The CRA Bulletin frequently shares news, timely information about CRA initiatives, and items of interest to the general community. Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay connected.
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC)’s recently launched Catalyzing Computing podcast is now included on the NSF’s Science360 Radio stream. Science360 Radio showcases shows from radio and podcast series, and also includes webcasts, events, in-depth interviews, and documentaries from NSF and other contributors. Catalyzing Computing focuses on topics of interest within the computing research community and is hosted by CCC […]
On March 22-23, CRA hosted the second annual Graduate Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities (URMD Grad Cohort) in picturesque Waikoloa Village, Hawaii. The location provided beautiful scenery as students spent two days learning how to succeed in graduate school and networked with a diverse group of peers and senior researchers.
The Data Buddies Survey came to a close at the end of February 2019. CERP wishes to thank all the departments who made data collection possible, with special appreciation extended to departments with at least a 20% response rate.
The Computing Research Association has released its latest white paper, “Creating Institutional Homes for Computing: Transforming a Department into a School or College.” This white paper addresses the growing interest and trend in transforming a department of computer science, usually housed within a college of engineering or science, into a school or college of computing. It follows up on a successful panel at the 2016 CRA Conference at Snowbird on Schools and Colleges of Computing and a second panel on transitioning to Colleges of Computing at the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced it’s 2018 Prize in Computing award to Shwetak Patel, of the University of Washington and Google and a Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member. The ACM Prize in Computing is their second most prestigious award in all of computing (after the Turing Award – known as the Nobel Prize in Computing). Patel is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to creative and practical sensing systems for sustainability and health. In just a decade, he has had incredible impact in the applications of AI and sensing in two broad areas – developing methods for disaggregating energy and water usage in the home and developing new methods of health sensing and advancing clinical science through the use of commodity sensors.
CRA Board Member Charles Isbell has been named the next dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, effective July 1. Isbell serves as the AAAI representative to the CRA Board.
Submissions opened March 15 for the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships. The fellowships were created to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field. The program will support students pursuing degrees at institutions anywhere in the world.
The CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline concluded its fall 2018 Data Buddies Survey. The survey was modified to provide additional insight on student experiences in computing degree programs. These new data will be used in annual reporting and program evaluation.
My research explores algorithmic methods for determining whether a pair of species are likely to have coevolved and, if so, finding the “best” scenarios that explain their evolutionary histories. This work explores the computational complexity of these reconciliation problems, seeks to develop efficient reconciliation algorithms where possible, and, ultimately, to implement these algorithms in practical tools for biologists and educators.
Convention tells us that research involves a selection of topic, literature review, framework development, refining/defining your research question, developing a design, collecting data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions, but at a community college the formality cannot always be used as a rule, but as a guideline for developing a realistic, learning opportunity. Community college participation in undergraduate research is an important part of education, but can be easily fall by the wayside to address life challenges often faced by community college students. However, given the opportunity to participate, research can be a rewarding and valuable skill that should be afforded to more students.
On February 25, CRA hosted its annual Computing Research Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX). Several engaging talks at the Leadership Summit provided useful information on current issues important to the organizations.
In partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT), CRA announces an initial launch of BPCnet.org, a resource portal designed to amplify the NSF CISE Directorate’s efforts in broadening participation in computing (BPC). CRA anticipates that BPCnet.org will provide a much-needed clearinghouse for the community to learn about and engage with ongoing projects to diversify computing.
Colleges and universities across the country are experiencing a significant influx of students in their undergraduate computer science (CS) courses. Many of these students are seeking the “traditional,” CS-centric undergraduate degrees that have evolved over decades, along with changes in our field. But many other students are quite different from the students whom we have found in our undergraduate majors. While they are interested in computing, they are more interested in creatively applying sophisticated computational skills and methods to a range of disciplines from biology to linguistics to art. They understand that CS knowledge is critical to helping them succeed in nearly any job, that “every field is becoming an information field.”
CRA members have elected three new members to its board of directors: Lorrie Cranor, Divesh Srivastava and Marvin Theimer. The CRA board of directors has elected new board officers to serve two-year terms beginning July 1, 2019. At the February board meeting, Ellen Zegura was elected chair; Nancy Amato was elected vice-chair; Ran Libeskind-Hadas was elected secretary; and James Allan was elected treasurer.
