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.


Blue Sky Conference Track at AAAI-20

March 9th, 2020 / in Announcements, CCC, Research News / by Helen Wright

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently sponsored a Blue Sky Ideas Conference Track at the Thirty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, February 7-12, 2020 in New York, NY. The Blue Sky Ideas talk presentations were aimed at presenting ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new directions, e.g., new problems, new application domains, or new methodologies that are likely to stimulate significant new research. First Place- Back to the Future for Dialogue Research (Phil Cohen) Second Place– AI for Explaining Decisions in Multi-Agent Environments (Sarit Kraus, Amos Azaria, Jelena Fiosina, Maike Greve, Noam Hazon, Lutz Kolbe, Tim-Benjamin Lembcke, Joerg P. Mueller, Soeren Schleibaum and Mark Vollrath) Third Place– Unveiling Hidden […]

NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Announcing Creation of the Foundational Research in Robotics Program

March 5th, 2020 / in Announcements, NSF / by Helen Wright

Dear Colleagues: The National Science Foundation announces the creation of the Foundational Research in Robotics (Robotics) program as a program jointly managed by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). The Robotics program supports research on robotic systems that exhibit significant levels of both computational capability and physical complexity. For the purposes of this program, a robot is defined as intelligence embodied in an engineered construct, with the ability to process information, sense, and move within or substantially alter its working environment. Here intelligence includes a broad class of methods that enable a robot to solve problems or make contextually appropriate decisions. Research proposals […]

Catalyzing Computing Podcast Episode 20 – The Ethics of Artificial Consciousness with Natesh Ganesh

March 2nd, 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 Natesh Ganesh, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Massachussetts at Amherst and a current Research Fellow at the University of Colorado, Boulder through the NIST Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). Natesh’s research interest lie in the fields of AI, neuromorphic hardware, thermodynamics (Natesh was an organizer of the CCC’s 2019 Thermodynamic Computing workshop, read the Thermodynamic Computing workshop report here), and the emergence of consciousness. In this episode we talk about some of the key contributors to the space of artificial consciousness and discuss the ethics […]

NIH Innovation Lab “Advancing Cancer Biology at the Frontiers of Machine Learning and Mechanistic Modeling”

February 26th, 2020 / in Announcements, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and Knowinnovation (KI) are convening experts in cancer systems biology, mathematical modeling and machine learning (and related artificial intelligence expertise) to come together, share ideas, form new collaborative teams, and propose and refine interdisciplinary pilot projects. The Innovation Lab “Advancing Cancer Biology at the Frontiers of Machine Learning and Mechanistic Modeling” will be held on June 1-5, 2020. Applications are due here on March 20, 2020. Summary of the Opportunity The cancer research field has benefited from both data-driven models (machine learning, including deep learning, for example) and mechanistic models (those commonly employed in systems biology)). While machine […]

Submit a Blue Sky Ideas Paper to the ACM Hypertext Conference!

February 25th, 2020 / in Announcements, Blue Sky, CCC / by Helen Wright

The 2020 ACM Hypertext conference is July 13-15 in Orlando, Florida. It is a premium venue for high quality peer-reviewed research on hypertext theory, systems and applications. ACM Hypertext is concerned with all aspects of modern hypertext research including social media, semantic web, dynamic and computed hypertext and hypermedia as well as narrative systems and applications. The theme of Hypertext 2020 is “HYPERTEXT for Social Good”. This motto of the 31st ACM Hypertext conference goes hand in hand with the growing importance of ensuring technological inventions and innovations have a positive impact on the users, as well as the society at large. They are particularly interested in work that is […]

Catalyzing Computing Podcast Episode 19 – Intro to Artificial Consciousness with Natesh Ganesh

February 24th, 2020 / in AI, podcast / by Khari Douglas

A new episode of the Computing Community Consortium‘s (CCC) podcast, Catalyzing Computing, is now available. Khari Douglas interviews Natesh Ganesh, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Massachussetts at Amherst and a current Research Fellow at the University of Colorado, Boulder through the NIST Professional Research Experience Program (PREP), whose research interest lie in the fields of AI, neuromorphic hardware, thermodynamics, and the emergence of consciousness. In this episode we discuss some, though certainly not all, of the leading theoretical frameworks for studying artificial consciousness. 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 an episode […]