Archive for May 14th, 2012

 

Administration Announces New Materials Genome Commitments

May 14th, 2012

Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) [image courtesy manufacturing.gov].Nearly a year ago, the Obama Administration announced a $500 million Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) to stimulate the development of new technologies to spur high-tech manufacturing. A key focus for the computing research community was a $70 million commitment to research in next-generation robotics.

But as we’ve noted previously, another important aspect of the AMP for computer science was the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), a multi-agency effort “to double the speed with which we discover, develop, and manufacture new materials.” At its core, the MGI sought to “fund computational tools, software, new methods for material characterization, and the development of open standards and databases that will make the process of discovery and development of advanced materials faster, less expensive, and more predictable.”

Today, as part of a daylong workshop attended by 170+ leaders from the public and private sectors, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has announced several new commitments to further advance the MGI.

Among them, according to an OSTP fact sheet accompanying the announcement (following the link):

» Read more: Administration Announces New Materials Genome Commitments

DARPA to Unveil Initiative on Natural Language Analysis

May 14th, 2012

DARPA to issue a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text (DEFT) [image courtesy DARPA].The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced plans to issue a new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) titled Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text (DEFT) – a program that will require leveraging advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and computational linguistics ”to assist warfighters with planning and decision-making by inferring implicit information in text, filtering redundancy and connecting like documents.” In anticipation of the BAA, DARPA plans to hold a Proposers’ Day this Wednesday, May 16th in Arlington, VA, to familiarize the community with its vision and goals for DEFT.

Here’s a description of the DEFT program (following the link):

» Read more: DARPA to Unveil Initiative on Natural Language Analysis