The following is a special contribution to this blog by Amy Apon, Chair of the Computer Science Division at Clemson University’s School of Computing. Apon attended the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) EarthCube Charette this week, and she recounts her experiences below. Earlier this week, the EarthCube community met at the first-ever EarthCube Charette in Washington, DC. EarthCube is a community process, with the goal of transforming the conduct of research by supporting the development of cyberinfrastructure that integrates data and information for knowledge management across the geosciences. EarthCube is supported jointly by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) and the Directorate for Geosciences (GEO). Already the EarthCube social networking website […]

This is a special contribution to this blog by Fred Roberts, director of the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), and Stephen Greenfield, Professor of Mathematics and a member of the Graduate Faculty, at Rutgers. The pair organized a workshop entitled “U.S.-China Collaborations in Computer Science and Sustainability,” bringing together 45 U.S. and Chinese computer scientists, mathematicians, ecologists, and representatives from other disciplines for a two-day meeting Sept. 19-20 in Piscataway, NJ. The full program, including list of participants and talks, can be found here. In this post, Fred and Stephen summarize the workshop, including key findings. The Sept. 19-20 workshop at Rutgers followed a series of U.S.-China Computer Science Leadership Summits featuring leaders of […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Alan Neustadtl, Jennifer Preece, and Ben Shneiderman, faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park, as well as Marc Smith of the Connected Action Consulting Group. The four co-organized a Summer Social Webshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation in College Park, MD, last Tuesday through Friday. Future leaders of social media research gathered at the University of Maryland at College Park Aug. 23-26 to hear from top researchers about Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP), including the state of the art, emerging methodologies, and practical applications to national priorities. The Summer Social Webshop (@Webshop2011) — the result of a collaboration between the University of Maryland’s Human Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL), its College of […]

The NSF’s CISE Directorate has issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), calling to attention the outputs of a multi-agency, invitational workshop on Cyber Security Data for Experimentation (CSDE). The workshop — which was held last year through the collaboration of the NSF, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Naval Research (ONR), and Treasury Department, as well as other Federal agencies — sought to find new ways for industrial partners to exchange relevant data with academic researchers. Academic, industry, and government participants engaged in spirited discussion and developed a deeper understanding of the issues involved in gaining access to industrial data sources and sharing research results based on those data…   One positive outcome […]

In a public session last Friday, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) spent time discussing the future of scientific research in the U.S. — hearing from Keith Yamamoto, Executive Vice Dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, and Venkatesh Narayanamurti, Professor of Technology and Public Policy at Harvard. The pair spoke about an upcoming American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Study on the Impacts of Federal and Industry Funding of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on American Universities (ARISE II). While much of the discussion centered on the life sciences, there were some interesting points raised about the divide between basic and applied research — as well as the future […]

At the Brookings Institution last week, Larry Summers, former head of the National Economic Council, and Eric Lander, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), discussed the role of government in fostering innovation — as well as the impact of science and technology R&D on the economy. Among the highlights, Lander discussed the long lead time in basic R&D investments: So current productivity is a lagging indicator of good investments made 25 years ago, perhaps. Where does, say, the information technology productivity that we celebrate today come from? You’re going to trace that all the way back to DARPA — to the DoD in the 1950s […]