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Archive for the ‘workshop reports’ category

Transformative Research: Reflections on a NSF Workshop

April 6th, 2012

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Michael E. Gorman, a Professor in the department of science, technology, and society (STS) at the University of Virginia. Mike recently completed a rotation as a program director at the National Science Foundation, and co-funded a workshop on transformative research that took place in Washington, DC, last month.

During my two-year stint as a rotator at NSF, I looked for places where I could add value. There was a lot of discussion about transformative research and even some special funds that could be used for projects deemed transformative. In September 2007, the National Science Board (NSB) ”unanimously approved a motion to enhance support of transformative research at the NSF.” The Board noted:

“The term ‘transformative research’ is being used to describe a range of endeavors which promise extraordinary outcomes, such as: revolutionizing entire disciplines; creating entirely new fields; or disrupting accepted theories and perspectives — in other words, those endeavors which have the potential to change the way we address challenges in science, engineering, and innovation. Supporting more transformative research is of critical importance in the fast-paced, science and technology-intensive world of the 21st Century.”

And it recommended the following addition to the NSF’s merit review criteria: “To what extent does the proposed activity suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?”

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Posted in policy, research horizons, workshop reports

CCC Launches NITRD Symposium Website;
Videos, Slides, Written Summaries of Talks All Available

March 14th, 2012

On Feb. 16th, over 150 Federal officials, Congressional staffers, academic researchers, and industry leaders packed a room overlooking the United States Capitol to mark two decades of coordinated Federal investment in networking and information technology research and development with a daylong symposium exploring progress and prospects in the field.

Today, I’m delighted to announce that we are launching a new website with complete materials from this extraordinary day — including videos, photos, slides, and written summaries from the 19 15-minute presentations by leaders of the field, plus a luncheon keynote by former Vice President Al Gore, a longtime champion of information technology R&D, and special remarks by former Congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.), also a champion of our nation’s investments in fundamental R&D. Please check it out here — and please help us disseminate this resource by forwarding it on to your colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students, and friends.

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Posted in big science, CCC, policy, research horizons, research news, resources, workshop reports

Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud

March 1st, 2012

The following is a special contribution to this Blog by Amr El Abbadi, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Christos Faloutsos, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and Mohamed Mokbel, Associate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota. The trio recently organized a National Science Foundation-funded workshop on Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud.

The NSF workshop on Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud was held in Arlington, VA, on February 23-24. With more than 35 participants from academia, industry, and government, the workshop’s goal was to set the future research directions and challenges that face the wide deployment of social networks and mobile applications on the cloud environment.

The workshop had two distinguished keynote speakers: Raghu Ramakrishnan, Yahoo! Research, and Mike Carey, University of California, Irvine. The first day of the workshop featured three interactive panels discussing the challenges of social networks in the cloud, mobile applications on the cloud, and mobility and social networks in the cloud, respectively. The second day had three parallel breakout sessions about privacy aspects of mobility and social networks, killer applications that call for mobility and social networks in the cloud, and cloud infrastructure requirements to support mobile and social network applications. The workshop was concluded by a summary of the breakout sessions followed by an extensive discussion about the future research directions.

The workshop proved quite successful, as it encouraged researchers to explore various innovative and new directions at the cross roads of all three themes: social networks, mobility and cloud computing. Of particular interest were the following issues:

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Posted in research horizons, workshop reports