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.

DARPA CLIQR Quest Challenge Underway

March 3rd, 2012 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is conducting a Cash for Locating and Identifying Quick Response codes (CLIQR) Quest Challenge, “a prize-based challenge that seeks to advance the understanding of social media and the Internet, and explore the role the Internet and social networking [play] in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.” The challenge began on Feb. 23rd and runs until 12pm EST on Thursday, March 8th. A cash prize of up to $40,000 will be awarded to the first contest entrant to find and submit all of the QR codes. According to the challenge website:

Susan Graham Receives CRA’s Distinguished Service Award

March 2nd, 2012 / in awards / by Erwin Gianchandani

Congratulations to Susan Graham, who was selected earlier this week by the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Board of Directors as its 2012 Distinguished Service Award recipient. CRA makes the award, usually annually, to a person who has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community, in areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications or conferences, and/or leadership. (Susan is currently the Vice Chair of the CCC Council.) Susan was selected “in recognition of the extraordinary contributions that she has made over more than three decades of dedicated and selfless service and leadership.” Here’s the full award description (following the link):

CISE, MPS Seeking to Advance Quantum Information Science

March 2nd, 2012 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) have issued a joint solicitation for a CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science. The program seeks to “promote research in the area of Quantum Information Science (QIS) by providing resources [that] allow QIS researchers and researchers from the CISE or MPS disciplines to actively engage in joint research efforts.” A specific goal is to encourage long-term visits by faculty to a host institution. From the solicitation (following the link):

Barbara Liskov Named to Inventors Hall of Fame

March 1st, 2012 / in awards / by Erwin Gianchandani

Turing Award-winner Barbara Liskov has been named as one of the 2012 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which has been honoring individuals who have “conceived, patented, and advanced the great technological achievements since the birth of our nation.” The citation reads: Barbara Liskov, for programming languages and systems design: MIT Institute Professor Liskov is considered an innovator in the design of computer programming languages, largely for helping to make computer programs more reliable, secure, and easy to use. Her innovations can be found within almost all modern programming languages. Liskov is part of an elite class that includes several folks from computing. Among them (after the jump):

Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud

March 1st, 2012 / in research horizons, workshop reports / by Erwin Gianchandani

The following is a special contribution to this Blog by Amr El Abbadi, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Christos Faloutsos, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and Mohamed Mokbel, Associate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota.  The trio recently organized a National Science Foundation-funded workshop on Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud. The NSF workshop on Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud was held in Arlington, VA, on February 23-24. With more than 35 participants from academia, industry, and government, the workshop’s goal was to set the future research directions and challenges that face the […]

“The Patient of the Future”

February 29th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

We’ve blogged about this topic before, but there’s another terrific article about Internet pioneer and California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2) founding director Larry Smarr in the March/April 2012 issue of MIT’s Technology Review: Back in 2000, when Larry Smarr left his job as head of a celebrated supercomputer center in Illinois to start a new institute at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of California, Irvine, he rarely paid attention to his bathroom scale. He regularly drank Coke, added sugar to his coffee, and enjoyed Big Mac Combo Meals with his kids at McDonald’s. Exercise consisted of an occasional hike or a ride on a stationary bike. “In Illinois […]