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 […]

Please bring the Code.org website and GREAT new inspirational video to the attention of all students, teachers, and parents you’re able to reach through your organization’s K-12 outreach efforts! The video features some of the top names from technology and the world at large – from Bill Gates to will.i.am.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has directed that the published results of federally funded research (final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents) be freely available to the public within one year of publication, and that researchers better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research. Nice knowin’ ya, Springer and Elsevier … The OSTP blog post, with the new policy memorandum linked, is available here.

The Computing Community Consortium is governed by an 18-member Council, with members on 3-year staggered terms. The CCC’s Nominating Committee invites nominations (including self-nominations) for members to serve on the CCC Council for the next three years. Please send nominations, together with the information below, to ccc-nominations@cra.org by 11:59pm ET on Monday, March 11, 2013. The committee’s recommendations will serve as input to the Computing Research Association and National Science Foundation, who will make the final selection. Nominations must include the following information: Name, affiliation, and email address of the nominee. Research interests. Previous significant service to the research community and other relevant experience, with years it occurred (no more […]