The following is a guest blog post from Craig E. Wills,  Professor and Department Head of the Computer Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  The wealth of faculty searches in Computer Science during this hiring season for positions starting in the Fall of 2015 affords the opportunity to study areas of Computer Science where departments are choosing to invest in new faculty hires. While the number and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline. We analyzed ads from 223 institutions for hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science. […]

Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Agriculture and NASA announced $31.5 million in new awards to spur the development and use of robots that work cooperatively with people (known as co-robots). The awards mark the third round of funding made through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a multi-agency program launched in September 2012 as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Initiative, with NSF as the lead federal agency. The 52 new research awards, ranging from $300,000 to $1.8 million over one to four years, advance fundamental understanding of robotic sensing, motion, computer vision, machine learning and human-computer interaction. The awards […]

Computer science and brain science share deep intellectual roots. Today, understanding the structure and function of the human brain is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our generation. Decades of study and continued progress in our knowledge of neural function and brain architecture have led to important advances in brain science, but a comprehensive understanding of the brain still lies well beyond the horizon. How might computer science and brain science benefit from one another? The CCC BRAIN two-day workshop, sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and National Science Foundation (NSF), brings together brain researchers and computer scientists for a scientific dialogue aimed at exposing new opportunities for joint […]

The following is a Computing Research Policy Blog post by Peter Harsha, CRA Director of Government Affairs.  As part of its mission to develop a next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the third offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We seek nominations for participants. LiSPI will be centered around a two day workshop to be held April 27-28, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Full details of LiSPI are available at: http://cra.org/ccc/spi.) LiSPI will feature presentations and discussions […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Tracy Kimbrel, National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Director for Computing and Communication Foundations.  The National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) recently announced a new program solicitation, Algorithms in the Field (AitF), which aims to promote collaboration between theory researchers and those in more applied areas. The program originated from interest and excitement among the theory community and researchers in many applied fields during a well-attended workshop held in May 2011. Bridging the gap between theory and practice in the design, analysis, implementation, and evaluation of algorithms can lead to new fields as well as broader cutting-edge applications. […]

Periodically, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will highlight research projects that are nominated by the public. Research highlights are meant to inform the computing community about interesting research going on in the field. The most recent research highlight featured Dr. Rajeev Alur from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Alur leads the NSF Expeditions in Computer Augmented Program Engineering (ExCAPE). The goal of ExCAPE is to change the way programmers develop software by advancing the theory and practice of software synthesis.  ExCAPE develops synthesis tools that can assist expert programmers in discovering difficult code and meet challenges in multicore programming. To read more, see the full research highlight. To submit a research highlight for inclusion […]