The New York Times recently reported on how colleges may soon begin to allow massive open online courses (MOOCs) to be eligible for transfer credits, and used as introductory and remedial courses. The American Council on Education, a group for higher education, and Coursera, a MOOC provider, are conducting a project to determine if certain free online courses should be eligible for credit at traditional colleges. Their faculty will evaluate how much students learn from the MOOCs. Students seeking credit for the classes would have to pay a fee to take an identity-verified, proctored exam, and could have transcripts sent to colleges. According to the NYTimes, “The project is […]

On Monday, November 19, at 4:00 PM EST, the National Science Foundation will hold a webinar on its Cyber-Enabled Sustainability Science and Engineering (CyberSEES) Program. The program aims to advance interdisciplinary research in which the science and engineering of sustainability are enabled by new advances in computing, and where computational innovation is grounded in the context of sustainability problems. “CyberSEES is open to a wide range of sustainability challenges and interdisciplinary approaches; and aims to advance computing and information sciences research and infrastructure in tandem with other disciplines. Proposals are expected to forge interdisciplinary collaborations among the computer and information sciences, social and natural sciences, mathematical sciences, engineering, and associated […]

Erwin Gianchandani joined the Computing Community Consortium as our inaugural Director in April 2010.  Much of the success that the CCC has achieved is directly due to Erwin’s efforts:  he is – among a long list of extraordinary attributes – smart, thoughtful, strategic, well-organized, tireless, and a joy to work with and be around. When you are fortunate enough to hire a young person such as Erwin, you know that at some point he will move on to other opportunities.  We’re sad to report that this day has come.  Next week, Erwin will leave CCC to become Deputy Director of the Division of Computer and Network Systems in NSF’s CISE […]

As we blogged in this space last month, Judea Pearl — winner of the 2011 ACM A. M. Turing Award “for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning” — delivered his Turing Award Lecture as the opening invited address at the 26th AAAI Conference in Toronto, Canada, in late July. ACM today posted video of the lecture on its website. Watch it here. And read a summary of Pearl’s lecture, as previously contributed to this blog by Vanderbilt computer science and computer engineering associate professor Douglas Fisher, after the jump.

Last month, we noted that eminent computer scientist Bill Wulf had taken the unprecedented step of resigning from the University of Virginia to protest the ousting of UVa president Teresa Sullivan by the university’s Board of Visitors. The Board reinstated Sullivan as president a week later, and since then, many in our community have wondered if Bill would rejoin the UVa faculty. Bill has maintained his stance despite pleas from his colleagues — faculty and administration alike — including Sullivan herself. Yesterday, he publicly released a letter explaining his rationale for not “un-resigning.” Here it is, in its entirety:

Earlier this month, another huge crowd of roboticists, artists, and filmakers converged on Manhattan for the second annual Robot Film Festival, a daylong celebration of robots on film. Founded by Heather Knight of Marilyn Monrobot and Carnegie Mellon University and co-organized by Marek Michalowski of Beatbots, the festival’s goal is “to highlight innovation, explore frontiers before technically feasible and investigate the impact of humanity and machinery interrelations.” The festival — themed “Are Robots Man’s Best Friend?” this year — kicked off with a screening of Sundance Film Festival winner Robot and Frank, due to hit U.S. theaters in August. Check out selected winners of the 2012 “Botskers” after the jump…