Mary Lou Maher, CRA’s Director of Research Community Initiatives and leader of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), will be concluding her tenure at CRA at the end of August. We thank Mary Lou for her leadership and contributions to the computing research community during her time at CRA. As the Director of CCC, Mary Lou provided strategic, administrative, and programmatic leadership. During her time in the role, CCC organized more than 20 community events, including two symposia and five visioning workshops, with two additional workshops currently in development. She also oversaw the publication of six visioning workshop reports, three Best Practices for Interdisciplinary Computing Research documents, and eight Quadrennial Papers. […]

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently released a memorandum to federal agencies to offer guidance on implementing the recent executive order on “Restoring Gold Standard Science”. The memo, authored by OSTP Director Michael Kratsios, offered nine key tenets for conducting scientific research, one of which was focused on “Collaborative and Interdisciplinary” research. Interdisciplinary research, the memo says, is “vital for generating new knowledge, as it fosters synergy, leverages complementary skills, and promotes the synthesis of ideas to raise new questions and tackle multifaceted problems that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries.” The memo directed agencies to prioritize this type of interdisciplinary research, through improved collaboration between agencies […]

  Interdisciplinary research in computing is vital for addressing complex societal challenges. However, despite its importance, fostering successful interdisciplinary collaborations remains a significant challenge. The Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) gathered insights from 40 experts across academia, industry, and government through a series of roundtable discussions to identify challenges in interdisciplinary research. The results of these discussions are being published in a series of best practices documents. The first, published in July 2024, recommended best practices for researchers collaborating on interdisciplinary teams. This second paper of the series focuses on how these collaborations can be better supported by funders, including government agencies, industry, philanthropic donors, […]

  The fields of Cybersecurity and Public Health possess many similar attributes. For one, both fields prioritize prevention over reaction in the case of cyber attacks or outbreaks, and both quickly begin focusing on tracking and containment when preventative measures fail. Experts in both fields strive to build resilient systems to mitigate vulnerabilities and rely heavily on communication and public awareness to mitigate cyber and health risks, especially during outbreaks or hacks.   Cybersecurity today, much like Public Health in the 19th and early 20th centuries, faces challenges in measuring and improving outcomes at a population level, and lacks a comprehensive framework to measure its effectiveness at a large scale. […]

  In the near future, robots may assist humans in a near-endless variety of applications — as teaching assistants in schools, in dangerous search and rescue efforts in disaster situations, and in ocean cleanup efforts, to name a few possibilities. In some areas, robots are already supporting humans in carrying out daily activities, such as robots assisting warehouse workers with retrieving and packaging products. While robotics research offers tremendous potential to improve our quality of life, a key challenge lies in developing a skilled workforce to drive these innovations.   CCC recently led the development of a CRA Quadrennial Paper on this topic, titled Imperative for Education the Next Generation […]

In mid-January, OpenAI released an Economic Blueprint outlining policy proposals to enable American leadership in AI development. Along with guidance on testing frontier models for national security risks and suggestions on how the U.S. can take the lead in establishing international standards for AI regulation, the blueprint also focused on funding. The blueprint points to “an estimated $175 billion sitting in global funds awaiting investment in AI projects,” and notes that China is competing strongly for this funding as well.  Shortly after the OpenAI blueprint was released, President Trump announced the Stargate Project, which aims to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. It is clear […]