The following is a special contribution to this blog from Klara Nahrstedt and Roy Campbell, faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Mohamed Gouda, program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The trio recently organized and ran a NSF-sponsored workshop on Security for Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is becoming an integral part of our computing and communication ecosystem, offering great opportunity for cost-effective large-scale processing and storage capabilities. Major service providers including Google, HP, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are offering cloud computing services not only to corporations but also to general users and at affordable prices. As we step closer to utility computing and “cloud services for everybody,” a major question is, “How […]
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.
CISE Researchers Discuss “Security for Cloud Computing”
April 20th, 2012 / in research horizons, workshop reports / by Erwin GianchandaniACM Names 2012-13 Athena Lecturer
April 19th, 2012 / in awards / by Erwin GianchandaniThe Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W) yesterday named MIT’s Nancy Lynch its 2012-13 Athena Lecturer, recognizing Lynch for her advances in distributed systems enabling dependable Internet and wireless network applications. The Athena Lecturer award, which comes with a $10,000 honorarium provided by Google, “celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science.” According to the press release: “Lynch’s work has influenced both theoreticians and practitioners,” said Mary Jane Irwin, who heads the ACM-W Athena Lecturer award committee. “Her ability to formulate many of the core problems of the field in clear and precise ways has provided a foundation that allows computer system designers to find ways […]
DARPA Robotics Challenge: Q&A With the Program Manager
April 19th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, Research News, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniLast week, we reported on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge, which will launch this October with a $2 million prize — plus up to $32 million in related R&D work — “to whomever can help push the state-of-the-art in robotics beyond today’s capabilities in support of the [Department of Defense’s’ disaster recovery mission.” Now our colleagues at IEEE’s Spectrum have published a Q&A with the DARPA program manager leading this challenge, Gill Pratt: Q: DARPA funds lots of robotics programs. What’s the goal and focus of this new effort? [more following the link]
Bringing Computer Science and Journalism Together
April 18th, 2012 / in research horizons, Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniComputer scientist — and 2009 Computing Innovation Fellow (CIFellow) — Nick Diakopoulos recently published a white paper about the similarities between journalism and computer science that’s attracted quite a bit of buzz. In an article in Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab earlier this month: What if journalism were invented today? How would a computer scientist go about building it, improving it, iterating it? He might start by mapping out some fundamental questions: What are the project’s values and goals? What consumer needs would it satisfy? How much should be automated, how much human-powered? How could it be designed to be as efficient as possible [more after the jump]?
Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Finals Later This Month
April 17th, 2012 / in Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniLater this month, the best and brightest cyber defense students from 10 universities throughout the country will descend on San Antonio, TX, for the 8th annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) sponsored by Deloitte. The three-day final, which kicks off on April 20th, challenges participants on the “operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing ‘commercial’ network infrastructure”: You have just been hired as the network and security administrators at a small company and will be taking administrative control of all information systems. You know very little about the network, what security level has been maintained, or what software has been installed. You have a limited time frame to familiarize yourself with the […]
Multi-Agency Earth System Models (EaSM) Proposals Due
April 16th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniThe National Science Foundation (NSF), through its cross-cutting Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) initiative and together with the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Energy (DoE), is seeking proposals for its Earth Systems Modeling (EaSM) program. The goal of EaSM is to foster interdisciplinary efforts aimed at the “development and application of next-generation Earth System Models” that enable a better understanding of climate change, how it is likely to affect the world, and how we can plan for its consequences. Full proposals are due by May 11, 2012. According to the solicitation: This interdisciplinary scientific challenge calls for the development and application of next-generation Earth System Models that include coupled and interactive […]
