Feb

2

Obama’s Proposed Budget Increases Spending in Science and Education

Filed Under policy, resources | Comments

The New York Times reports that President Obama’s proposed budget includes substantial increases for science research, including an 8% increase for the National Science Foundation from last year’s budget, rising to $7.4 billion.  The Department of Education is also targeted for an increased discretionary budget to $49.7 billion from $46.2 billion in 2010.

Nov

21

National Computer Science Education Week

Filed Under pipeline, policy | Comments

Congress has resolved that the week of December 7 will be designated as “National Computer Science Education Week.”  Organizations such as the ACM, CRA, and NCWIT, along with industrial partners, are planning to use this week to promote awareness of computer science education.

The NSF has invested in a number of programs that seek to  re-envision K-12 and undergraduate computer science education.  A recent article by Jeannette Wing, Assistant Director of NSF for CISE, summarizes the rationale, the challenges, and some of the specific initiatives.

We’re eager to hear your ideas on ways that computer science education could be improved, both at the K-12  and college level.  We’re also  interested in hearing your thoughts on how the importance of computer science might be more effectively communicated to a broad audience.

Sep

25

Inducing Innovation with Prizes

Filed Under big science, policy | Comments

The awarding of the $1 million Netflix Prize this week reopens an interesting bigger question:  Are prizes a viable mechanism for encouraging research in the computing fields?  From Netflix’s perspective, the answer is almost certainly yes.  Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is quoted telling the New York Times (probably tongue-in-cheek) “You’re getting Ph.D.’s for a dollar an hour.”

Could prizes be useful to the broader computing community in advancing research?  The Clay Mathematics Institute established the Millenium Prizes in 2000, offering $1 million for the solutions to each of seven famous open problems, including the question of whether P=NP.  It’s hard to imagine that many researchers have decided to shape their research agendas based on the existence of this prize.  On the other hand, Wolfram Research sponsored a $25,000 prize, with a blue ribbon prize committee, to determine if a specific small (2 states and 3 symbols) Turing Machine is universal. The problem was solved (in the affirmative) in 2007 by a 20-year-old from Birmingham, England.

There is a rich history of prizes for technical innovation.  In the early 18th century, the British Parliament offered the Longitude Prize for a practical method of precisely determining a ship’s longitude, with different monetary amounts depending on the accuracy of the instrument.  The rules were changed during the course of the competition and the prize was never awarded.

More recently, there have been numerous technical prizes such as the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface.  Following on the success of the Ansari Prize, The X PRIZE Foundation has established several other major prizes for specific achievements that have “the potential to benefit humanity”.

Are there some major problems in computer science that could be incentivized by prizes – financial or otherwise?  What are the potential benefits and risks of this approach?  We’re eager to hear your thoughts.

Some good additional readings include the following:

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