Professor Maja J. Matarić, a computer scientist at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, has been awarded the the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). Professor Mataric was recognized for her outstanding efforts in mentoring at all levels — K-12 students, students at USC, and young faculty colleagues. It is exciting to see mentoring acknowledged and rewarded at this level! Congratulations Maja! Read the White House announcement here.
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.
Computer Scientist Maja Mataric Receives Presidential Mentoring Award
February 10th, 2011 / in awards / by Ran Libeskind-HadasNAE Announces Class of 2011
February 8th, 2011 / in awards / by Ed LazowskaThe National Academy of Engineering has announced the newly-elected Members of the Class of 2011. The nine new Members of Section 5 (Computer Science & Engineering) are: Susan Dumais, Microsoft Research Daphne Koller, Stanford University Hank Levy, University of Washington Jitendra Malik, UC Berkeley Nick McKeown, Stanford University Don Norman, Northwestern University Ari Requischa, University of Southern California Fred Schneider, Cornell University Mihalis Yannakakis, Columbia University In addition, Jonathan Rose (University of Toronto) was elected as a Foreign Associate. Quoting from the NAE: “Members are elected to NAE by their peers (current NAE members). Election to membership is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. Members have distinguished […]
CRA Launches Effort to Understand Opinions About Recent PostDoc Surge
February 2nd, 2011 / in pipeline, policy / by Erwin GianchandaniThe Computing Research Association — the umbrella organization of the CCC — today launched an effort to engage the computing research community in a conversation about PostDocs, at a time when a growing number of recent PhDs in computer science and allied fields are pursuing postdoctoral fellowships. According to data from CRA’s annual Taulbee Survey, the numbers of new PostDocs soared from 60 in 1998 to 159 in 2009 (three-year rolling averages), while the numbers of new tenure-track faculty positions declined sharply, from 224 in 2004 to 151 in 2009 (again, three-year rolling averages). Moreover, the numbers of recent PhDs who are hired into industry immediately out of graduate school […]
State of the Union
January 26th, 2011 / in Uncategorized / by Ed Lazowska“Innovation” and “Internet” are on the rise. More broadly, the President echoes recommendations of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology regarding research investments in Networking and Information Technology, Energy, and K-12 STEM education.
“Outrageous Ideas” at CIDR: Seeking to Stimulate Innovative Research Directions
January 18th, 2011 / in research horizons / by Erwin GianchandaniResearchers frequently lament the predictable framework of published papers. The constraints of a rigorous review process discriminate against unconventional work and ideas that are innovative but not yet fully worked out. As part of its mission to identify major new research opportunities, the CCC is sponsoring a series of “wacky ideas” sessions at several conferences. The goal of these sessions is to break free of the shackles of the normal reviewing process while still requiring a paper. In this way, the “wacky idea” sessions differ from a “midnight session” of informal talks, in that the paper allows the ideas presented to be more broadly accessible. The first of these sessions […]
Watson Outpaces Jeopardy Wizards in Sneak Preview
January 13th, 2011 / in research horizons / by Erwin Gianchandani“What is Jericho?” Those were the first words from “Watson,” the IBM supercomputer system that’s taking on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — the two winningest players in “Jeopardy!” history — this week. Minutes later, with three categories of questions completed as part of this morning’s dry run, Watson was winning: the supercomputer had $4,400; Jennings trailed with $3,400; and Rutter was third with $1,200. If those first few minutes are any indication of what the actual game shows (which will be taped beginning tomorrow) are going to be like, we could be in for a truly fascinating man v. man v. machine matchup when the shows hit the airwaves […]
