A current and several former CRA Board members have been elected as Fellows to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Section on Information, Computing, and Communication this month. A ceremony honoring them will be held in February 2008 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. Fellows are elected by their peers for their contributions to science and technology. A full list of the Fellows can be found here.
Current CRA Board member Andrew A. Chien, vice president of Intelís Corporate Technology Group and director of Intel research, is also a fellow of the ACM and the IEEE. He was formerly a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Former Board members, John L. King, David A. Patterson, and Stuart Feldman, were also elected AAAS Fellows. John is the Vice Provost for Academic Information and a professor at the University of Michigan as well as a fellow of the Association for Information Systems. He is formerly a Fulbright Distinguished Chair. Dave is the E.H. and M.E. Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE. He also received the CRA Distinguished Service Award. Stu is currently the Vice President, Engineering, East Coast at Google, a position he took recently after his time as Vice President of Computer Science at IBM Research. He is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE and is currently the president of ACM.
Congratulations Andrew, John, Dave, and Stu!
AAAS Section on Information, Computing, and Communication Fellows
Werner Braun, University of Texas Medical Branch ï C. Sidney Burrus, Rice University ï Jin-Yi Cai, University of Wisconsin-Madison ï Andrew A. Chien, Intel Corporation ï Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University ï Stuart I. Feldman, IBM Corporation ï Jean-Luc Gaudiot, University of California, Irvine ï Michael T. Goodrich, University of California, Irvine ï David Harel, Weizmann Institute of Science ï John L. King, University of Michigan ï David J. Lilja, University of Minnesota ï Maja J. Mataric¥, University of Southern California ï David A. Patterson, University of California, Berkeley ï David M. Rocke, University of California, Davis ï John R. Rumble, Information International Associates ï David E. Shaw, D. E. Shaw and Co., Inc. ï James J. Thomas, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ï Fei-Yue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences ï Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University
Two recent Information Week articles are of interest. The first article discusses the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology’s newly released report regarding the IT workforce and the need to increase the representation of women and minorities to keep America competitive. This was a theme at the recent conferences in Florida, the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Information Technology. The report is free and available at the CPST web site but you do have to register to access it.
The second article is about the National Research Council report encouraging open exchange of science and technology research on the international stage. The article states the Council’s understanding that there are matters of national security that the United States is trying to protect by classifying research but that “the possibility that the United States might lose its edge in technology and research represents one of the greatest risks to national security.” Again the report is available online and is worth reading.
Coverage from the Tapia Conference (previous post)...
Former CRA board member John King kicked off the second day of the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing with a diversity focused plenary emphasizing the evolution of cultural context. Using historical examples Dr. King focused on the changes of the last 200 years in the US that show the progression of society in accepting and celebrating the differences between the majority and the minority groups. He emphasized that the context changes the point of view and different points of view provide more information. That is why diversity is so important.
This echoes strongly the plenary given yesterday afternoon by Norman Johnson of Referentia Systems. His talk discussed the importance of mass knowledge and that the knowledge of large groups is often more accurate than the knowledge of issue area experts. Without diversity, that mass knowledge is, in effect, "dumbed-down."
A panel discussing why computing departments fail to retain underrepresented students if universities care about diversity noted the need for role models and emphasis on getting underrepresented students through the first year by building community and accepting cultural differences.
More to come...
The government affairs team here at CRA is headed to Orlando next week! I will be bringing you updates from the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference and Peter will let you know what’s happening at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. The conferences are co-located this year, so it'll be interesting to see how that affects the overall dynamic of both conferences. I'm guessing it'll be a big positive, but we'll see. Stayed tuned!
An announcement from your friends at the Computing Community Consortium:
October 11, 2007Four Added to GENI Science Council
The Computing Community Consortium is pleased to announce the addition of four members to the Science Council for the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). The new members will join 15 current members of the council in providing scientific guidance for the GENI project -- a proposed experimental facility to allow research on a wide variety of problems in communications, networking, and distributed systems.
The new members will expand the breadth of research expertise on the GENI Science Council, said Edward Lazowska, Chair of the CCC Council.
The new members:
- Joan Feigenbaum, Henry Ford II Professor of Computer Science at Yale University
- James A. Hendler, Tetherless World Senior Constellation Chair at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Michael Kearns, National Center Chair in Resource Management and Technology at the University of Pennsylavnia
- Larry Peterson, Chair of Computer Science at Princeton University.
The GENI Science Council was originally established in March 2007 by the CCC, in partnership with the National Science Foundation. The Science Council will produce a comprehensive research plan that describes the scientific and engineering research questions that GENI will make possible to address, the educational opportunities that GENI will afford, and the industrial collaborations the GENI will invite. Members of the GENI Science Council were selected from a pool of more than 100 individuals nominated by the computing community representing roughly 20 research areas.
Further information on the GENI program, including the composition of the Science Council, can be found on the web at http://geni.net.
About CCC: Formed in partnership with the National Science Foundation and the Computing Research Association, the Computing Community Consortium seeks to catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives. On the web: http://cra.org/ccc
The Senate began consideration of the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriation bill yesterday but put off further consideration of the bill until October 15. Despite the delay, President Bush has released a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) stating -- no surprise -- he will veto the bill if it is passed at the current funding levels.
The bill includes $5.156 billion for NSF’s Research and Related Activities including $52 million for the Cyber Enabled Discovery and Innovation program, $244.6 million for Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction, and $850.6 million for Education and Human Resources Directorate - a $100 million increase over the President’s request. During consideration, an amendment adding $1 billion to the funding of NASA was passed, bringing NASA’s total to $18.5 billion within the bill. The bill includes $863 million for NIST including $110 million for the Manufacturing Extension Programs (MEP) and $100 million for the Advanced Technology Program (ATP).
The Administration has many concerns with this bill although they mostly are with the Commerce and Justice parts of the bill. The SAP does oppose the increase to NASA and the extra $100 million for NSF’s EHR. The SAP also states opposition to the funding amounts for the MEP and ATP programs, as he has in recent budget years.
Related posts on this topic can be found here.
Good Op-Ed at Forbes.com about the need to invest in science and math education at the K-12 level to keep the US lead in science and technology. It points out that the current challenge to America’s competitive status is not a single high profile event that can galvanize the population but a slow decline in our education process and commitment to science and technology fields that has been happening for years.
Once again, our nation's educational system has been called into question, as international assessments indicate that our K-12 students lag far behind their peers from dozens of other nations in science and mathematics.Furthermore, the impending retirement of baby-boom scientists and engineers trained during the post-Sputnik era has led to concerns over potential high-tech workforce shortages. Only 4.7% of undergraduate degrees awarded in the U.S. are in the field of engineering, compared to a staggering 38.6% of those awarded in China. Clearly, our national commitment to engineering and other high-tech fields has waned. As these jobs are playing a larger and larger part in the world economy, our timing is particularly bad.
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Furthermore, their success does not spell doom for the U.S. economy as long as we react accordingly: with public investments that allow our students and workers to compete with their international counterparts. By building a solid bedrock of science and math education in grades K-12, we can assure a problem-solving, technically adroit workforce that will keep the U.S. in a position of global leadership.
It also calls on the government to implement the recommendations of the National Science Board report “A National Action Plan for Addressing the Critical Needs of the U.S. Science, Technoloogy, Engineering, and Mathematics Education System.” (PDF)