The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recently created a working group on physical resilience. The working group is made up of cyber-security experts from across academia, government and industry with the intent to identify research areas and possible solutions, as well as, advance current approaches to bolstering cyber-physical resilience.  Among the new working group members is former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member Kevin Fu. Kevin Fu is a Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Fu served on the CCC Council from 2015-2019. During his time at the CCC, Kevin was […]

The Biden-Harris Administration is continuing their recent efforts to advance the research, development, and deployment of responsible AI. With the rise of AI and its increasing capabilities these initiatives are meant to protect American citizens’ rights and safety. Last week the CCC blog highlighted responsible AI efforts from the White House. Yesterday the White House announced three more initiatives summarized below. An update to the National AI Research and Development Strategic Plan. This plan builds on plans issued in 2016 and 2019, and sets out key priorities and research goals to guide federal investments in AI research and development (R&D). It will focus federal investments in R&D to promote responsible […]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has made huge strides in the past decade. A large part of this progress can be attributed to large quantities of accessible datasets and computing resources. Recently many federal agencies have started to invest in leveraging commercial cloud computing resources to advance AI/ML research and development (R&D). The White House’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and AI Subcommittee just released a report on Lessons Learned from Federal Use of Cloud Computing to Support AI Research and Development summarizing lessons learned from Federal agencies on the use of cloud computing to further AI R&D. The report came about from another Federal Government’s Select Committee […]

Contributions to this post were provided by the Computing Research Association’s Senior Policy Analyst Brian Mosley. Yesterday, President Biden announced 30 of America’s most distinguished leaders in science and technology as members of his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST is the premier science advisory committee within the Executive Office of the President and is the sole body of advisors charged with making science, technology, and innovation policy recommendations to the President and the White House. Established by Executive Order, it is an independent Federal Advisory Committee composed of distinguished individuals from industry, academia, and non-profit organizations with a range of perspectives and scientific expertises.   The […]

The following is a guest blog post by the Computing Research Association (CRA) Government Affairs Director, Peter Harsha. It was originally posted on CRA’s Computing Research Policy Blog.  President-elect Joe Biden announced today he intends to nominate Dr. Eric Lander, biologist and former leader of the Human Genome Project, to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and serve as the Presidential Science Advisor. Biden also announced that he was designating the Presidential Science Advisor a cabinet level position for the first time in history, illustrating the importance the new administration will place on the guidance of science in policymaking. Also named today as Deputy Director of OSTP is Dr. Alondra Nelson, who is […]

Past Computing Community Consortium Council member Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has been appointed to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council provides advice to the White House on topics critical to U.S. security and the economy, including policy recommendations on the future of work, American leadership in science and technology, and the support of U.S. research and development. “I’m grateful to be able to add my perspective as a computer scientist to this group at a time when so many issues involving AI and other aspects of computing raise important scientific and policy questions for […]