CIFellow, Alexis E. Block began her CIFellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles in September 2021. Block is mentored by Veronica J. Santos, Director of the UCLA Biomechatronics Laboratory, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the school’s Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Faculty Affairs. Prior to beginning her CIFellowship, she received her Dr. sc. from ETH Zurich where she was a part of a joint program called the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems. Block recently won the Otto Hahn Medal from Germany’s Max Planck Society for her dissertation work in human-robot interaction and the development of the “HuggieBot” which you can read about here. […]

Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member, Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico and External Faculty Member at the Santa Fe Institute, Melanie E. Moses, recently published an article in Nautilus titled, “How to Fix the Vaccine Rollout: A computational biologist charts a fair and efficient course for vaccine distribution.” A year after the onset of COVID-19, the development and approval of vaccines provides hope that the pandemic nightmare is nearing an end. With countries facing second or third waves and, in many places, cases hitting an all time high, vaccinating our most vulnerable populations as quickly as possible is essential. Unfortunately, until now, the vaccine rollout […]

The following is a Dear Colleague Letter from National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France A. Córdova. It is critically important for the computing research community to respond to this opportunity insofar as possible and to hopefully help inform and educate about the science of virus transmission. Dear Colleague,  In light of the emergence and spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States and abroad, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is accepting proposals to conduct non-medical, non-clinical-care research that can be used immediately to explore how to model and understand the spread of COVID-19, to inform and educate about the science of virus transmission and prevention, and to […]