As we’ve covered extensively, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), together with six Federal agencies, rolled out the Big Data R&D Initiative on Thursday afternoon, providing $200 million in funding to improve our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data. Highlights included a $25 million solicitation supporting foundational research, including core techniques and technologies, spanning all directorates and offices within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and 7 institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); a $250 million “Data to Decisions” investment by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering [ASD(R&E)], constituting a major push in data to decision, autonomy, and human systems; and a […]
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 March, 2012
Video from Thursday’s Big Data R&D Initiative Launch Posted
March 31st, 2012 / in big science, policy, research horizons, Research News, resources, videos / by Erwin GianchandaniSanjeev Arora Named Winner of 2011 ACM-Infosys Award
March 30th, 2012 / in awards / by Erwin GianchandaniCongratulations to Sanjeev Arora, the Charles C. Fitzmorris Professor of Computer Science at Princeton, who yesterday was named the recipient of the 2011 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences for his “contributions to computational complexity, algorithms, and optimization that have reshaped our understanding of computation.” According to an ACM–Infosys press release: Arora’s research revolutionized the approach to essentially unsolvable problems that have long bedeviled the computing field, the so-called NP-complete problems. These results have had implications for problems common to cryptography, computational biology, and computer vision, among other fields [more following the link].
Obama Administration Unveils $200M Big Data R&D Initiative
March 29th, 2012 / in big science, policy, research horizons, Research News, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) The Obama Administration this morning unveiled details about its Big Data R&D Initiative, committing more than $200 million in new funding through six agencies and departments to improve “our ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data.” The effort, spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Defense (DoD), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science, and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), seeks to “advance state-of-the-art core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share huge quantities of data; harness these technologies to accelerate […]
NY Times on Today’s Big Data R&D Initiative Launch
March 29th, 2012 / in big science, policy, research horizons, Research News, resources / by Erwin GianchandaniUpdated Thursday, March 29, at 10:55am: OSTP and the agencies have announced the Big Data R&D Initiative. See the latest details here. *** As we noted on Tuesday, the Obama Administration is announcing a new, multi-agency Big Data R&D Initiative today. An event — to be streamed live via the web — is scheduled for 2pm EDT. New York Times’ technology writer Steve Lohr has the early details in today’s paper: The federal government is beginning a major research initiative in big data computing. The effort, which will be announced on Thursday, involves several government agencies and departments, and commitments for the programs total $200 million. Administration officials compare the initiative to past government research […]
DARPA’s Space Programming Challenge Kicks Off Today
March 28th, 2012 / in research horizons, Research News / by Erwin GianchandaniToday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), TopCoder, Inc., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Space Systems Laboratory, is launching the Zero Robotics Autonomous Space Capture Challenge, asking individuals and teams of programmers to develop a fuel-optimal control algorithm that enables a satellite on board the International Space Station (ISS) to accomplish a feat that’s very difficult to do autonomously: to capture a space object that’s tumbling, spinning, or moving in the opposite direction. The absence of gravity presents a significant challenge for precision robotic maneuvering and operations in space. Overcoming some of that challenge may be possible through the development […]
White House to Announce Big Data R&D Initiative Thursday;
Live Webcast Planned
March 27th, 2012 /
in big science, CCC, policy, research horizons /
by
Erwin Gianchandani
Updated Thursday, March 29, at 10:55am: OSTP and the agencies have announced the Big Data R&D Initiative. See the latest details here. *** The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), together with the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science, and Department of Defense (DoD), including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will hold an event in Washington, DC, this Thursday addressing the challenges and opportunities relating to “Big Data.” The event will be webcast live from 2:00pm to 3:30pm EDT. According to the media advisory: Researchers in a growing number of fields are generating extremely large and complicated data sets […]