Several sources report that MIT’s Dean of Engineering, Subra Suresh, is to be nominated to be the new Director of NSF.  Previously, Dr. Suresh was chair of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Eric Brewer has won the ACM – Infosys Foundation Award “for his contributions to the design and development of highly scalable Internet services.”  Brewer’s work was a key reason for the success of Inktomi, a search engine pioneer that Brewer co-founded in 1995 and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003. The ACM-Infosys Foundation Award, established in August 2007, “recognizes personal contributions by young scientists and system developers to a contemporary innovation that exemplifies the greatest recent achievements in the computing field.” ACM announcement here.  Wall Street Journal article here. Congratulations Eric!

Chuck Thacker has won the ACM A.M. Turing Award (quoting ACM) “for his pioneering design and realization of the Alto, the first modern personal computer, and the prototype for networked personal computers.  Alto incorporated bitmap displays, which enable modern graphical user interfaces, including What You See Is What You Get editors.  Thacker’s design, which he built while at Xerox PARC, reflected a new vision of a self-sufficient, networked computer on every desk, equipped with innovations that are standard in today’s models.” ACM announcement here.  Microsoft announcement (a wonderful profile of Chuck) here.  Terrific 6-minute interview on NPR’s All Things Considered here. Congratulations Chuck, and thanks for being an inspiration to […]

At the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Research Council (NRC) is undertaking a project entitled “Deterring Cyberattacks: Informing Strategies and Developing Options for U.S. Policy. ” The project is aimed at fostering a broad, multidisciplinary examination of strategies for deterring cyberattacks on the United States and the possible utility of these strategies for the U.S. government.  As part of this project, the responsible committee is issuing a call for papers that address questions relevant to this broad topic. To stimulate work in this area, the NRC is offering one or more monetary prizes for excellent contributed papers that address one or more of […]

A CACM “Viewpoints” column by Cameron Wilson (ACM) and Peter Harsha (CRA), inspired by the Transition Team white papers commissioned by the Computing Community Consortium. “While the history of computing-related contributions to shaping our world is a compelling topic, future opportunities in computing—where the field might go and what problems it might tackle—are perhaps even more compelling. Whether it’s creating the future of networking, revolutionizing transportation, delivering personalized education, enabling the smart grid, empowering the developing world, improving health care, or driving advances in all fields of science and engineering—all national priorities—computing has key contributions to make and key roles to play.” Read the full article here.