The CRA board of directors is pleased to announce its selections for the 2019 CRA Awards.
Edward Felten – Distinguished Service Award Winner
Maria Gini – A. Nico Habermann Award Winner
This CRA-W program provides guidance to research-interested students on how to navigate the vast offerings at the GHC conference and opportunities to meet and interact with students and mentors with similar interests in small-group settings
By Meredith Ringel Morris, Principal Researcher & MSR Dissertation Grant Chair Broadening participation in computing is a core part of Microsoft‘s values; accordingly, we are excited to continue the Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant that aims to recognize, support, and mentor diverse doctoral students as they complete their dissertation research in computing-related fields. This grant is open to doctoral students in their fourth […]
The National Science Foundation is initiating a national search for the Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).
Recently, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) elected 86 new members and 18 foreign members. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,297 and the number of foreign members to 272. Former CRA Board Member Margo Seltzer was among those elected.
Find out what participants thought about the 2018 CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women in this recently released video. In testimonials collected at the end of the workshop, a resounding theme was the participants’ renewed motivation to complete their Ph.D.
The goal of this workshop is to introduce junior CAREER-eligible faculty to the NSF CAREER program and help them to prepare their CAREER proposals to target CISE programs.
The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce two recipients of the 2019 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award: Jennifer Rexford from Princeton University and Westley Weimer from the University of Michigan. These outstanding individuals are being recognized for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of their students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is launching the “Catalyzing Computing” podcast, which will focus on topics of interests within the computing research community. The podcast is hosted by CCC Program Associate Khari Douglas and will feature interviews with researchers and policy makers about their background and experiences in the computing community. You can stream or download the podcast on Soundcloud now.
Today’s New York Times features an article “The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class.” The story explores how the increasing student demand for computer science courses is outstripping the supply of professors. The article cites CRA Taulbee data and quotes several current and former CRA board members.
My computer science research career started during my college internship at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, during the early 1970s in the center that later produced UNIX and the portable C compiler. This experience taught me that computing was broader than the introduction to scientific programming in my undergraduate studies in applied math. (There was no computer science undergraduate major at the time.) For most of my career, I was interested in deriving descriptions of program execution behaviors from code in order, for example, to optimize program time and/or memory performance, to validate desirable properties such as correctness or data security, or to refactor code for ease of maintenance.
Increasingly, jobs rely on the ability to use computers to interpret, understand, and trust data. For example, my students and I have worked with ornithologists who cannot understand the representations of their bird sightings, civil engineers who cannot easily use their own building data, finance experts who cannot trace money between companies and their subsidiaries, and an XML document company whose clients cannot understand data that appears outside of their reports. In each case, the data users have been hampered because their data is exceedingly difficult to understand and trust, even though the users are experts in their fields. One reason for this difficulty is that the organization of the data is often designed for computers, not for people (i.e., for storage, not accessibility). Another reason is that data often come from different sources, leaving users with the challenge of integrating data that they neither understand nor trust.
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2019 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. This year’s nominees are a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several are authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others have made presentations at major conferences, and some have produced software artifacts that were in widespread use.
The organizers of the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird session, “Increasing Diversity in Computing is Easier Than You Think: Some Small Steps that Make a Big Difference,” recently published a list of 10 small steps departments can take to increase diversity at their institutions.
This work uses the same methodology as work over the past five years to study where Computer Science departments are choosing to invest faculty positions by examining data obtained from advertised faculty searches for the current hiring season. While the number of and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline.
We analyzed ads from 409 institutions seeking to fill hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science. There was a small one-year increase in the number of institutions searching but there has been a 83% increase over the five years of our studies. The number of tenure-track positions sought shows a one-year increase of 5% and a 118% increase over the five years.
The ACM recently named 56 of its members as ACM Fellows for transformative contributions and advancing technology in the digital age. The Fellows were honored for significant contributions in areas including computer architecture, mobile networks, robotics, and systems security. From the ACM Press Release: The accomplishments of the 2018 ACM Fellows underpin the technologies that define the digital age […]
Three CRA contributors were recently recognized on Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Tech List. From Forbes: “The Top 50 Women In Tech is an unranked assessment of technologists in five categories: Moguls, Founders, Innovators, Engineers and Warriors. The list showcases the breadth and depth of entrepreneurial women who are changing the world.” CRA and […]
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently announced its 2018 Elected Fellows. The Fellows are recognized with this lifetime honor for their extraordinary achievements in advancing science. Several individuals involved with CRA have been elected Fellows to the Section on Information, Computing & Communication.
