The White House recently released a blog celebrating the one year anniversary of the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which was created to ensure continued U.S. leadership in high-performance computing (HPC). The blog details the important steps various Federal agencies have taken to create the foundation for a long-lasting and successful Federal initiative. A few examples are summarized below. See the White House blog to learn more. The Department of Energy (DOE) has invested in a suite of efforts to continue developing the research base for “Post-Moore’s Law era” computing. These activities include convenings, such as a workshop on neuromorphic computing and a science roundtable with representatives from national laboratories and […]

Contributions to this post were provided by Meredith M. Lee, Executive Director of the West Data Hub from UC Berkeley. President Obama released a proclamation announcing June 17 through June 23, 2016 as National Week of Making. He called upon all Americans to observe this week with programs, ceremonies, and activities that encourage a new generation of makers and manufacturers to share their talents, solutions, and skills. From the press release: During National Week of Making, we recommit to sparking the creative confidence of all Americans and to giving them the skills, mentors, and resources they need to harness their passion and tackle some of our planet’s greatest challenges… Over […]

Big Data has been a major theme of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) over the years. In addition to having a Convergence of Data and Computing Task Force, the CCC held two events for Big Data that coalesced the research community and the usage community in 2008. A number of CCC’s white papers have also focused on the topic, including Challenges and Opportunities with Big Data (2012), Opportunities and Challenges for Next Generation Computing (2015), Accelerating Science: A Computing Research Agenda (2016), and a series of white papers on Big Data and National Priorities (2010) that were instrumental in the creation of the Big Data Initiative.   The following is a White House Blog Post by Keith Marzullo, the Director of the Networking […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to announce a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and CCC co-sponsored public workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Social Good on June 7th, 2016 in Washington, DC. There has been a dramatically increasing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years. AI has been successfully applied to societal challenge problems and it has a great potential to provide tremendous social good in the future. In this workshop, we will discuss the successful deployments and the potential use of AI in various topics that are essential for social good, including but not limited to urban computing, health, […]

President Obama just announced his plan to implement a Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) that will take near-term actions and put in place a long-term strategy to enhance cybersecurity awareness, protect privacy, maintain public safety, and empower Americans to take better control of their digital security. The Administration also released the 2016 Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan, which was coordinated by the National Science and Technology Council. All of this follows in the momentum of the December passage of the Cybersecurity Act of 2015, which makes it easier for private companies to share cyber threat information with each other and the Government. CNAP is the capstone of more than seven years of determined […]

The White House just wrapped up their National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop (NSCI). The purpose of the workshop was to maximize the impact and inform long term planning for the NSCI, by creating new partnerships between academia and industry. Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, laid out the newly released nanotechnology-inspired Grand Challenge and asked the audience: What are the main actions that we need to develop in order to carry out the president’s five main actions laid out in the NSCI? The three themes from the workshop were: Convergence of data-intensive and numerically intensive computing Hardware technology for future HPC systems Improving productivity in […]