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.

National Science Foundation accepting proposals for new set of National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes

October 14th, 2021 / in AI, Announcements, NSF, research horizons / by Maddy Hunter

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is currently accepting proposals for their National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes program. By offering funding for AI Research Institutes the program seeks to strengthen the national AI research network and drive advancements in multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder research on large-scale, long-term research frontiers in AI.  Institutions of higher education (including community colleges) and non-profit, non-academic organizations are eligible to apply. Further details on eligibility and proposal requirements can be found on the NSF website. This round of institute proposals MUST focus on one of these high-priority themes:  Intelligent Agents for Next-Generation Cybersecurity  Neural and Cognitive Foundations of Artificial Intelligence  AI for Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry AI […]

Former CCC Council Member Shwetak Patel’s Work Recognized by Georgia Tech and Business Insider

October 11th, 2021 / in awards, CCC, Healthcare, Research News / by Maddy Hunter

Former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member and Professor of Computer Science &  Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, Shwetak Patel, was just anointed to the Georgia Tech College of Computing’s Hall of Fame and Business Insider’s list of “30 leaders under 40” who are changing healthcare. He is being recognized for a broad scope of work ranging from home energy monitoring (Zensi) to a mobile health company (Senosis Health). Along with being a professor and head of Ubicomp Lab, Patel holds the Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professorship; is the Director of health technologies at Google Health and FitBit Research; was the recipient of […]

Dear Colleague Letter: Critical Aspects of Sustainability (CAS): Innovative Solutions to Climate Change

October 7th, 2021 / in Announcements, CCC, NSF, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The following is joint Dear Colleague Letter from Assistant Directors at the National Science Foundation about innovative solutions to climate change. The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) released a whitepaper in August 2021 on Computing Research for the Climate Crisis, coauthored by Nadya Bliss (Arizona State University), Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado Boulder), and Claire Monteleoni (University of Colorado Boulder and a CCAI Advisor), to highlight the role of computing research in addressing climate change-induced challenges. See the full whitepaper here.  Dear Colleagues: This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) encourages the science and engineering communities to develop forward-thinking research that will demonstrably aid in the Nation’s goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions […]

NSF/SHF Announcement: new CISE core and PPoSS solicitations

October 5th, 2021 / in Announcements, NSF, pipeline / by Helen Wright

The following is a message from National Science Foundation (NSF) Software and Hardware Foundations (SHF) Program Directors Nina Amla, Anindya Banerjee, and Sol Greenspan. Dear Colleagues, Here are a few important program announcements from the Software and Hardware Foundations (SHF) program. The new CISE Core solicitation for Small and Medium Core projects has been released. This new solicitation (NSF 21-616) should be used for all new submissions to the SHF Core program. Please see the solicitation for more details here. A few important things to note in this new solicitation: Medium projects still have a deadline – this is now the window of December 1 – December 22, 2021 Small projects continue to have no […]

How Human Connection Drives the Scientific Process

October 4th, 2021 / in AI, conferences / by Khari Douglas

A somewhat surprising theme emerged during the “Scientific Vocation Revisited – Can Future Discoveries be Made by Artificial Intelligence?” session at the 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF). The session featured panelists Jeffrey A. Dean (Google Research), Harry Collins (Cardiff University) and Dafna Shahaf (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem); and, while they did discuss the potential impact of AI systems on the process of scientific discovery, they also kept reiterating the importance of human collaboration to making scientific advancements; particularly collaborations that occurs face-to-face. To open the session, moderator Volker Stollorz (Science Media Center Germany) asked Jeffrey Dean why private industry, such as Google and OpenAI, has been able to make […]

Serving as a DARPA PM: A very long lever arm

September 30th, 2021 / in CCC, policy, research horizons, Research News / by Helen Wright

The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Kathleen Fisher (Tufts University). Going to DARPA as a Program Manager (PM) is a great opportunity to make a difference by creating and managing a program much bigger in scope than what an individual faculty member can do at a university. Other PMs are talented and innovative thinkers who come from a broad range of backgrounds. Exposure to them and to the range of problems DARPA is reckoning with can be eye-opening. In the following paragraphs, I describe my experiences serving as a PM to convey a sense of what the job is like and why […]