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 […]

Modern communication devices are becoming an increasingly vital part of society and everyday life. These technologies provide users with the ability to conveniently and instantaneously perform vital services and tasks. To meet this growing area of development, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a new investment of over $37 million to catalyze research pertaining to the development of intelligent, resilient, and reliable next generation — or NextG — networks. The public-private investment, Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation Systems (RINGS) seeks to increase the competitiveness of the U.S. NextG networking and computing technologies to ensure the security and resilience of our systems. Partnered with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense […]

The NSF Convergence Accelerator has released a new funding opportunity for three new research tracks: Enhancing Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (Track H), Sustainable Materials for Global Challenges (Track I), and Food & Nutrition Security (Track J).  Track H will focus on improving the quality of life and access to employment and opportunities for persons with disabilities (PWD) and will convene researchers in the fields of social sciences, behavioral sciences, engineering, computer science, ethics, and economics. In 2015, the CCC put on a workshop “Prompting  Strategic Research on Inclusive Access to Rich Online Content and Services” to address challenges and opportunities surrounding access to online content and services, including rich, […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced $17.7 million in funding for 12 Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS) projects, which will bring together the statistics, mathematics and theoretical computer science communities to develop the foundations of data science. Technological advances and unprecedented access to computing infrastructure have resulted in an explosion of data from different sources. The availability of these data — their volume and variety, and the speed at which they are collected — is transforming research in all fields of science and engineering. TRIPODS awards will enable data-driven discovery through major investments in state-of-the-art mathematical and statistical tools, better data mining and machine learning approaches, […]

Ed Lazowska and Peter Lee on November 4 proposed a brainstorming exercise to identify about a dozen game-changing advances in computing research over the past 20 years. A large number of people responded, as summarized in a November 30 post. The CCC has organized a really important symposium on March 25 that has short talks on 12 such advances. Check out http://www.cra.org/ccc/locsymposium.php for details. I think that this symposium is really important because with a new administration in Washington, we have people who appreciate the importance of fundamental research. If we increase the size of the funding pie, all of us will benefit. The best way to increase the size […]

A very important message to the Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) is now on the CRA Government Affairs Blog. We are asking our members to contact their representatives in Congress now to request support for science funding in the stimulus bill. Quoting: Today we’re asking members of our Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) — and anyone else with an interest in seeing fundamental research and research infrastructure budgets reflect their critical importance to the long-term health of U.S. economy and quality of life — to contact their representatives in Congress and urge their support for science funding in the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill now making its way through Congress… […]