Computing Research Policy Blog

Announcing the Computing Research Highlight of the Week

Today, as part of CRA's mission to improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research, we're pleased to announce the launch of a new feature on the CRA and CCC web pages: the Computing Research Highlight of the Week. Each week, we'll highlight some of the exciting and important research results recently generated by the computing community.

Our first highlight features a new algorithm developed by researchers at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego that promises to significantly boost the efficiency of network routing.

We hope to accomplish a few things with these highlights. First, we want to show off the good work being done in our community in a way that is accessible to the general public. One model for this is the very popular Astronomy Photo of the Day, where each day a new photo or graphic (or video) having something to do with astronomy is featured along with a succinct description. We hope to do the same for computing. Second, we hope to build up a good database of examples of the vibrancy of the computing fields that we can use in our advocacy efforts with Congress, the Adminstration, and federal agencies. Having a collection of easily accesible and digestable research "nuggets" helps us immeasurably when trying to make the case for computing research to policymakers. And thirdly, we want to make sure our members of our own community are aware of some of the wide variety of interesting research results that are being generated across the various sub-disciplines of computing, and perhaps even make connections to their own work.

We've tried to make it easy for you to keep track of the current weekly highlight with an RSS feed, an email notification system, and even embed code that allows you to feature the highlight of the week on your own web page. Each week's highlight also features prominently on both the CRA and CCC home pages.

So how do you get your own work featured as a Computing Research Highlight of the Week? It's easy: just submit it! From those submissions CRA and CCC staff and volunteers chose a new highlight each week. We're pleased that so many answered our call last July for your research highlights, but we want more. So submit your interesting and important research results today!