“How is the general population of researchers and institutions to meet [the needs of] ‘Big Data’?” That was the question posed last week by Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute at Argonne National Laboratory, before a packed auditorium at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just outside Washington, DC. Foster was delivering one of the keynotes at NIST’s BIG DATA Workshop, a two-event that assembled leading experts from academia, industry, and government to explore key topics in support of the Federal government’s recently-announced $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative. Foster’s answer? (Follow the link to find out!)

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) — together with the Case Foundation and the Joyce Foundation — is hosting an event Tuesday on Public Sector Prizes, seeking to further understand the role of incentive prizes and challenges in the public sector — and to catalyze future initiatives in this space. A portion of the event will be streamed live via the web for those interested. According to an OSTP announcement (following the link):

Back in January, the National Science Board (NSB) released a report — National Science Foundation’s Merit Review Criteria: Review and Revisions — recommending that NSF “better define the two criteria for the benefit of the science community.” The report specified three principles governing the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) approach to utilizing these criteria. Last month, the NSF, together with research councils from 50 countries, established a Global Research Council and issued six merit review principles at the conclusion of the first-ever Global Summit on Merit Review. The principles (following the link):

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Nabil R. Adam, a professor of computer and information systems and director of the recently-established information Technology for Emergency mAnageMent (i-TEAM) Research Laboratory at Rutgers University. Nabil has been on leave as a fellow at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate for the last four years, and in June 2010, he organized and ran a workshop focused on emergency management. Here Nabil summarizes the workshop and some of the key themes that emerged. The Department of Homeland Security recently hosted a workshop titled “Emergency Management: Incident, Resource, and Supply Chain Management” at the University of California-Irvine’s […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Mario Bergés, an assistant professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Mario recently co-organized the first International Workshop on Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring. (This post originally appeared here.) Last Monday, May 7th, the 1st International Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) Workshop took place on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. Zico Kolter and I had been organizing this event for the past few months, in an attempt to bring together the community of researchers and industry practitioners who are working on electricity disaggregation. By all measures, the resulting event exceeded our expectations. We had a great turnout (60 participants) and […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Elizabeth L. Grossman, a member of Microsoft Corporation’s Technology Policy Group. Yesterday, Microsoft’s Innovation & Policy Center, in Washington, DC, hosted a panel discussion on “21st Century Cities” as part of the @Microsoft Conversations series. The panel explored the technology and policy opportunities and challenges around making our cities smarter and more energy efficient, such as how information technology (IT) can link people, transportation, and buildings. This blog post provides information about some of the Microsoft sustainability activities in this area — particularly how we use our campus and facilities as a living lab — and future directions in computing […]