This morning, the University of California, Berkeley, announced a $60 million grant from the Simons Foundation — which seeks “to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences” — to establish the new Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. The goal is to have “computer theorists and researchers from around the globe … converge to explore the mathematical foundations of computer science and extend them to tackle challenges in fields as diverse as mathematics, health care, climate modeling, astrophysics, genetics, economics and business.” The New York Times‘ John Markoff has the details in today’s paper (following the link):
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.
Simons Foundation Awards UC Berkeley $60M to Launch Theory of Computing Institute
May 1st, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniComputing at the USA Science & Engineering Festival
May 1st, 2012 / in conference reports, CS education, pipeline, research horizons, Research News, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniComputing was among the excitement this past weekend at the 2nd Annual USA Science & Engineering Festival, held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The festival is the largest celebration of science and engineering in the U.S. and featured over 500 exhibits and 75 performances and shows on multiple stages. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was an Einstenium sponsor of the Festival and supported a performance stage and the participation of 16 projects, including the SpelBots. The SpelBots are a team of students with an interest in robotics from Spelman College, a female historically black college, and were formed to inspire and encourage young women and underrepresented students […]
NSF, NIH to Hold Webinar on Big Data Solicitation
April 30th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniLate last month, the Administration unveiled a $200 million Big Data R&D Initiative, committing new funding to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The initiative includes a joint solicitation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), providing up to $25 million for Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science and Engineering (BIGDATA). Now NSF and NIH have announced a webinar “to describe the goals and focus of the BIGDATA solicitation, help investigators understand its scope, and answer any questions potential Principal Investigators (PIs) may have.” The webinar will take place next week — on Tuesday, May 8th, from 11am to […]
The Inaugural Collective Intelligence Conference
April 27th, 2012 / in big science, conference reports, research horizons / by Erwin GianchandaniResearchers from multiple disciplines spanning computer science, mathematics, the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, and biology gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week for the first-ever Collective Intelligence conference. Organized by Tom Malone (MIT) and Luis von Ahn (Carnegie Mellon University), the conference sought papers about behavior that is both collective (spanning groups of individual actors, including people, computational agents, and organizations) and intelligent (the collective behavior of the group exhibits characteristics such as perception, learning, judgment, or problem solving). Over 100 papers were submitted for consideration, and 18 were selected for presentation (following the link):
21st Century Cities — and Microsoft’s Energy-Smart Buildings
April 26th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, workshop reports / by Erwin GianchandaniThe following is a special contribution to this blog from Elizabeth L. Grossman, a member of Microsoft Corporation’s Technology Policy Group. Yesterday, Microsoft’s Innovation & Policy Center, in Washington, DC, hosted a panel discussion on “21st Century Cities” as part of the @Microsoft Conversations series. The panel explored the technology and policy opportunities and challenges around making our cities smarter and more energy efficient, such as how information technology (IT) can link people, transportation, and buildings. This blog post provides information about some of the Microsoft sustainability activities in this area — particularly how we use our campus and facilities as a living lab — and future directions in computing […]
ACM Honors Innovators for Research, Education Advances
April 26th, 2012 / in awards / by Erwin GianchandaniCongratulations to Luis von Ahn, Hanan Samet, Hal Abelson, and Stephanie Forrest, who today were named recipients of four prestigious awards issued by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The awards, which honor the recipients for the significant contributions that they have made to enable computer science to solve real-world challenges, “reflect achievements in human-computer interaction, computer science education, geographical information science, and computer simulation for biological research.” According to ACM’s press release:
