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.


CSET Launches Tool for Exploration of Global AI Ecosystem

August 18th, 2022 / in AI, CCC / by Maddy Hunter

The Center Security and Emerging Technology just launched the Country Activity Tracker (CAT), an interactive tool that portrays countries’ level of tech competitiveness and collaboration. Many countries are in the race for Artificial Intelligence (AI), making massive investments in research and infrastructure to remain competitive in the tech sphere. The United States is no exception, with many policies and initiatives geared towards remaining the world leader in tech and AI. CAT collects data and presents metrics on AI research, patents and investment-related activities in AI across the globe. Researchers and policy makers can use CAT to examine other countries’ AI ecosystems, compare metrics and progress between countries’ and explore opportunities […]

NSF TIP Quarterly Report

August 16th, 2022 / in Announcements, NSF / by Maddy Hunter

The National Science Foundations (NSF) newly established Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) sent out their first quarterly newsletter. The newsletter is intended to update the community on existing investments, new initiatives/funding opportunities, events, job opportunities and more. TIP was established earlier this year to catalyze innovation and research in emerging technologies and encourage collaboration across disciplines and sectors to address pivotal challenges facing our country and maintain our country’s competitive edge in the technology sphere. A couple highlights from this weeks newsletter include: Last week President Biden signed into law the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which officially authorizes the TIP directorate. NSF Regional Innovation Engines, […]

CIFellow Spotlight: Alexis Block – Mobile Social- Physical Human-Robot Interaction and Embodiment

August 10th, 2022 / in CCC, CIFellows, CIFellows Spotlight, robotics / by Maddy Hunter

CIFellow, Alexis E. Block began her CIFellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles in September 2021. Block is mentored by Veronica J. Santos, Director of the UCLA Biomechatronics Laboratory, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the school’s Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Faculty Affairs. Prior to beginning her CIFellowship, she received her Dr. sc. from ETH Zurich where she was a part of a joint program called the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems. Block recently won the Otto Hahn Medal from Germany’s Max Planck Society for her dissertation work in human-robot interaction and the development of the “HuggieBot” which you can read about here. […]

CCC Council Member Katie Siek Releases Paper Discussing why Submitting “junk data” to Period Tracking Apps will not Aid in Protecting Reproductive Privacy

August 8th, 2022 / in Announcements, CCC, Privacy / by Catherine Gill

Last month, CCC council member Katie Siek, along with two PhD student collaborators, Zaidat Ibrahim and Alexander Hayes from Indiana University, released an article in the journal The Conversation about public concern regarding the use of period tracking apps.    Recently, many, including researchers and experts, have voiced apprehension over using period tracking applications since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, fearing that state and local governments may attempt to subpoena user’s period data from the owners of these apps. Some have even gone so far as to input false data into these period tracking apps, in the hopes that this “junk data” will confuse the applications’ algorithms, and cause […]

University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange Launch a Certificate Course on Quantum Computing and Communications

August 4th, 2022 / in Announcements / by Maddy Hunter

Quantum computing has exploded onto the scene and increasingly gained traction as the computing field moves toward the end of Moore’s Law. Viewed as a next step in improving the speed and efficiency of computing and tackling increasingly intricate problems, quantum computing uses quantum mechanical properties to express and manipulate information as quantum bits or qubits offering large potential speedups with processing. The capabilities and possibilities that quantum computing offers has garnered interest across many disciplines leading to a shortage in the quantum workforce. The University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the Chicago Quantum Exchange is working to close this gap with a new Certificate in Quantum […]

Snowbird CCC “Reboot!” Session

August 2nd, 2022 / in CCC, conferences, research horizons / by Maddy Hunter

Last month at CRA’s Conference at Snowbird the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) led an after-dinner brainstorming session, “Reboot!” to help members of the community engage in a visioning discussion. Led by Sujata Banerjee, Nadya Bliss, Liz Bradley, Bill Gropp, Dan Lopresti and Ann Schwartz, the session featured a series of discussions and idea sharing among the community pertaining to two topics chosen to inspire a lively discussion and to get people thinking outside of their areas – Neural Programming and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Customized to Human Norms. You can read the full description of each topic here. Participants were asked to find a partner and discuss a series of questions. […]