Last Saturday, Erwin Gianchandani, formerly the director of the Computing Community Consortium and now the deputy director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Computer and Network Systems, organized and moderated a symposium at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) 2013 Annual Meeting in Boston. The 90-minute session – titled How Fundamental Computing Research Touches Everyday Lives — sought to describe how fundamental research in computing over the last several decades has transformed our world, and promises to facilitate enormous opportunities for still more game-changing breakthroughs in the years ahead. Nearly 85 people packed into a room at the Hynes Convention Center to hear the session’s featured […]

The following is a special contribution to the CCC blog from Will Barkis, Project Lead, Mozilla Ignite. Mozilla, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, US Ignite, KC Digital Drive and the Kauffman Foundation would like to invite you to “Hacking the Gigabit City” on March 22-24 in the Google Fiber Space in Kansas City. Gigabit networks might just be to the 21st century what railroads, electricity, highways and telephones were to the 20th.  That future is here in Kansas City, home of broadband and barbecue.  Following previous events in San Francisco and Chattanooga, we invite you to Kansas City to come hack the gig. At “Hacking the Gigabit City”, we’ll […]

Congratulations to CCC Council member Anita Jones for being named the recipient of the 2012 Philip Hauge Ableson Award. The Ableson award is the highest award conferred by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Jones was actively involved in supporting the Computing Research Association’s proposal to create the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), and has served on the CCC Council since its inception. She is currently University Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia. Jones was selected for the honor by AAAS “for her outstanding scientific-technical achievements; her contributions as a mentor, inspiration, and role model for other scientists and engineers; and her lifetime of exemplary public service to government, professional […]

Here’s a “must read” article for you HCI types:  a New York Times obituary for John E. Karlin, a Bell Labs industrial psychologist who is responsible for 7-digit dialing, the layout of the touch tone pad, the length of the cord on telephones (back when they had cords), and a slew of other “everyday things.” “A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them? “And when, not long afterward, the dial gave way to push buttons, new questions arose: round […]

Election to the National Academy of Engineering – which has roughly 2,000 members across a dozen fields – is one of the highest professional honors accorded to engineers in academia, industry and government. Today, the NAE Class of 2013 was announced – 69 new Members and 11 new Foreign Associates.  Elected in Section 5, Computer Science & Engineering, were: Anant Agarwal, president, edX (online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard University), and professor, electrical engineering and computer science department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. For contributions to shared-memory and multicore computer architectures. David Dill, professor, department of computer science, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. For the development of techniques to verify hardware, software, […]

Check out CCC council member Lance Fortnow’s blog, “Computational Complexity.” Today’s post focuses on postdocs in computer science. Anita Jones is troubled by the growing number of postdocs in computer science, she uses “troubling” twice in the first paragraph of her CACM Viewpoint. But is it really a troubling trend or just a natural outgrowth of a maturing field?   Theoretical computer science leads computer science in having and even embracing a postdoc culture. Nearly every graduating PhD in theoretical computer science that remains in academia takes a postdoc position before taking an tenure-track job. If anything I hear theorists lamenting a drop in theory postdocs this year with the end […]