The following entry is a special contribution to this blog from John L. King, the W.W. Bishop Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.  John was a council member of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) from 2007 – 2010 and on the Board of the Computing Research Association (CRA) from 2003 – 2005.   The Digital Societies and Social Technologies (DSST) 2013 Summer Institute took place at the University of Maryland College Park, College of Information Studies from July 28-August 1.  It built on traditions established by the CSST (Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems) summer institutes and the Summer Social Webshops.  The focus was on bridging the “social” and […]

In 2011, the National Science Foundation (NSF) created the Washington Area Trustworthy Computing Hour (WATCH), a series of thought-provoking talks by innovative thinkers with ideas that illuminate the challenges and provide signposts toward solutions in trustworthy computing. The series is jointly organized by NSF’s Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Directorates, and sponsored by the CISE Trustworthy Computing Program. The next WATCH seminar will be on September 26, 2013 given by Alessandro Acquisti from Carnegie Mellon University.  The title of his talk is An Experiment in Hiring Discrimination via Online Social Networks. Update: Due to unforeseen circumstances, the WATCH presentation scheduled for 9/26 is being postponed. NSF is actively working to […]

Last month, Google announced the recipients of its Summer 2013 Research Awards, and two former Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) were among the winners: Mohit Tiwari and Katrina Ligget. These awards are made to researchers in computer science which cover tuition for graduate students and provide the opportunity to work with Google scientists and engineers. Ligget was a 2009-2010 CIFellow at Cornell University.  She is now an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.  Her research award is for work on understanding how to price private information, and on the mechanisms for eliciting such information.  This work is an outgrowth of the privacy and game […]

The goal of the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) Program, which is a joint funding announcement between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is to accelerate the development and use of innovative approaches that would support the much needed transformation of health from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive, proactive, evidence-based, person-centered and focused on well-being rather than disease. SCH is now in its second year. Initial grants have been funded by both NSF and NIH. Successful applications are those that address important health problems while advancing fundamental science. They also include multidisciplinary teams with appropriate expertise to address both the health and fundamental science […]

Every year, AAAS administers the Science & Technology Policy Fellowship program, which brings over 200 scientists and engineers to DC each year to work for the federal government. The goal of the Fellowship is to educate scientists on how the government works and to explore the intersection where policy and science meet. AAAS has recently launched a Big Data & Analytics track in the Fellowship program to focus on the analytical skills necessary for using big data to tackle the most pressing policy issues of the day such as infrastructure, security, and health care. They would love to see more representation from the computer science community! Applicants must have a doctorate in a scientific, medical, or […]

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) today announced two new Expeditions in Computing awards, providing each selected project team $10 million in funding over five years, representing the single largest investments made by the directorate in basic computing research. Established in 2008, Expeditions awards provide, “the CISE research and education community with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, fundamental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information.” Farnam Jahanian, assistant director for CISE shares, “The Expeditions in Computing program catalyzes large-scale, far-reaching and potentially transformative research motivated by deep scientific questions.  These two new awards aim to apply our understanding of natural, biological capabilities to the […]