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.


Global City Teams Challenge Tech Jam March 22-23!

February 18th, 2016 / in Announcements, Research News / by Helen Wright

The Global City Teams Challenge Tech Jam date has been set! It will take place at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Gaithersburg, MD on March 22-23, 2016. The Tech Jam will provide opportunities for existing Action Clusters to present their project plans, discuss project measurements, and identify additional Action Cluster partners. NIST is also establishing an international technical public working group to help develop an “IoT-Enabled Smart City Framework” that will identify pivotal points of interoperability across the many existing and deployed architectures. This international group will be holding initial workshops immediately following the GCTC Tech Jam in the United States (March 24-25, 2016) and in […]

CCC at AAAS 2016 Summary

February 17th, 2016 / in research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

Last week we reported that the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) would be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2016 Annual Meeting, February 11-15, 2016, in Washington, DC.  CCC Vice Chair Elizabeth Mynatt, from Georgia Institute of Technology, Kentaro Toyama, from University of Michigan, and CCC Chair Gregory Hager, from Johns Hopkins University, presented on The Confluence of Computing and Society: Emerging Themes in Socio-Technical Systems to a standing-room-only crowd of around 80 participants. The growing importance of computing drives us to understand the interaction between computing and sociotechnical systems, we need to think about how we want to frame technological approaches in the context of societal needs or larger social systems. The three different talks went into […]

IARPA Request For Information – Novel Training Datasets and Environments to Advance Artificial Intelligence

February 16th, 2016 / in Announcements, Research News, resources / by Helen Wright

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured the public’s imagination for over 60 years, but it has proceeded in fits and starts leading to what has become known as an “AI winter” – a long period of diminished research and funding activity. Until recently, the conventional wisdom has been that new algorithms were the limiting factor in making steady progress towards artificial intelligence. However, recent advances in machine learning, have established that historical algorithms in conjunction with high-performance computers can be used to achieve nearly human-level performance on diverse tasks such as image and speech recognition, language translation, and video game play. In each of these instances rapid progress was facilitated by the […]

NIH Pill Image Recognition Challenge

February 15th, 2016 / in policy, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently published a Federal Register Notice for a national Pill Image Recognition Challenge. NLM seeks YOUR input in developing high-quality algorithms and software that rank known images of prescription pills in the NLM RxIMAGE database by similarity to consumer-quality images of unknown prescription pills. NLM plans to use the submissions in creating a future software system and Application Programming Interface (API) that can be used in identifying an unknown prescription pill from a photo taken of that pill by a smart phone. Parties wishing to participate in the Challenge are provided with a training data set. The submission […]

NSF Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Request

February 11th, 2016 / in Announcements, NSF, policy / by Helen Wright

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France A. Córdova outlined President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget request to Congress for NSF. The FY17 request calls for $8 billion for NSF, an increase of 6.7 percent or about $500 million over the enacted FY16 budget. Funding priorities for FY2017 include research that addresses issues of major scientific and societal importance. For example: Clean Energy Technologies would receive $512 million, an increase of $141 million over FY2016. Understanding the Brain would receive $142 million in FY2017. Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems (INFEWS) would receive $62 million. Risk and Resilience would receive $43 million. This is a research portfolio […]

Computing Community Consortium at AAAS 2016

February 10th, 2016 / in Announcements, Research News / by Helen Wright

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2016 Annual Meeting this weekend, February 11-15, 2016 in Washington, DC. The AAAS Annual Meeting is interdisciplinary and inclusive. Each year, thousands of leading scientists, engineers, educators, policymakers, and journalists gather together to discuss recent developments in science and technology. The 2016 theme will focus on how the scientific enterprise can meet global challenges in need of innovation and international collaboration. CCC Chair Gregory Hager, from Johns Hopkins University, and CCC Director Ann Drobnis are co-organizing a symposium on Friday, February 12, 2016 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. on The Confluence of Computing and […]