The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), together with the recently created Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (COECI), launched the USPTO Innovation Challenge last week, offering $50,000 in prizes for specialized algorithms that can “help bring the 7 million patents presently in the patent archive into the digital age.” In particular, the USPTO Innovation Challenge is seeking new algorithms to automatically identify and locate specific elements within patent documents, as part of a broader effort to improve the patent examination process. According to Robynn Sturm Steffen, a Senior Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP): Approximately half-a-million U.S. patents are filed by inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses […]

In the December 2011 Communications of the ACM, CCC Council member and MIT Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Frans Kaashoek discusses multicore computing, security, and OS design: Kaashoek has … conducted wide-ranging research in computer systems, including operating system design, software-based network routing, and distributed hash tables, which revolutionized the storage and retrieval of data in decentralized information systems. He also helped found two startups: Sightpath, a video broadcast software provider that was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2000, and Mazu Networks, which was acquired by Riverbed Technology in 2009. Kaashoek was named an ACM fellow in 2004 and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006. […]