We’re still in the midst of reviewing applications for the 2011-12 Computing Innovation Fellows Project, but I thought I would take a moment today to begin highlighting the stories of our current and former CIFellows. The CIFellows Project was always intended to provide recent Ph.D.s in computer science (and allied fields) with short-term postdoctoral positions in academia and industry, to keep them in research and teaching despite the economic downturn. In the past two years, we’ve heard great things about the CIFellows, the CIFellow-mentor relationships, the research results borne out of the program, and, most importantly, the outcomes for many of the CIFellows in terms of the permanent opportunities that […]

As thousands of firefighters battle huge wildfires in the Southwestern U.S this week, some are using a new tool in their kit: a computerized model that calculates the fire risk in real time — drawing on data about the fire’s behavior, danger, moisture over the past several decades, and terrain topology — to swiftly produce a priority map for where firefighters are most needed. Severe fire seasons of the past decade in the western United States have spurred many government agencies to manage lands to reduce fire intensity and severity to ultimately protect human life and property.   However, seven decades of fire exclusion policies have resulted in the dense forest […]