The following is a contribution to this blog from Robin Murphy, Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University. Back in April, Robin co-organized a visioning workshop about the role of computing in disaster management (including preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery). In this blog entry, Robin describes her participation at a workshop held last week in DC on Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management.  I participated in the Wilson Center’s workshop on Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management last week where I briefed 60 physical and 150 remote participants on the NSF/CCC Workshop on Computing for Disaster Management and the subsequent […]

This past February in Arlington, VA, Yolanda Gil (University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute) and Haym Hirsh (Rutgers University) co-organized a workshop on discovery informatics, assembling over 50 participants from academia, industry, and government “to investigate the opportunities that scientific discoveries present to information sciences and intelligent systems as a new area of research called discovery informatics.” A report summarizing the key themes that emerged during discussions at that workshop is now available. From the executive summary: …[The] workshop’s participants identified an expansive range of fundamental research challenges for information and intelligent systems brought into focus by these three themes:   To improve computational discovery processes: We must understand […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from the organizing committee of the Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) visioning workshop on spatial computing — From GPS and Virtual Globes to Spatial Computing-2020 — held last Monday and Tuesday in Washington, DC. The committee summarizes some of the highlights of the workshop. Spatial computing (SC) is a set of ideas and technologies that will transform our lives by understanding the physical world, knowing and communicating our relation to places in that world, and navigating through those places. The transformational potential of spatial computing is already evident. From virtual maps to consumer GPS devices, our society has benefitted immensely from spatial technology. We’ve reached the point […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Jenny Korn, a Ph.D. student in communications at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Korn was one of the participants of last week’s 2012 Summer Social Webshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation, co-organized by Alan Neustadtl, Jennifer Preece, and Ben Shneiderman, faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park, as well as Marc Smith of the Social Media Research Foundation. Chosen from more than 100 applications, 50 doctoral students gathered at the University of Maryland last week for the Summer Social Webshop (the website includes videos of presentations!). The well-crafted presentations triggered lively discussions at the intersection of social media and network analysis. We represented many disciplines, including communications, sociology, information science, […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Suchi Saria, a 2011 Computing Innovation Fellow who recently joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in computer science as well as health policy and management. Suchi co-led the organization of the second annual symposium on Meaningful Use of Complex Medical Data (MUCMD) in Los Angeles, CA, with Randall Wetzel, professor of anesthesiology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Our growing health care need is one of the largest looming crises of our time. In the United States, per capita spending in health care constitutes the highest in the world and almost twice that of the country ranked second. However, our […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Louiqa Raschid, a professor in the School of Business, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, and Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, and H.V. Jagadish, Bernard A. Galler Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Louiqa and Jag co-organized a workshop on next-generational financial cyberinfrastructure on July 18-19. Earlier this month, experts in computer science as well as finance gathered outside Washington, DC, to consider the need for a new financial cyberinfrastructure, and to elucidate the computing research challenges that are arising in this increasingly interdisciplinary space. Participants were drawn […]