The 2018 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, presented by CMD-IT, was held September 19-22 in Orlando, Florida. The Tapia conferences bring together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities.
Research shows that it takes 25 minutes to reach full productivity after an interruption, yet we are interrupted every 3 minutes. And even without external interruptions, our focus is fragmented. We look at any given desktop window for an average of only 40 seconds, constantly self-interrupting to check email or Facebook. We also try to complete multiple tasks at once, even though we all know that multitasking typically fails. Our tendency to be easily distracted kept our hunter-and-gatherer ancestors alive when they needed to attend to potential predators, but now, in the safety of our offices, it is amazing we manage to get anything done. Chances are you won’t even read this entire article in one go.
It is an exciting, impactful, and important time to be in computer science, not only as a researcher or educator, but also as an expert serving the community – and we want to invite you to consider opportunities for service at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Former CRA Board Member Sarita Adve (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was recently named the 2018 recipient of the ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. She is being recognized “for research contributions and leadership in the development of memory consistency models for C++ and Java, for service to numerous computer science organizations, and for exceptional mentoring.” […]
The number of faculty openings in computing has increased significantly in recent years, which has placed stress on the faculty recruiting process. Both academic departments and faculty candidates go through an arduous process. CRA has started a new service intended to improve the recruiting process for academic and industrial/government laboratory research positions. Candidates for these positions […]
The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) has just announced a new program, NSF 19-507, NSF Quantum Computing & Information Science Faculty Fellows (QCIS-FF). This program aims to grow academic research capacity in the computing and information science fields to support advances in quantum computing and/or communication over the long term.
A new initiative, backed by the foundations of Pierre Omidyar, Eric Schmidt, Craig Newmark and Mozilla aims to convince the nation’s computer science departments to spend more time teaching the ethics of the profession alongside the basics of coding.
We will again host two Graduate Cohort Workshops in 2019. The CRA URMD Grad Cohort Workshop is designed specifically for underrepresented minorities in computing and persons with disabilities in graduate school in computing fields. The CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop is designed for women students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields. The workshops will include a mix of formal presentations, informal discussions and social events. By attending Grad Cohort, participants will be able to build mentoring relationships and develop peer networks that are intended to form the basis for ongoing activities during their graduate career and beyond. Both applications are open now and will close on November 15.
The Computing Research Association Education Committee (CRA-E) is now accepting applications for the CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program. The program opportunities for Ph.D. candidates in a computing field to contribute to CRA-E projects, to network with computer science education advocates on the committee, and to engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students and promote computer science research and undergraduate education at the national level.
The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. It recognizes those who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
The VMware academic team is pleased to announce the third annual award in support of the computer science research community. The objective of this award is to call attention to a valuable and promising body of emerging computer science systems research and provide support for continued advances by an emerging research leader.
The 2018 CRA Taulbee Survey will be starting soon. As has been our recent practice, the survey will be split into two parts, salary and main (everything else). This allows us to set an earlier deadline for the salary section in order to produce a preliminary salary report in December, while giving departments more time to collect and enter the information in the rest of the survey if needed.
The Computing Research Association seeks your help in recruiting candidates for its Board of Directors. We want individuals who have time, energy, initiative, and resources to work on CRA issues on behalf of the entire CRA community. We have a working Board, and all members are expected to work on community issues.
The Computing Research Association seeks a highly motivated individual to serve as a Deputy Director for the Computing Community Consortium. The Deputy Director works with the CCC Director, Council Members, and the CRA staff to ensure that the CCC succeeds in its mission: to serve as a catalyst and enabler for the computing research community, to provide mechanisms for the community to identify compelling research visions for the future of the field and to articulate those visions to key stakeholders.
These guidelines were established to articulate successful strategies for mentoring African-American doctoral students in Computing Sciences (CS). iAAMCS defines “student mentoring” as the process of supporting, encouraging and guiding students’ academic and social progress with the goal of facilitating career and personal development. Grounded in project-based results and similar empirical research, the following guidelines emerged: (1) recruit strategically, (2) establish community, (3) foster a research culture, (4) provide holistic advising, (5) provide funding and (6) promote professional development. iAAMCS hopes that institutions, departments and faculty use these guidelines to bolster the participation of African-American students pursuing doctoral degrees in CS.
