Before a packed room of leading government officials, technologists, and journalists in downtown Washington this morning, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stressed the need for a new public-private partnership framework that enables innovation and workforce development in cybersecurity in order to adequately protect our nation’s interests from cyber attacks. The event — Cybersecurity Breakfast: Protecting Our Nation’s Assets — was sponsored in part by Washington Post Live, the live journalism arm of The Washington Post Co., and held at the newspaper company’s headquarters. Napolitano described the cybersecurity challenge in her opening remarks: The risks to national and economic security from cyberspace affect us all. So we begin by saying that […]
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.
DHS Secretary Talks Cybersecurity Innovation, Workforce
October 27th, 2011 / in policy, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani“7 Big Problems for 7 Billion People”
October 27th, 2011 / in policy, research horizons / by Erwin GianchandaniSometime on Halloween — yes, Halloween — the world’s population is projected to hit 7 billion. In anticipation of the numerical milestone, msnbc.com has published an article this week calling on leading experts in many different disciplines to weigh in on the challenges caused by the burgeoning world population, noting: How we respond now will determine whether we have a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future or one that is marked by inequalities, environmental decline and economic setbacks… Among the experts consulted is Google’s Vice President for Research and Special Initiatives Alfred Spector, who noted access to information and education as one of the problems facing society: In the developed world technology has transformed […]
“Translation Algorithms Used to Crack Centuries-Old Code”
October 26th, 2011 / in Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniAn interesting story making the rounds this week about researchers who have cracked a centuries-old secret message using statistical translation techniques. From Wired UK: Computer scientists from Sweden and the United States have applied modern-day, statistical translation techniques — the sort that are used in Google Translate — to decode a 250-year old secret message. The original document, nicknamed the Copiale Cipher, was written in the late 18th century and found in the East Berlin Academy after the Cold War. It’s since been kept in a private collection, and the 105-page, slightly yellowed tome has withheld its secrets ever since.
International S&E Visualization Challenge: Vote Before Friday
October 26th, 2011 / in Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniBack in February, we noted that the National Science Foundation and Science were partnering to run another International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge to celebrate the grand tradition of visualization — specifically for communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. Well, now the submissions are being put to a public vote — with winners to be published in Science and on Science Online. Among this year’s entries are a number of interactive video games that are advancing science and engineering (after the jump):
Pushing the “Humble Thermostat Into the Digital Age”
October 25th, 2011 / in research horizons, Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniAn interesting example in today’s New York Times about computing in sustainability: …The humble household thermostat. A boring wall fixture and an unlikely target for innovation? Not to [Tony] Fadell [a former Apple executive who led iPod and iPhone development from 2001 to 2009], his team of 100 computer hardware and software experts and the venture capitalists backing his Silicon Valley start-up, Nest Labs… Unlike other thermostat manufacturers, Nest Labs has a sizable team of specialists in the branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning, including Yoky Matsuoka, who came from Google and whose work won a MacArthur Foundation award… They see the conventional thermostat as a dumb […]
“When Disaster Strikes, New Tech Saves Lives”
October 24th, 2011 / in research horizons, Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniRobin Murphy, Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University (and a member of the CCC Council), and Mary Fernández, Executive Director of Distributed Computing Research at AT&T Research, are among several computing researchers featured on msnbc.com’s Future of Technology website this afternoon — as part of a series of wide-ranging videos about new technologies for emergency response. This last decade has seen one disaster after another hit every corner of the earth. And for each catastrophe, researchers and tech companies have deployed new tools to help search for victims, clear rubble, and aid survivors… For even faster search and rescue, [researchers] are working on a project […]
