Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


What Role Can Computing Play in Battling the COVID-19 Pandemic?

September 24th, 2020 / in conferences, COVID / by Khari Douglas

How can computing technology impact global health, particularly with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic? Shwetak Patel, 2018 ACM Prize in Computing winner and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council member, addressed this question on the second day of the Virtual Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) 2020. Patel, an entrepreneur and professor of computer science at the University of Washington, won the 2018 Prize for “contributions to creative and practical sensing systems for sustainability and health.” During his presentation, Patel highlighted a few of the use cases of computing technology on healthcare: for instance, AI has improved screening and diagnostic capabilities by reading X-rays and radiology scans and the ubiquity of mobile phones makes them a great […]

Architecture Innovation Accelerates Artificial Intelligence

September 23rd, 2020 / in AI, conferences / by Khari Douglas

As part of the first day of the Virtual Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) David A. Patterson, who won the 2017 ACM A.M Turing Award “for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry,” shared a presentation titled Architecture Innovation Accelerates Artificial Intelligence.  To begin, Patterson gave a brief overview of the history of AI: it started with top-down approaches where a programmer would attempt to describe all the rules with the proper logic for the machine, but other researchers argued that was impossible and instead advocated for a bottom up approach where you feed the machine data and it learns for itself, i.e. machine […]

A General-Audience Talk: How Computing May Change Our World

September 22nd, 2020 / in Announcements, CCC, CRA, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

While the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) works to catalyze the computing community for the public good, we have rarely prepared talks suitable for the non-computer-scientist public. Fortunately, CCC Chair Emeritus Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently prepared a well-received general-audience talk for Participatory Learning And Teaching Organization (PLATO), a senior organization that arranges informative lectures, classes, and field trips, all virtual now. Prof. Hill’s one-hour talk has the immodest title “How Computing May Change Our World” (YouTube Video & Slide PDF). It discusses that, while computing has already changed how we communicate, work, and play, more big impacts are afoot. Prof. Hill gives insight […]

Have fun! Life and Career Advice from Sir C. Antony R. Hoare and Leslie Lamport

September 22nd, 2020 / in conferences, videos / by Khari Douglas

Khari Douglas will be covering the Virtual HLF 2020 on the CCC blog all week. Stay tuned for more and watch the program via livestream here.  The Virtual Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) 2020 kicked off today (September 21st) via livestream. As part of the day’s program, Sir C. Antony R. Hoare and Leslie Lamport, both winners of the ACM A.M. Turing Award, sat down for a conversation to discuss their careers and offer advice to the young researchers in the audience. Lamport began the session by asking Hoare how his early school days prepared him to be a computer scientist. Hoare revealed he was nicknamed “Prof” by his classmates because of his studiousness and cited Bertrand Russell, […]

Virtual Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2020

September 21st, 2020 / in Announcements, CCC, conferences, COVID, policy, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) is virtual this year! Like many things in 2020, it might not be the same experience, but the positive is that it can now be viewed by everyone here on the Livestream from 10AM- 4PM ET Monday (September 21st) through Thursday (September 24th).  Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Senior Program Associate Khari Douglas will be attending the virtual HLF to podcast and blog about the various talks and panels. Additionally, CCC Council member Shwetak Patel from the Univeristy of Washington will be talking on Tuesday, September 22nd at 10:30AM ET on Learning From Global Health Research to Address the Current Pandemic and then leading and participating […]

Announcing the 2020 Computing Innovation Fellows

September 14th, 2020 / in CIFellows, NSF / by Maddy Hunter

This past spring, when hiring practices were rapidly changing due to COVID-19, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) launched the CIFellows 2020 program, with strong support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be Ph.D. graduates in computing. This effort was inspired by the CRA/CCC’s NSF-funded Computing Innovation Fellows Programs with cohorts starting 2009, 2010, and 2011, which funded a total of 127 fellows after the 2008 recession.  Many people invested their time and talents to our CIFellows 2020 program, including co-principal investigators on the NSF grant that funded the program: Andrew P. Bernat […]