The following blog post is from CCC Chair Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kelvin Droegemeier recently gave his first speech as the Head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) 2019 annual meeting in Washington, DC. He is a meteorologist who has done substantial computer modeling and the first non-Physicist to lead OSTP. See the 42-minute video of his talk here. He called for all of us to continue our quest regarding Science’s “Endless Frontier” from Vannevar Bush’s eponymous 1945 report, beginning with a “portfolio analysis” of the US’s tremendous scientific strengths. For those of us […]
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.
New White House Science Head Bullish on Information Technology Research
March 5th, 2019 / in Announcements / by Khari DouglasCatalyzing Computing Episode 4 – What is Thermodynamic Computing? Part 2
March 4th, 2019 / in big science, Blue Sky, podcast, research horizons / by Khari DouglasLast week I shared my interview with Thermodynamic Computing workshop organizers, Tom Conte (Georgia Tech) and Todd Hylton (UC San Diego) and workshop participant Christof Teuscher in What is Thermodynamic Computing? Part 1. Part 2 of What is Thermodynamic Computing? is now available for streaming or download on Soundcloud (embed below), or you find it on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play. In this episode I interview workshop organizer, Natesh Ganesh, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who is interested in the physical limits to computing, brain inspired hardware, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and emergence of intelligence in self-organized systems. He was awarded the best paper award at IEEE ICRC’17 for the paper A Thermodynamic Treatment of Intelligent Systems. I also speak with workshop participant […]
NSF Webinar on the Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes
February 28th, 2019 / in Announcements, NSF, research horizons, Research News / by Khari DouglasThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a webinar on Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI). The webinar will take place March 13th from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and will provide an overview of the QLCI program. The QLCIs are a part of the Quantum Leap, one of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas. The Quantum Leap focuses on “exploiting quantum mechanics to observe, manipulate, and control the behavior of particles and energy at atomic and subatomic scales, resulting in next-generation technologies for sensing, computing, modeling, and communicating.” NSF will invest $30 million in Quantum Leap through various programs, including the QLCIs, in 2019. Overview Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI) […]
Great Innovative Idea: Capturing Meaning: Toward an Abstract Wikipedia
February 27th, 2019 / in CCC, Great Innovative Idea / by Helen WrightThe following Great Innovative Idea is from Denny Vrandečić of Google. Denny was one of the Blue Sky Award winners at ISWC 2018 for his paper Capturing Meaning: Toward an Abstract Wikipedia. The Idea Currently, Wikipedia is available in almost 300 languages – but the content of all these languages is independently written and maintained. This leads to some language editions having great and up-to-date content on a broad variety of content, and other language editions with struggling having any information about the most core topics an encyclopedia should cover. Also, often knowledge about local ideas are often not available in larger language editions. This is generating and maintaining the imbalance between the different language communities on the […]
CCC’s Postdoc Best Practices Program Final Report
February 26th, 2019 / in Announcements, CIFellows / by Khari DouglasFour years ago the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) launched the Postdoc Best Practice Program (Postdoc BP), designed to develop, implement and institutionalize the implementation of best practices for supporting postdocs. The Postdoc BP program was initiated due to a 157% rise[1] in computing postdocs between 2005 and 2010, which demanded attention from the computing community. A Steering Committee, led by Anita Jones (University of Virginia), was assembled to choose a set of institutions or consortia to design and investigate potential best practices for these postdocs. Ultimately, the CCC awarded grants to three institutions/consortia: The University of Washington, led by Brian Curless and David Rispoli; Arizona’s Foundational Model for Postdoctoral Programs […]
Catalyzing Computing Episode 3 – What is Thermodynamic Computing?
February 25th, 2019 / in Announcements, big science, podcast / by Khari DouglasA few weeks ago, I blogged about the Thermodynamic Computing workshop that took place in Honolulu between January 3-5. Today a new episode of the Catalyzing Computing podcast is available that features an interview with two of the workshop organizers, Tom Conte (Georgia Tech) and Todd Hylton (UC San Diego). In this interview we discuss their reasons for proposing the workshop, what thermodynamic computing is, and the potential impact that thermodynamic computing could have on future technology. I also sit down with workshop participant Christof Teuscher (Portland State University) to discuss his thoughts on the workshop and his work with new models of computation, including computing with DNA. You can stream or download the […]
