The National Academy of Engineering has announced the Members of the Class of 2010.  In Section 5 (Computer Science & Engineering), the newly-elected Members are: Andrei Broder, Yahoo! Irene Greif, IBM Bill Gropp, UIUC Laura Haas, IBM Mike Jordan, UC Berkeley Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive Tom Mitchell, CMU Larry Peterson, Princeton Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland Mark Wegman, IBM N.R. Narayana Murthy, Infosys (Foreign Associate) Congratulations to these outstanding colleagues!  The NAE announcement may be viewed here.

As noted in a previous post, Mattel has been running a web-based contest to choose Barbie’s next career. The results are in!  “You voted!  We listened!!”  (Even if  “you” is a bot …)  The winner of the popular vote is … Computer Engineer Barbie! The New York Times reports:  “Barbie has come a long way since 1992, when the blond bombshell of a doll was programmed to say, ‘Math class is tough.’  Barbie, whose various careers have taken her from aerobics instructor to supermodel to business executive, will next be a computer engineer, a career chosen by half a million Barbie fans.”  Read the full article here.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is sponsoring an award for K-12, undergraduate,  graduate students, and recent graduates who have done something remarkable to  address the Grand Challenges our world faces.   The National Academy of Engineering has identified 14 specific NAE Grand Challenge problem areas in Sustainability, Health, Vulnerability, Joy of Living.  Many of these problems potentially have a significant computational component. If you know of a student has already made a special contribution in one of these areas, please nominate them!Nominations may REUSE existing materials such as videos, essays, articles, business plans, posters, presentations, photo essays or can be newly created. Nominations are due 1 March 2010. There are  $15,000 in cash […]

Five months ago, Peter Lee took a leave of absence as Head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University to begin a stint at DARPA as the Director of the new Transformational Convergence Technology Office (DARPA/TCTO).  TCTO is re-establishing basic research programs in a broad range of rapidly emerging computing-enabled technology areas such as social media, synthetic biology, high-performance computing, and networking, as well as employing a diverse range of innovation strategies including broad community programs, competitions/challenges, and crowd sourcing. Peter spoke on DARPA and TCTO at the University of Washington on February 2.  The talk is inspiring and informative.  Watch the streaming video here.

Tom Friedman has a wonderful op-ed in today’s New York Times.  Read it here.  Then go to the National Lab Day website, here, and register! “What the country needs most now is not more government stimulus, but more stimulation. We need to get millions of American kids, not just the geniuses, excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again. We need to make 2010 what Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of ‘Start-Up America.’ “Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs […]

Today, January 17th, is the anniversary of the 1995 Kobe, Japan, earthquake which killed over 6,000 people. I am in Japan, ironically, accepting the Motohiro Kisoi Award for academic contributions to rescue engineering.  I am thinking about Haiti, what is and what might have been. My Japanese hosts at the International Rescue Systems institute are sanguine about the long delays in getting new technologies from the labs and into the hands of the responders, agencies, and the victims themselves. It takes time, they say.  They are patient; it took 5 years to rebuild Kobe with the resources of one of the great nations of the world. During my visit this week and […]