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 December, 2012

 

Reinventing American Manufacturing – The Role of Innovation

December 26th, 2012 / in Uncategorized / by Ed Lazowska

An excellent article by MIT’s Bill Bonvillian, just out in the MIT Press journal Innovations.  Bill’s prescription: The U.S. must develop an integrated strategy if it is to reinvent its production capability. It should include the nine steps listed below: Developing advanced technologies that could lead to new manufacturing paradigms Selecting manufacturing paradigms that apply across a range of sectors Integrating technology development with efforts to develop new processes and business models In doing this, encompassing the new combined services/production model Tracking where world production competitors are moving Building at all levels a new advanced manufacturing workforce Applying an organizational model that works across the seams between the R&D agencies […]

DARPA Providing Radio Frequency Data Backbone to Match Fiber Optic Capacity

December 18th, 2012 / in Research News / by Shar Steed

DARPA is envisioning a 100-Gigabit per second Radio Frequency communications link between airborne and ground assets. Currently, fiber optic cables provide the core backbone for military and civilian networks, enabling high speed Internet, phone, video and other data transfer. A major challenge to providing 100 Gb/s from an airborne asset to the ground is cloud cover. Free-space optical links won’t propagate through the cloud layer, which means RF is the only option. The system will be designed to provide all-weather capability enabling tactically relevant data throughput and link ranges through clouds, fog or rain. Technical advances in modulation of millimeter-wave frequencies open the door to achieving 100G’s goals. “Providing fiber-optic-equivalent […]

Computer Engineers Search for Ways to Keep Microcircuits Cool

December 14th, 2012 / in research horizons / by Shar Steed

A recent article in Nature, highlights a major challenge that computer engineers are facing. As the size of microcircuits decreases, their temperature rises. They must now find new and innovative ways to keep cutting edge computer parts cool.   Current trends suggest that the next milestone in computing — an exaflop machine performing at 1018 flops — would consume hundreds of megawatts of power (equivalent to the output of a small nuclear plant) and turn virtually all of that energy into heat.   Increasingly, heat looms as the single largest obstacle to computing’s continued advancement. The problem is fundamental: the smaller and more densely packed circuits become, the hotter they […]

NSF Seeking Proposals for Interdisciplinary Research in Hazards and Disasters (HazardSEES)

December 13th, 2012 / in research horizons, Research News / by Kenneth Hines

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a new solicitation – Interdisciplinary Research in Hazards and Disasters, or HazardSEES – that aims to foster the science and engineering necessary to improve our understanding of natural and technological hazards linked to natural phenomena.  Proposals responsive to this program (which is one of several recent opportunities posted under NSF’s multi-year, Foundation-wide Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) initiative) should describe (1) innovative interdisciplinary research that advances our understanding of the causes, interdependencies, impacts, and cumulative effects of these hazards on individuals, the natural and built environment, and society as a whole, and (2) mechanisms for improving capabilities for forecasting or predicting hazards, […]

NBC News Segment on Massively Open Online Courses

December 12th, 2012 / in Uncategorized / by Shar Steed

Earlier this week, NBC aired a video segment highlighting how Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are transforming education. Professors at universities like Stanford, Princeton and Columbia are now offering online courses in a wide range of topics for free. View the segment here. On February 11-12, 2013, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will hold a visioning workshop titled, “Multidisciplinary Research for Online Education.” Participants will look beyond the current high-profile interest in MOOCs, and to ideate on important research questions over the next 10 years in all areas of computing in support of massively open online education.

Upcoming NSF/CISE CAREER Proposal Writing Workshops

December 11th, 2012 / in resources / by Kenneth Hines

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announced that it will hold two one-day CAREER proposal writing workshops in the Spring of 2013. The first workshop will be held on March 15, 2013 at Temple University in Philadelphia. The second workshop will take place at the University of Texas, Arlington on May 17, 2013. More information about these workshops, according to CISE: The goal of these workshops is to introduce junior faculty to the NSF CAREER program, and help them prepare their CAREER proposal. Faculty members will have the opportunity to improve their skills in proposal writing, as well as interact with NSF program directors from different divisions […]