The following is a guest blog post from Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and Founding Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (2007-2013).  The 2016 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job projections have recently been released, covering the decade 2014-2024. As in all recent BLS projections, computing occupations dominate STEM: computing occupations are projected to account for 73% of all newly-created STEM jobs during the decade (488,500 jobs), and 55% of all available STEM jobs, whether newly-created or available due to retirements (1,083,800 jobs over the decade). Of course, there are asterisks associated with any projection. And there are double asterisks associated […]

National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for the Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose has issued the following letter to the community to announce the appointment of Ken Calvert as NSF CISE Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Division Director.  Dear Colleagues, I’m very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Kenneth (Ken) Calvert to the position of Division Director for the CISE Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS), effective May 2016. Ken has already begun his service at NSF as an Expert this month. Ken will be joining NSF from the University of Kentucky, where he is Professor of Computer Science. He has served as Chair of […]

The next WATCH talk, called The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work is Thursday, March 24, 2016 from Noon-1pm EDT. The presenter will be Phillip Rogaway, professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis. Rogaway studied cryptography at MIT (1991), then worked as a security architect for IBM before joining the faculty at the University of California, Davis in 1994. Co-inventor of “practice-oriented provable security,” Rogaway’s work seeks to meld cryptographic theory and cryptographic practice in a mutually beneficial way. Abstract: Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension. […]

National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for the Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose and NSF Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources (EHR) Joan Ferrini-Mundy have issued the following letter to the community to draw attention to existing NSF funding opportunities in Fiscal Year 2016 that are available to support the CS for All initiative. March 10, 2016 Dear Colleagues: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to be part of the Computer Science for All (CS for All) initiative announced by the Administration on January 30, 2016. As the lead Federal agency for building the research knowledge base for CS education, NSF plans to make available $120 million over […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is pleased to announce a distinguished lecture on Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 2:00pm EST by Dr. Moshe Y. Vardi titled The Automated-Reasoning Revolution: From Theory to Practice and Back. Dr. Vardi is also a confirmed speaker at the Community Community Consortium‘s (CCC’s) Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium in May 2016. Moshe Y. Vardi is the George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering and Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University. He is the recipient of three IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards, the ACM SIGACT Gödel Prize, the ACM Kanellakis Award, the ACM SIGMOD Codd Award, the Blaise Pascal […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Sankar Basu, National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Director for Computing and Communication Foundations.  NSF recently announced a new program solicitation, Energy-Efficient Computing: from Devices to Architectures (E2CDA), which is a partnership with among NSF’s Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate and the Engineering (ENG) Directorate with the Semiconductor Research Corporation. Through this joint solicitation, NSF and SRC aim to support game-changing research that can set the stage for the next paradigm of computing – from mobile devices to data centers – by minimizing the energy impact of future computing systems. The program synopsis reads as follows: There is a […]