Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced a new report titled “Telling the Stories of the BPC Alliances”. This report describes how the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program has had tremendous success in boosting participation of underserved students in computer science. The BPC program funds 11 alliances involving a diverse set of institutions—large research universities, historically black colleges, states, middle and high schools, and various non-profit organizations. Together, they leverage their faculty and financial resources to encourage more students to pursue computer science degrees, and, ultimately, careers. While national participation in computer science is declining, the number of students pursuing CS […]

In a recent blog post “Reflections on the NNI – Coordination & Partnerships” the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy again cites the CCC: “A partnership model to effectively engage the research community in agenda-setting is the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). With support from the National Science Foundation, the CCC allows the computer science community to establish a vision for the field and quickly mobilize the community to pursue “big ideas.” Could this type of consortium work for the nanotechnology research community?”

The Department of Education’s National Center for Education Research (NCER) is seeking applications responsive to 14 long-term research programs under its Education Research Grant Programs. Some of these programs are particularly relevant for computing researchers. For example, the RFA for NCER’s Education Technology program (RFA CDFA 84.305a) states: To support research on education technology tools that are designed to provide or support instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, or science (including pre-reading, pre-writing, early mathematics, and early science) or to provide professional development for teachers related to instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, or science. The Institute intends to contribute to improvement of reading, writing, mathematics, and science learning by (1) developing […]

Last Saturday, the New York Times Magazine published the fourth installment in its “Smarter Than You Think” series, this one titled “Students, Meet your New Teacher, Mr. Robot.” The article highlights the use of robots as teachers of young students. Imbued with boundless patience and ability to recall facts, robots hold promise as effective teachers in high-repetition scenarios such as language class autism therapy. Teams from UCSD, MIT, UConn, etc., are field-testing teaching robots for a variety of uses. The results of these tests have been positive and the future use of robots in the classroom seems likely. The article also discusses the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence — teaching […]

Peter Lee, a past member of the CCC Council and the PI of the first CIFellows Project, today was named the Managing Director of Microsoft Research Redmond, effective this fall. In joining Microsoft Research, Peter departs DARPA, where he has been the Director of the agency’s Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO) for the past year. There Peter has challenged conventional Department of Defense (DoD) approaches to computer science research by infusing new energy into [DARPA]’s relationships with academia and industry and reinforcing the agency’s unique role at the intersection of research and application. Today, TCTO is re-establishing basic research programs in a broad range of rapidly emerging computing-enabled technology areas […]

I’m trying to compile a list of major technological and societal trends that influence computing research.  Here’s my list.  Please post your own suggestions! Recent technological and societal trends Ubiquitous connectivity, and thus true mobility Massive computational capability available to everyone, through the cloud Exponentially increasing data volumes – from ubiquitous sensors, from higher-volume sensors (digital imagers everywhere!), and from the creation of all information in digital form – has led to a torrent of data which must be transferred, stored, and mined:  “data to knowledge to action” Social computing – the way people interact has been transformed; the data we have from and about people is transforming All transactions […]