Chris Isidore of CNN Money, wrote on July 29 about Amazon’s announcement to hire 7,000 new employees, 5,000 of which are for their nationwide distribution centers in an article titled Amazon hiring 7,000 workers.  Last week, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers – Robotics & Automation Society (IEEE-RAS) held a briefing for the Robotics Caucus on Robots & Job Creation.  Read further to understand how Amazon’s hiring and the briefing are related. Raj Madhavan , Vice President of the Industrial Activities Board of IEEE-RAS, opened the session by asking questions on how best to use robotics.  He then turned the microphone over to Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced the Centers of Excellence for Big Data Computing in the Biomedical Sciences (U54) funding opportunity announcement, the first in its Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative. The purpose of the BD2K initiative is to help biomedical scientists fully utilize Big Data being generated by research communities. As technology advances, scientists are generating and using large, complex, and diverse datasets, which is making the  biomedical research enterprise more  data-intensive and data-driven. According to the BD2K website: “BD2K Centers of Excellence will address these issues by developing new approaches, methods, software, tools, and related resources and by providing training to advance Big Data science in the context of biomedical […]

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) met on July 18, 2013 in a joint session with the Council for Science and Technology (CST) from the United Kingdom.  This was the first time the two similar bodies met together.  The first agenda item was Big Data: Smart Cities.  The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has been involved in Big Data for quite some time, having convened a Big Data Study Group in 2008. The conversation began with Steven Koonin discussing The Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) at New York University (NYU).  CUSP is a public-private research center that uses New York City as both its laboratory and classroom. […]

The NSF has recently issued a new program solicitation – Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs.  According to the solicitation, “The Division seeks advances in computing and communication theory, algorithm design and analysis, and the architecture and design of computers and software. CCF-supported projects also investigate revolutionary computing models and technologies based on emerging scientific ideas and integrate research and education activities to prepare future generations of computer science and engineering workers.” CISE’s Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) supports research and education projects that develop new knowledge in three core programs: The Algorithmic Foundations (AF) program; The Communications and Information Foundations (CIF) program; and The Software and […]

It’s impossible to convey how great this year’s Microsoft Research Faculty Summit has been:  a “who’s who” of attendees from academia; heavy participation by top people from Microsoft Research; superb presentations on a range of research topics; and a total absence of marketing. I’m currently sitting in the final breakout session of the second day:  on quantum computing, with extraordinary talks by Scott Aaronson (MIT), Charlie Marcus (Niels Bohr Institute), and Matthias Troyer ETH Zürich).  But I’m missing concurrent sessions on machine learning (with Andrew Ng (Stanford and Coursera) and 3 others), beating spam (with Stefan Savage (UCSD) and two others), and visual motion (with Noah Snavely (Cornell) and two […]

The NSF has recently issued three new program solicitations: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), Computer and Network Systems (CNS): Core Programs, and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Core Programs. According to its solicitation, “The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program welcomes proposals that address Cybersecurity from a Trustworthy Computing Systems (TWC) perspective and/or a Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) perspective. In addition, we welcome proposals that integrate research addressing both of these perspectives as well as proposals focusing entirely on Cybersecurity Education.” CISE’s Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS) is supporting research and education projects in two core programs: Computer Systems Research (CSR) program; and Networking Technology and […]