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.


ACM SIGARCH BLOG: A Vision of Computer Architecture Visioning

May 27th, 2020 / in big science, CCC, policy, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The following blog was originally posted in ACM SIGARCH on May 26th, 2020. It is written by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair Mark D. Hill from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Hill is the recipient of the 2019 Eckert-Mauchly award, a lifetime achievement award in computer architecture.  TL;DR: This post reviews some successful visioning in computer architecture and related fields. It argues why visioning is necessary for our field to flourish and discusses how the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has facilitated some of this. Visioning is especially critical now as disruptions arrive from many quarters. Visioning: The development of a plan, goal, or vision for the future. From Latin videre–to see. “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” […]

Computing Researchers Respond to COVID-19: Contact Tracing for All? Bridging the Accessibility Gap for Contact Tracing

May 26th, 2020 / in Announcements, CCC, COVID, Healthcare, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Katie Siek, Indiana University.  Automated, proximity-based contact tracing apps use Bluetooth to identify who is near them. In theory, this is a great solution that can be efficiently deployed widely (albeit with many privacy and protocol considerations addressed here), however the assumption is that people have access to mobile phones with Bluetooth and use technology similarly. We know that not everyone has access to smartphones. Pew notes that approximately 70% of Americans who make less than $30,000 a year own a smartphone. Similar stats are seen for Americans who live in rural areas and those with […]

NSF DCL: Announcing the CIFellows 2020 Postdocs Project

May 22nd, 2020 / in Announcements, CCC, CIFellows, NSF, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi (Assistant Director) and Erwin Gianchandani (Deputy Assistant Director) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE). CRA/CCC announced the CIFellows 2020 project last week and highlighted the upcoming 5/26 webinar earlier this week.  Dear Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community: Words like “unprecedented” and “challenging” have been widely used to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives and on our research and educational communities, and yet they seem insufficient to capture the totality of the situation. Recognizing COVID-19’s significant impact on research hiring, the National Science Foundation’s CISE directorate […]

CIFellows 2020 Application Guidelines Updated and May 26th Webinar

May 20th, 2020 / in Announcements, CCC, CIFellows, NSF, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

Last week the Computing Research Association (CRA) and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announced the new Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) Program for 2020. This program recognizes the significant disruption to the academic job search caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic uncertainty and aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be PhD graduates in computing.  Awards will support an individual for 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow (“CIFellow”) at a host institution of their choosing. CRA will issue subawards to the Host Institution to cover an annual postdoc salary of $75,000, plus fringe and indirect costs (capped at 35%). Fellows will have the ability to select a […]

CCC Embedded Security Workshop Report Released

May 19th, 2020 / in CCC, conference reports, Security, workshop reports / by Khari Douglas

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently released the Leadership in Embedded Security workshop report. The workshop was organized by former CCC Council Member Kevin Fu (University of Michigan), Wayne Burleson (UMass Amherst), and Farinaz Koushanfar (UC, San Diego). It brought together around fifty academics, industrial researchers, and government agency program managers who work close to the topic of embedded security. The workshop included deep dive group discussions as well as short visionary talks by several international speakers to lend perspectives on successful strategies for funding embedded security research overseas. The report, titled Grand Challenges for Embedded Security Research in a Connected World, focuses on the challenges and potential research opportunities across five […]

Catalyzing Computing Podcast Episode 22 – Ice Cores and Chaos Theory with Liz Bradley (Part 2)

May 18th, 2020 / in AI, podcast / by Khari Douglas

A new episode of the Computing Community Consortium‘s (CCC) podcast, Catalyzing Computing, is now available. This is part two of Khari Douglas’ interview with Liz Bradley, the current Vice-chair of the CCC Council. Bradley has been with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder since January of 1993, and her current research focuses on nonlinear dynamics and chaos, as well as scientific computation and AI. In this episode we discuss nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory in pop culture, and the future of artificial intelligence. You can stream the episode in the embedded player below or find it on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play | Blubrry | iHeartRadio | Youtube.  If you are interested in appearing in […]