Late last month, DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O) issued a solicitation calling for research proposals that “investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.” Among the focus areas (emphasis added): Understand: Change is pervasive and accelerating throughout all aspects of human, world and military affairs, bringing with it both opportunities and threats. Examples of threats include emerging regional peer rivals, rogue and failed nation-states, insurgent groups, militant/radicalized populations, transnational terrorist organizations and criminal enterprises, and new classes of cyber-human-physical threats. Military success requires understanding threat capabilities, intentions, and activities as well as local human, social, cultural, and behavioral factors. I2O seeks to enable this understanding through […]
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 Soliciting Innovative Research Proposals
June 21st, 2011 / in big science, research horizons, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniUsing Technology to Reinvent Math Education
June 20th, 2011 / in Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniWhat subject do high school students dislike the most? My bet is math — it’s confusing, abstract, and requires meticulous attention to detail. But at it’s heart, math is an exciting tool to grapple with otherwise unsolvable problems and ideas. The first time someone explained integrals to me, I couldn’t help but be amazed. Bret Victor is a self-described Technology Hobo (seriously, that’s what he calls himself) who wants to change the way we interact with math. His project, Kill Math, seeks to change the way students see math by incorporating new technology to transform the abstract, like equations, into corporeal, intuitive and interactive visualizations. Bret sees technology as the […]
ITA Software’s Co-Founder Discusses Travel Technology
June 18th, 2011 / in big science, conference reports, research horizons / by Erwin GianchandaniRemember the electronic reservation system that you used to book your summer vacation this year? Well, in all likelihood, it was powered by information technology from ITA Software — the 450-person, Cambridge, MA-based company that was recently bought by Google for $700 million. ITA Software’s innovative travel tool — QPX — powers some of the world’s leading travel websites, including those of Orbitz and Travelocity, as well as United, American, Southwest, and Alaska Airlines. At the recent “Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything” symposium commemorating MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration, ITA Software’s co-founder and President & CEO Jeremy Wertheimer described the history of travel technology, delving into the staggering complexity of finding and […]
Barbara Liskov receives an honorary degree from Northwestern …
June 18th, 2011 / in Uncategorized / by Ed Lazowska… and a shout-out early in Stephen Colbert’s hilarious commencement address. Congratulations Barbara! Watch Colbert’s remarks here.
Call for Papers: Collective Intelligence 2012
June 17th, 2011 / in research horizons / by Erwin GianchandaniTom Malone and Luis von Ahn — with funding from the NSF’s CISE Directorate — are organizing an interdisciplinary conference that seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of fields relevant to understanding and designing collective intelligence of many types. This first-ever conference — Collective Intelligence 2012 — will take place in Cambridge, MA, on April 18-20, 2012, and comprise invited talks, oral paper presentations, and poster sessions. From the official call for papers:
Want to Earn $50K?
June 16th, 2011 / in big science, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniA couple of very interesting prize-based competitions have been announced in the past week. The first — with Vint Cerf, U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, and former Congressman Tom Davis among the judges — calls for innovative ways for IT to improve government: The Merit Awards is a new innovation contest that challenges the world to come forth with ideas on how to use IT to improve the quality of government. Focused on incenting people to get involved in their government, the award offers a $50,000 prize for smart, new thinking. But the program is not only open to Americans. Innovation knows no borders — nor does it need a […]
