A new episode of the Catalyzing Computing podcast is now available. In this episode Khari Douglas sits down with Peter Harsha, the Director of Government affairs for the Computing Research Association (CRA), to discuss the federal funding landscape and it’s impact on science research. He also highlights the CCC’s Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI) and walks through the National Research Council’s (part of the National Academies) Tire Tracks Chart of the IT ecosystem. Stream in the embedded player below or find the podcast on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play | Youtube. If you listen to the podcast, please take a moment to complete this listener survey – this survey will help us learn more about […]

The National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience, which held their inaugural meeting last April, met again last week in Washington, DC. At the open session, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Julie Brill spoke about Security, Privacy, and the Internet of Things. The mission of the FTC is to “prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers; to enhance informed consumer choice and public understanding of the competitive process; and to accomplish this without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.” In terms of privacy and data security, Commissioner Brill stated that, at this point in time, the FTC has already handled 40 privacy cases and 60 security cases, including the Fandango and Credit Karma cases in […]

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced the creation of the new Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research, convergence research is the integration of research in two or more of the following disciplines: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biomedicine, biology, astronomy, earth sciences, engineering, and computational science. The inaugural prize will be awarded for convergence research that benefits human health. The prize is made possible through a generous gift from Raymond and Beverly Sackler and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation, and will be presented annually beginning this year with an inaugural $400,000 award. Two-thirds of the prize money will be awarded to the selected researcher(s), and the remaining third will […]

Data sets are growing rapidly. Yahoo, Google, and Amazon, work with data sets that consist of billions of items. The size and scale of data, which can be overwhelming today, will only increase as the Internet of Things matures. Data sets are also increasingly complex.  It is becoming more important to increase the pool of qualified scientists and engineers who can find the value from the large amount of big data. The National Academies released a report on training students to extract value from big data based on a Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics (CATS) workshop that occurred in April 2014. From the report: Training students to be capable in exploiting big data requires experience […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) requested that the National Research Council (NRC) carry out a study examining anticipated priorities for advanced computing infrastructure in support of NSF-sponsored science and engineering research. The study encompasses advanced computing infrastructure activities and programs throughout NSF, including but not limited to, those of its Division on Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI). In response to this request, the NRC established the Committee on Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure. The committee has begun its work by gathering and reviewing relevant materials, receiving testimony and comments from individuals, and identifying additional experts to receive testimony from along with additional information. Information is still being collected, but some important […]