science as cinematography is to filmmaking. Probably not […]