(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting broad public input about “the long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of Federally-funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Some background: OSTP has established two interagency policy groups under the National Science and Technology Council — the Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications and the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data — to identify the specific objectives and public interests that need to be addressed by any policies in these two areas. The groups will take […]
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.
Agencies Seek Input on Public Access to Scientific Data
November 8th, 2011 / in policy / by Erwin GianchandaniChallenges & Visions Track a Centerpiece of SSRR 2011
November 8th, 2011 / in research horizons, workshop reports / by Erwin GianchandaniThe Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) latest Challenges & Visions track was held Nov. 3 at the 9th Annual IEEE Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR) in Kyoto, Japan. The “outrageous visions for computing in rescue robotics” track was a success, expanding the awareness of computing for a less traditionally computational group — roboticists. (Previous tracks have been at conferences on spatial computing, databases, and operating systems.) SSRR is a single-track conference sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society that attracts about 80 researchers and students from around the world in multiple disciplines: computer science, engineering, physics, and even medicine. The symposium focuses on stimulating meaningful conversations and demonstrations to […]
First-Ever Leadership in Science Policy Institute Kicks Off
November 7th, 2011 / in CCC, policy / by Erwin GianchandaniMoments ago in downtown Washington, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) convened its inaugural Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), a daylong workshop intended to educate a small cadre of computing researchers about U.S. science policy. Throughout the day, the 35 participants — selected through an open nomination process earlier this year — will be attending a series of presentations and discussions with science policy experts, current and former Hill staff, and relevant agency and Administration officials about mechanics of the legislative process, interacting with agencies, advisory committees, and so on. Among the speakers and topics planned:
“The U.S. Star in Humanoid Robotics”
November 6th, 2011 / in Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniIn today’s Washington Post Magazine, Dennis Hong, director of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech and “a leader in the movement to perfect the humanoid robot,” gets profiled: In the movies, robots are everywhere, boxing and shooting and running and flying and generally outdoing humans at every turn. In reality, the humanoid robot has a long way to go. Simply powering an autonomous robot is a nightmare; current battery technology allows a robot maybe 20 minutes of life, and (as one of Hong’s students told me) if you poke the power cell with a pencil, it will explode. Visual sensors are costly and erratic. The simple human act of walking […]
EarthCube: A Community Experiment
November 5th, 2011 / in big science, policy, research horizons, workshop reports / by Erwin GianchandaniThe following is a special contribution to this blog by Amy Apon, Chair of the Computer Science Division at Clemson University’s School of Computing. Apon attended the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) EarthCube Charette this week, and she recounts her experiences below. Earlier this week, the EarthCube community met at the first-ever EarthCube Charette in Washington, DC. EarthCube is a community process, with the goal of transforming the conduct of research by supporting the development of cyberinfrastructure that integrates data and information for knowledge management across the geosciences. EarthCube is supported jointly by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) and the Directorate for Geosciences (GEO). Already the EarthCube social networking website […]
GEC12: “Jumpstarting Application Development” with US Ignite
November 4th, 2011 / in research horizons / by Erwin Gianchandani(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) Nearly 300 researchers, entrepreneurs, infrastructure providers, city managers, and others from around the country are gathered in Kansas City, MO, this week for the GENI Engineering Conference (GEC) — the twelfth in a series of conferences since the GENI Project was first funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2007 to take a clean-slate approach and create a virtual laboratory for exploring future internets “at scale.” And for the first time, a key focus of the GEC is US Ignite, a new initiative by NSF and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to spark the development of gigabit applications and services; […]
