Recently-departed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Regina Dugan gave a “breathtaking” TEDTalk at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, in late February, describing some of the extraordinary projects — a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, etc. — funded by her agency, and the paths to success. Dugan began: You should be nice to nerds. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, “If you don’t already have a nerd in your life, you should get one.” I’m just sayin’.   Scientists and engineers change the world.   I’d like to tell you about a magical place called DARPA where scientists and engineers defy the […]

NPR’s Diane Rehm Show on Monday featured an hour-long discussion among several thought leaders — titled “The New World of Massive Data Mining” — about the Federal government’s new Big Data R&D Initiative: Every time you go on the Internet, make a phone call, send an email, pass a traffic camera or pay a bill, you create [electronic data]. In all, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created each day. This massive pile of information from all sources is called “Big Data.” It gets stored somewhere, and everyday the pile gets bigger. Government and industry are finding new ways to analyze it. Last week the administration announced an initiative to aid the development of Big Data […]

As we’ve covered extensively, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), together with six Federal agencies, rolled out the Big Data R&D Initiative on Thursday afternoon, providing $200 million in funding to improve our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. Highlights included a $25 million solicitation supporting foundational research, including core techniques and technologies, spanning all directorates and offices within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and 7 institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); a $250 million “Data to Decisions” investment by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering [ASD(R&E)], constituting a major push in data to decision, autonomy, and human systems; and a […]

Vijay Kumar, Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics as well as Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a fascinating talk at last month’s 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, summarizing recent advances in his General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab. Kumar described how his lab is blending computer science and mechanical engineering to create flying quadrotor robots, which “move together in eerie formation, tightening themselves into perfect battalions, even filling in the gap when one of their own drops out.” According to Kumar: [Agile aerial] robots like this have many applications. You can send them inside buildings as first responders to look for intruders, […]

Beginning at 8:15am EST today, we will be streaming live via the web an all-day symposium — titled The Impact of NITRD: Two Decades of Game-Changing Breakthroughs in Networking and Information Technology — marking two decades of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program. Watch it live following the link!

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Eric Horvitz, Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research and member of the CCC Council, and Peter Lee, Managing Director of Microsoft Research Redmond. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Microsoft Research last September, we organized a day of reflection at the Redmond lab where we asked participants to look back and then forward to the next 20 years of computer science, with the goal of providing advice to young scientists. Today we are making available an overview view of highlights from the day of reflection, and also videos from one-on-one interviews. Check out the overview piece after the jump…