The National Science Foundation announced a series of grants as a part of their new Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) program. The quick onset, mass devastation, and unpredictability of new strands and waves of contagion with COVID-19 taught us just how unprepared we were to face a global pandemic. Nearly $26 million in new awards will be used to support “high-risk, high-payoff convergent research that aims to identify, model, predict, track and mitigate the effects of future pandemics.” The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) wrote a series of white papers revolving around pandemic informatics. Published in November 2020, the first paper, Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience was part of […]

The National Science Foundation just named the winners of the Alan T. Waterman Award. The annual award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by the National Science Foundation. This was the first year that three scientists were recognized. The nation’s highest honor for early career researchers went to Daniel B. Larremore (Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Colorado Boulder), Lara A. Thompson (Associate Professor for the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of the District of Columbia), and Jessica E. Tierney (Associate Professor of Geosciences and Global Change and the University of Arizona).  The fifth Computer Scientist […]

Announced on December 9th, 2021, Moderna Inc., a biotechnology company and a key player in mRNA vaccines, is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to launch an Artificial Intelligence Academy. The academy aims to teach Moderna employees to identify and integrate AI and machine learning solutions into the company ecosystem and into the vaccine distribution pipeline.  CMU Professors across the university, including those from CMU’s Department of Statistics & Data Science and the Tepper School of Business, are collaborating to design and implement Moderna’s AI Academy. The academy will be made up of an immersive curriculum tailored to working professionals and focusing on a broad range of topics including data […]

Contributions to this post were provided by Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado Boulder), Madhav Marathe (University of Virginia), Melanie Moses (The University of New Mexico), William D. Gropp (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University).  We are pleased to announce the second addendum to the Computing Research Association (CRA) and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience quadrennial paper on variants of concern (VOC).    A year ago, few experts correctly predicted the toll the pandemic has now taken, nor the extraordinarily rapid development and administration of effective vaccines. Scientists have dramatically increased understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, treatment, and vaccines. Yet, where the pandemic will […]

Contributions to this post were provided by Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado Boulder), Madhav Marathe (University of Virginia), Melanie Moses (The University of New Mexico), William D Gropp (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University).  In Fall 2020, the Computing Research Association (CRA) released a series of planned white papers produced through its subcommittees (including the Computing Community Consortium (CCC)), exploring areas and issues around computing research with the potential to address national priorities over the next four years. Called Quadrennial Papers, the white papers attempt to portray a broad picture of computing research detailing potential research directions, challenges, and recommendations for policymakers and the computing research community.  […]

The following is an announcement from the National Science Foundation. The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has also been working in this space and recently published a 2020 Quadrennial Paper on Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience.  The Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO); Computer Information Science and Engineering (CISE); Engineering (ENG); Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE); and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) are jointly supporting a series of interdisciplinary workshops to engage research communities around the topic of Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention. This topic arises both from fundamental scientific questions and pressing societal needs.  Consequently, NSF is holding a series of virtual workshops that bring together interdisciplinary experts in the biological, engineering, computer, and social and […]