The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its first wave of investments totaling $46 million to support the goals of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. President Obama launched the BRAIN Initiative in April 2013 as a new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders. The initiative is a joint program with funding through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This first wave of investments through NIH will fund more than 100 investigators so they can develop new tools and technologies to understand neural circuit […]

Former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) CI Fellow, Dr. Suchi Saria, now an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University, emphasizes the important role that computational scientists can play towards advancing and improving healthcare delivery in a computational healthcare article in IEEE Intelligent Systems. The transfer of healthcare records from paper to digital records has been a tremendous catalyst for accelerating change. Today much of an individual’s health data- demographics, personal and family medical history, current and past treatments, vaccination records, laboratory test and results, and so on-are stored in electronic healthcare records (EHRs). This has had a huge impact on data-driven innovations in healthcare delivery. In the article A $3 Trillion […]

Dr. James F. Kurose, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), was named the next Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at NSF, effective January 2015.  Dr. Kurose will assume the position that Dr. Farnam Jahanian successfully held for three years before leaving NSF to become the Vice President for Research at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Dr. Kurose is currently a member of the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board of Directors. For Dr. Kurose’s complete bio click here. The official NSF announcement is available here.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) announced nine research awards to 10 universities totaling nearly $4 million to develop Secure, Trustworthy, Assured, and Resilient Semiconductors and Systems (STARSS). The STARSS program is part of a $75 million cyber security effort by the NSF, aimed at making chips immune from being exploited by hackers who take advantage of hidden Trojan horses that are intentionally or unintentionally inserted into chips by intellectual property (IP).  The goal is to also make it easier to spot counterfeit chips, chips that have been tampered with, and used chips being passed off as new. For more information about this program and the nine […]

Agencies of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program are planning to develop a joint National Privacy Research Strategy. On behalf of the agencies, the Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development Senior Steering Group seeks public input on the vital privacy objectives that should be considered for the goals of the strategy. The National Privacy Research Strategy will be used to guide federally-funded privacy research and provide a framework for coordinating research and development in privacy-enhancing technologies. Responders are asked to answer one or more questions in the following areas: Privacy objectives Assessment capabilities Multi-disciplinary approach Privacy architectures All submissions must be 20 pages […]

Popular Science has released their Top Ten of 2014 which honors the brightest young minds reshaping science, engineering, and the world. Computer scientists Prabal Dutta and Roxana Geambasu made the Top Ten! In Dr. Dutta’s lab at the University of Michigan, small wireless sensors keep tabs on energy usage, gathering data that could inform the next generation of smart buildings. They scavenge their own power from their surroundings, such as the slight magnetic field generated by an electrical wire.  Dutta’s other projects include a set of cameras only a few cubic millimeters in size and lapel pins that track how air temperature, humidity, and the distance between speakers affects the spread of flu.  Dutta […]