The National Science Foundation (NSF) has revamped the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Program.  It is now called the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program.  Like IGERT, NRT programs are supposed to develop graduate STEM training programs which will give students the skills, knowledge and competencies needed for a full range of STEM careers.  One key feature of the new program is the specific focus on Data Enabled Science and Engineering.  From the announcement: The NRT program initially has one priority research theme – Data-Enabled Science and Engineering (DESE); in addition, proposals are encouraged on any other crosscutting, interdisciplinary theme. In either case, proposals should identify the alignment of project research […]

The National Science Foundation has issued a new program solicitation for High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Continuing the Building of a More Inclusive Computing Environment for Science and Engineering. “The intent of this solicitation is to request proposals from organizations willing to serve as Resource Providers within the NSF eXtreme Digital (XD) program.  The current solicitation is intended to complement previous NSF investments in advanced computational infrastructure by exploring new and creative approaches to delivering innovative computational resources to an increasingly diverse community and portfolio of scientific research and education.   NSF’s vision for Advanced Computing Infrastructure, which supports Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21), focuses specifically on ensuring that the science and engineering community has […]

Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member Mark Hill was featured by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in their “Discoveries“.  Hill’s work on the efficiencies in computer architecture is described in the article titled Shaving Nanoseconds from Racing Processors. The computer is one of the most complex machines ever devised and most of us only ever interact with its simplest features. For each keystroke and web-click, thousands of instructions must be communicated in diverse machine languages and millions of calculations computed.   Mark Hill knows more about the inner workings of computer hardware than most. As Amdahl Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin, he studies the way computers transform 0s and 1s into […]

In an article published on The New York Times’ website yesterday, the newspaper’s technology writer Steve Lohr discusses Alex Pentland’s new book, “Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread – The Lesson From a New Science.” Pentland is the Director of the MIT Human Dynamics Laboratory which pioneered the idea of a society enabled by Big Data. One of the key lessons in his book is that there is a lot of data out there, but not all data is equal. Pentland looks at this as a computational social scientist that researches people through sensors.  He began this type of research long before people carried their own sensors as they do today, in their cellphones. “We understood what cellphones meant,” […]

This weekend, The New York Times had an article titled 10 Courses With a Twist by Laura Pappano.  Pappano describes that institutions of higher education are changing their models and putting more emphasis on teaching, making the learning experience not just be for the sake of the course, but applicable to life. Students still file into lecture halls and classrooms, but once they’re seated, it’s clear that these courses are different. They mess with the old models. And they give students an experience that might change how they think, what they care about or even how they spend their lives. Topping the list is Introduction to Computer Science  (CS50) at Harvard, taught by Dr. David Malan.  Malan […]

The next WATCH Talk is scheduled for April 17 at noon EST. Deborah Frincke will discuss Education and Training within the National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS). Dr. Frincke  is the NSA/CSS Associate Director for Education and Training, leads the National Cryptologic School (NCS)  titled as the NCS Commandant, and manages a worldwide multiservice military and civilian, corporate-level learning organization to deliver education, training and career development to members of the NSA/CSS workforce.   Abstract Education and Training within the National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a complex, global, mission-driven effort, incorporating essentially every aspect of learning that an employee might require. Whether civilian or military, encompassing a short tour or multiple […]