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.

EPA’s Smart City Air Challenge

October 3rd, 2016 / in Announcements, awards / by Khari Douglas

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is offering up to $40,000 to two communities as part of their Smart City Air Challenge in order to help the communities create and implement plans to deploy air quality sensors and share the subsequent data. To qualify, communities will need to submit their plans detailing how they will deploy hundreds of air quality sensors and how they will manage the data they collect. The award money will not cover the entire program costs – communities will need to partner with sensor manufactures, data management companies, and other necessary industry partners in order to fully realize their plans. After a year the EPA will evaluate […]

World’s Largest Technology Companies Create Historic Partnership on AI

September 29th, 2016 / in Announcements, CCC, research horizons, Research News, robotics / by Helen Wright

This is a guest blog post by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Past Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, with contributions from Eric Horvitz the Technical Fellow & Managing Director at Microsoft Research and a past president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). In a recent blog post, we summarized the report of an academic/industry roundtable, which, among other recommendations, advocated for mechanisms to support long-term, strategic, and sustained conversation between academics and industry representatives. Yesterday, one such mechanism came into being with the announcement of the Partnership on AI by a consortium consisting of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and IBM. From the press release: The objective of […]

NSF Announces New Program Solicitation in Smart and Connected Communities

September 28th, 2016 / in Announcements, NSF / by Khari Douglas

As part of the White House’s expansion of the Smart Cities Initiative, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a new program solicitation on Smart and Connected Communities. The following Dear Colleague Letter from Jim Kurose, Assistant Director of NSF for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, explains the new opportunities available. Dear Colleagues,   Yesterday, the White House announced that the federal government is committing over $80 million – led by NSF with a $60M commitment over two years – toward the Smart Cities Initiative that was launched just over a year ago.   NSF has long supported the fundamental research, education, and community-building activities that are catalyzing the multidisciplinary and […]

2 Computer Scientists in the 2016 MacArthur Fellows Class

September 27th, 2016 / in Announcements, awards / by Khari Douglas

The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2016 MacArthur Fellows, a list that features 23 individuals who “are breaking new ground in areas of public concern, in the arts, and in the sciences.” The Fellowship grants each recipient $625,000 in order to pursue their interests for the benefit of human society. This year’s list includes two computer scientists – Subhash Khot, professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU and Bill Thies, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research India. Professor Khot is a theoretical computer scientist who is focuses his research on the limits of computing, in particular the study of the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC), which postulates that the […]

White House to Invest Over $80 Million Dollars in the Smart Cities Initiative

September 26th, 2016 / in Announcements, CCC, NSF, policy, Research News, resources / by Helen Wright

To kick off the start of Smart Cities Week, the White House has announced that it is expanding its Smart Cities initiative, by adding over $80 million dollars in new federal investments and doubling the number of participating communities (to over 70 in total). The Community Community Consortium (CCC) held a Smart Cities panel and discussion at the Computing Research Symposium: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs. You can see the full discussion here. Some highlights from the White House Fact Sheet are below: Today, to kick off Smart Cities Week, the Administration is expanding this initiative, with over $80 million in new Federal investments and a doubling of the number of […]

The Future of Computing Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations

September 21st, 2016 / in Announcements, CCC / by Helen Wright

The Computing Community Consortium convened a round-table of industry and academic participants in July 2015 to better understand the landscape of industry-academic interaction, and to discuss possible actions that might be taken to enhance those interactions. This discussion was preceded by a survey sent to academics and industry representatives in Spring of 2015. This survey was designed to provide some current information about the perceptions of the value of academic/industry interaction as well as trends and barriers. The resulting report, The Future of Computing Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations, touches on topics that were discussed during the round-table as well as in the survey. From the report: In reflecting on the results […]