This week’s episode of David Pogue’s PBS NOVA Science NOW explores the future that is being created by computer scientists: “The technologies that will transform our lives decades from now are already taking shape in laboratories around the world.  David Pogue imagines what the Tech page of The New York Times might look like 10, 20, or 30 years from today, as he meets the innovative engineers and computer scientists working to create thought-controlled video games, robotic exoskeletons, and virtual reality that seamlessly integrates with the real world.” The entire 52-minute episode is “must see TV”!  Check it out here.

This year’s CCC Thanksgiving feel-good story features Joy Buolamwini, a 2012 graduate of the Georgia Tech College of Computing who was recently named a 2013 Rhodes Scholar. “Born in Canada to African parents and having lived in Ghana, Barcelona, Memphis and Atlanta, Buolamwini truly considers herself a global citizen …   “Rhodes is not the first prestigious fellowship program to recognize Buolamwini’s enterprising spirit. She’s also a 2013 Fulbright scholar and will use her grant to improve access to education in Zambia. Her past experience developing web and mobile applications for Atlanta’s Teach for America schools will inform Buolamwini’s efforts with the Zambian Institute for Sustainable Development to create a […]

Collections of photos, images, and videos are quickly coming to dominate the content available on the Web. Currently internet search engines rely on the text with which the images are labeled to return matches. But why is only text being used to search visual mediums? These labels can be unreliable, unhelpful and sometimes not available at all. To solve this problem, scientists at Stanford and Princeton have been working to “create a new generation of visual search technologies.” Dr. Fei-Fei Li, a computer scientist at Stanford, has built the world’s largest visual database, containing more than 14 million labeled objects. A system called ImageNet, applies the data gathered from the database to […]

  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 […]