Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


Archive for January, 2012

 

DARPA Announces Proposers Day for New PERFECT Program

January 31st, 2012 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) has announced a Proposers Day for a new program — Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) — to introduce the research community to the PERFECT vision and goals, and to facilitate interaction and coordination among prospective PIs and technology developers. The Proposers Day will take place on February 15, 2012, in Arlington, VA. The PERFECT program seeks to “provide the technologies and techniques to overcome the power efficiency barriers that currently constrain embedded computing systems capabilities and limit the potential of future embedded systems.” Importantly, a key component of this is resiliency, an area for which a recent CCC visioning […]

“Go Viral to Improve Health”

January 30th, 2012 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Academy of Engineering (NAE) have partnered to launch the “Go Viral to Improve Health” Health Data Collegiate Challenge, designed to spur undergraduate and graduate students to create health-related apps. The contest is aimed at students pursuing degrees in health, engineering, and computer science. And the prize for the winning team is $10,000. According to the Challenge website (after the jump):

“The Mathematics of Taste”

January 28th, 2012 / in Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

Ever wondered how companies determine the best flavors and scents for their packaged food, drinks, cleaning products, toiletries, and so many more items? Well, turns out it’s a multibillion-dollar business, with millions of dollars spent every year on R&D, including consumer testing. But if colleagues at MIT have their say, the way of this business could soon change: [Though] the big flavor companies spend tens of millions of dollars every year on research and development, including a lot of consumer testing… making sense of taste-test results is difficult. Subjects’ preferences can vary so widely that no clear consensus may emerge. Collecting enough data about each subject would allow flavor companies to filter […]

DARPA Seeking to Develop a “Cognitive Fingerprint”

January 27th, 2012 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is out this month with a broad agency announcement soliciting “innovation research proposals in support of the development of new software-based biometric modalities” that go beyond the current focus of passwords for identity validation: The current standard method for validating a user’s identity for authentication on an information system requires humans to do something that is inherently difficult: create, remember, and manage long, complex passwords. Moreover, as long as the session remains active, typical systems incorporate no mechanisms to verify that the user originally authenticated is the user still in control of the keyboard. Thus, unauthorized individuals may improperly obtain extended access to […]

“Computational Thinking: A Digital Age Skill for Everyone”

January 26th, 2012 / in resources, videos / by Erwin Gianchandani

The International Society for Technology in Education (ITSE), in partnership with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), is out with an outstanding four-minute video — Computational Thinking: A Digital Age Skill for Everyone — providing an introduction to computational thinking. It’s part of the ITSE’s recent efforts to develop an operational definition for CT, generate booklets for teachers and leaders, and develop a toolkit for presentations or meetings with educators and parents. To describe computational thinking, the video highlights how advances in computing research are changing our everyday lives — from tracking and preventing crime to efficiently managing the global food supply, from detecting illnesses in rural […]

“The New Era of Computing”

January 25th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

An interesting interview with Alex Szalay, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University — about data-intensive computing — in Datanami this week: When it comes to thought leadership that bridges the divides between scientific investigation, technology and the tools and applications that make research possible … Szalay is one of the first scientists that springs to mind.   Szalay, whom we will dub “Dr. Data” for reasons that will explained in a moment, is a distinguished professor in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Aside from his role as a scientist — an end user of high performance computing hardware and applications — he also serves director of the JHU […]