The AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have organized a new seminar series on Data Science, Big Data, and Internet of Things. The series is a monthly one-hour informational presentation that is open for all to attend in person or online. Michael Franklin from UC Berkeley will be the inaugural speaker tomorrow, Wednesday January 21, from 11:30am to 12:30pm EST. Franklin is the Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Computer Science and Chair of the Computer Science Division of the EECS Department at UC Berkeley. He is director of the Berkeley AMPLab, a 70+ person effort fusing scalable computing, machine learning, and human computation to make sense […]

In March 2012, the Obama Administration announced the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative.” The goal is to help solve some of the Nation’s most pressing challenges by improving our ability to extract knowledge from large and complex collections of digital data. The Administration encouraged multiple stakeholders including federal agencies, private industry, academia, state and local government, non-profits, and foundations, to develop and participate in Big Data innovation projects across the country. National Science Foundation is exploring the establishment of a national network of “Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs.” These Hubs will help to sustain new regional and grassroots partnerships around Big Data. Potential roles for Hubs include, but are […]

Things always change fast in computing. But the rate of change seems to be on a major uptick recently. In this post, I want to focus on an accelerating driver of that change, a looming crisis on the horizon, and a surprising link between the two that may have big promise. In the spirit of blog discourse, let’s lay this out in broad strokes: The Industrial Revolution of Data. Today’s world-wide web remains a staggering tribute to the typing abilities of the human race. But even with a growing global population, typists are not a scalable source of bit-production going forward. We are entering an era where the overwhelming majority of […]