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.

National Robotics Initiative (NRI)

November 24th, 2014 / in Announcements, NSF, pipeline, policy, research horizons, Research News, robotics, workshop reports / by Helen Wright

Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Agriculture and NASA announced $31.5 million in new awards to spur the development and use of robots that work cooperatively with people (known as co-robots). The awards mark the third round of funding made through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a multi-agency program launched in September 2012 as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Initiative, with NSF as the lead federal agency. The 52 new research awards, ranging from $300,000 to $1.8 million over one to four years, advance fundamental understanding of robotic sensing, motion, computer vision, machine learning and human-computer interaction. The awards […]

Live-streamed CCC BRAIN Workshop

November 24th, 2014 / in CCC, policy, videos, workshop reports / by Helen Wright

Computer science and brain science share deep intellectual roots. Today, understanding the structure and function of the human brain is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our generation. Decades of study and continued progress in our knowledge of neural function and brain architecture have led to important advances in brain science, but a comprehensive understanding of the brain still lies well beyond the horizon. How might computer science and brain science benefit from one another? The CCC BRAIN two-day workshop, sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and National Science Foundation (NSF), brings together brain researchers and computer scientists for a scientific dialogue aimed at exposing new opportunities for joint […]

Get Schooled on Science Policy: LiSPI Call for Nominations Now Open!

November 24th, 2014 / in Announcements, NSF, pipeline, policy / by Helen Wright

The following is a Computing Research Policy Blog post by Peter Harsha, CRA Director of Government Affairs.  As part of its mission to develop a next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the third offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We seek nominations for participants. LiSPI will be centered around a two day workshop to be held April 27-28, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Full details of LiSPI are available at: http://cra.org/ccc/spi.) LiSPI will feature presentations and discussions […]

Research Opportunity from NSF for Algorithms in the Field

November 20th, 2014 / in Announcements, NSF, Research News / by Helen Wright

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Tracy Kimbrel, National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Director for Computing and Communication Foundations.  The National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) recently announced a new program solicitation, Algorithms in the Field (AitF), which aims to promote collaboration between theory researchers and those in more applied areas. The program originated from interest and excitement among the theory community and researchers in many applied fields during a well-attended workshop held in May 2011. Bridging the gap between theory and practice in the design, analysis, implementation, and evaluation of algorithms can lead to new fields as well as broader cutting-edge applications. […]

CCC Research Highlight: ExCAPE

November 19th, 2014 / in Announcements, CCC, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

Periodically, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will highlight research projects that are nominated by the public. Research highlights are meant to inform the computing community about interesting research going on in the field. The most recent research highlight featured Dr. Rajeev Alur from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Alur leads the NSF Expeditions in Computer Augmented Program Engineering (ExCAPE). The goal of ExCAPE is to change the way programmers develop software by advancing the theory and practice of software synthesis.  ExCAPE develops synthesis tools that can assist expert programmers in discovering difficult code and meet challenges in multicore programming. To read more, see the full research highlight. To submit a research highlight for inclusion […]

Getting Serious about the Design of Social Computing Systems

November 13th, 2014 / in CCC, Research News / by Ann Drobnis

This is a guest post, written by David W. McDonald, Chair and Associate Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of Washington. Designing a good application is hard. Designing a good computer system is harder. Designing a good system that accounts for the vagaries of people, their motivations, and their flaws is even harder. Yet that is the challenge that designers of social computing systems must solve. The difficulties of designing social computing systems derive from both the complexity of the software and hardware configurations, and the fact that some participants in a social computing system will not behave with positive goals or intent. That […]