The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2018 Annual Meeting this weekend, February 15-19, 2018 in Austin, TX.

CCC Executive Council Member Dan Lopresti will be moderating a session called Rethinking Approaches to Disaster Management and Public Safety With Intelligent Infrastructure on February 16, 2018 from 8:00-9:30AM in Room 19A of the Austin Convention Center.

• Speakers and Talk Titles:
  • Michael Dunaway, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
    Public Safety Considerations for Smart, Connected Communities
  • Robin Murphy, Texas A&M University
    Robots, Emergency Management, and People
  • Nalini Venkatasubramanian, University of California, Irvine
    Enabling Resilient Situational Awareness in Disasters: A Cross-Layer Approach
• Abstract: Modern societies can be understood as the intersection of four interdependent systems: the natural environment, the built environment, the social environment of humans and their activities, and an information ecosystem overlaying the other three domains. The latter provides the means for understanding, interacting with, and managing the relationships between the natural, built, and human environments. This increased connectedness creates both new challenges and opportunities that demand new approaches to public safety and emergency management.  The design and integration of intelligent infrastructure — including embedded sensors, the Internet of Things, advanced wireless information technologies, real-time data capture and analysis, and machine-learning-based decision support — holds the potential to greatly enhance public safety, emergency management, disaster recovery, and overall community resilience, while addressing new and emerging threats to public safety and security.
• For more information, see this website. 

CCC Chair Beth Mynatt will be moderating a session called Transforming Cities, Transportation, and Agriculture with Intelligent Infrastructure on February 16, 2018 at 10:00-11:30AM in Room 19B of the Austin Convention Center.

• Speakers and Talk Titles:
  • Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Laboratory
    City-Scale Intelligent Systems and Platforms 
  • George Pappas, University of Pennsylvania
    Future of Mobility Through Innovations in Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure 
  • Shashi Shekhar, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
    Transforming Agriculture with Intelligent Infrastructure
• Abstract: Intelligent infrastructure is the deep embedding of sensing, computing, and communications capabilities into traditional physical infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and bridges, in order to increase efficiency, resiliency, and safety. For example, embedding controllers, intersection schedulers, and sensors along roads creates new capabilities for controlling traffic signals and optimizing traffic flow. Across disciplines ranging from engineering to computer science to public policy, intelligent infrastructures are increasingly seen as solutions to the long-standing problems that face local governments. These include strained resources spread across ever-growing urban populations, aging infrastructures and public services systems, competitiveness in the global economy, and acute human and environmental stressors due to rapid growth and change. This session brings together speakers to discuss three critical areas of fundamental scientific research in intelligent infrastructure, and the challenges and barriers to realizing these advances as part of economically sustainable systems.
  
• For more information, see this website. 

CCC Director Ann Drobnis will be moderating a session called Artificial Intelligence: Augmenting Not Replacing People on February 17, 2018 at 8:00-9:30AM in Room17A of the Austin Convention Center.

• • Speakers and Talk Titles:
    • Gregory Hager, Johns Hopkins University
      Machines Teaching People
    • Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research
      Augmenting Human Cognition via Computational Intelligence: Directions and Promise
    • Julie Shah, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
      Enhancing Human Capability With Intelligent Machine Teammates
  • Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are rapidly maturing into tools that are impacting our everyday lives. However, contrary to popular conception, most of these tools will not be autonomous, stand-alone systems, but rather will manifest as human assistants and augmentations. While autonomous driving is featured in the headlines, the short-term impact of advances in this field will be increased safety, comfort, and convenience, with the driver still at the wheel. New technologies in healthcare will not replace doctors, but will leverage their skill and judgement by providing super-human augmentations for eyes, hands, and intellect. As more robots move onto the manufacturing floor, they are most likely to function as ever-smarter programmable tools, and will still require human coworkers to teach them new tasks and to do those elements that are simply too hard to automate. This panel explores these themes, emphasizing in particular the areas where AI and people will work together to do what neither can do alone. Each talk highlights a particular focus or application and illustrates both the opportunity for human augmentation in that area, as well as the human-machine technology frontiers each presents. The panel will close with a discussion of the opportunities and challenges of AI technologies for human augmentation.
    
  • For more information, see this website. 

The CCC has participated in AAAS in the past and is looking forward to this year!