This week, the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with five other U.S. government agencies, launched the Building the Prototype Open Knowledge Network (Proto-OKN). This $20 million initiative, will provide funding opportunities towards building a prototype version of an integrated data and knowledge infrastructure called an open knowledge network. An open knowledge network (OKN) is a publicly accessible, interconnected set of data repositories and associated knowledge graphs that will enable data-driven, artificial intelligence-based solutions for a broad set of societal challenges. In 2018, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) partnered with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) to  bring together the community and produce a 20-Year Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence. The report emphasized […]

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has been providing the medical field with information since 1836. Starting off as a small collection of books, the entity has grown into the world’s largest biomedical library, housing biomedical research and computational health data research. NLM supports two research programs, the Division of Extramural Programs (EP) and Intramural Research Program (IRP), that seek to catalyze advancements in the intersection of medicine and computer science. Specifically, these programs focus on biomedical informatics, data science, computational biology, and computational health. Through these programs NLM is making major investments in finding new ways that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used in the medical field.  A couple […]

Transformative advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology require large amounts of accurate, comprehensive data. There is a widening disparity between the types and amounts of datasets that organizations have access to. This not only hinders research, but widens the knowledge gap between entities. A commonly talked about solution is developing an open source knowledge structure that will be available to everyone and house a wide diversity of data to help address pressing issues such as economic growth, climate change, misinformation, pandemic prevention etc. Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) released an “Open Knowledge Network Roadmap Report” as a guide towards realizing this type of infrastructure. In February through […]

The following Great Innovative Idea is from Somali Chaterji, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University where she leads the Innovatory for Cells and Neural Machines. The Idea The idea behind my work is that there is strength in numbers — a distributed computing system that needs to run a computationally heavy application on scarce resources can do so by pooling together many weak to moderate devices in a federated setting and with security guarantees. The secret sauce in my work is to do the right level of approximation at the right point in space (which device) and at the right point in time […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently released the Algorithmic and Economic Perspectives on Fairness workshop report. It is the output of the CCC’s 1.5-day Economics and Fairness visioning workshop that took place in May 2019, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The workshop was organized by David C. Parkes (Harvard University, CCC Council) and Rakesh Vohra (University of Pennsylvania), with the support of the CCC’s Fairness and Accountability Task Force. It brought together computer science researchers with backgrounds in algorithmic decision-making, machine learning, and data science with policy makers, legal experts, economists, and business leaders to discuss methods to ensure economic fairness in a data-driven world. The report highlights the current trends and uses of algorithmic […]

Since its inception, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has hosted dozens of visioning workshops to envision, discuss, and catalyze the future of computing and its role in addressing societal needs. The Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium will draw these topics into a program designed to illuminate current and future trends in computing and the potential for computing to address national challenges. The two days are organized around four main themes: Intelligent Infrastructure for our Cities and Communities: Intelligent infrastructure is already transforming our nation’s cities and communities, but the technological revolution is just now beginning. This session will highlight some of the major advances taking place now, while at […]