Although the iAAMCS Guidelines serve as best practices for mentoring African-American students in computing, these strategies are useful for optimal mentoring all students.
The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2018 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award.
The CRA Distinguished Service Award is presented to a person or multiple people who have made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community. The CRA A. Nico Habermann Award is presented to a person or multiple people who have made outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a wonderful way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
In the report of the CRA Taulbee Survey published in the May 2018 CRN, there is an error in specialty area labeling in Tables D4 (Employment of New PhD Recipients by Specialty) and D4a (Detail of Industry Employment). In both D4 and D4a, the column labels for High Performance Computing and Human Computer Interaction were swapped. In addition, in D4a the column labels in alphabetical sequence between Informatics: Biomedical/Other Science and Social Computing/Social Informatics were incorrect.
On Friday, June 29th, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2018 class of Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellows to the CRA office in Washington, D.C. These fellows, undergraduates at universities and colleges from across the United States, spent the summer at high-tech companies, firms, or trade associations in Washington, learning the intricacies of technology policy. Additionally, they took two class credits at George Mason University, and attended briefings at institutions such as the U.S. Capitol, Department of State, World Bank, and Federal Reserve. The fellows were in the office to attend a presentation by Brian Mosley, policy analyst in CRA’s Office of Government Affairs, covering the policy concerns and issues that the association works on and attempts to influence legislation and other concerns at the federal level.
As a researcher, I am fascinated by the challenge of advancing the high-level foundations of computer software (programming models, compilers, and runtimes) to productively exploit the latest advances in computing systems. While there has been a long tradition of research in this area since the dawn of computing, the rapid evolution of hardware has continuously fueled a need for new software technologies as old approaches quickly become obsolete. Current explorations of new hardware directions that go beyond Moore’s law have further amplified the motivation for this research direction.
From July 16-18, the Computing Research Association (CRA) held its biennial Conference at Snowbird with more than 300 people in attendance. Every two years, the chairs of computing and information departments, as well as the leaders of government and industrial laboratories from across the country and the world, gather in Snowbird, Utah, to network and discuss common issues concerning the future of the field.
The National Academies’ Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently released a study on the sexual harassment of women in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine, specifically looking at how it affects the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in these fields. The report examines the factors that predict high rates of sexual harassment and includes recommendations for addressing and preventing sexual harassment. Evidence reviewed in the study shows that organizational climate is the strongest predictor of sexual harassment in an environment and that it can either encourage or discourage sexually harassing behavior. Please join GUIRR for a webinar with two members of the authoring committee—Gilda Barabino, dean of the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York, and Vicki Magley, professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut—to discuss why addressing organizational climate is important to preventing sexual harassment and how certain policies and strategies recommended in the report can be applied in academia and industry to prevent sexual harassment.
Stuart Reges’ recent article entitled “Why Women Don’t Code” elicited strong reactions. I am a colleague of Reges’ in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (UW). Like a number of my colleagues, I found myself surprised and troubled by his article.
CRA has recently hired Alejandra Guzman as a program associate. In this role, Alejandra supports CRA and CRA-W program activities with meeting planning, workshops, outreach activities, and committee support.
CRA and CRA-W Board Member Ayanna Howard was recently named the recipient of the 2018 Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science and Diversifying Computing from the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT). “The Richard A. Tapia Award is awarded annually to an individual who demonstrates significant research leadership and strong commitment and contributions to diversifying computing.
CRA-W will hold early and mid career mentoring workshops for women on November 3-4 in Phoenix, AZ. The goal of these workshops is to provide an environment for mentoring, practical information, advice, and support among computing researchers.
To achieve their educational mission, computing departments at research universities increasingly depend on full-time teaching faculty who choose teaching as a long-term career. This memo discusses the need for teaching faculty, explores the impact of teaching faculty, and recommends best practices.
For the past 30 years I have had two passions – machine learning (ML) that makes a difference in the real world and increasing diversity in computer science (CS). For the first 26 years, I focused on my first passion and developed new approaches to ML though applications to remote sensing, neuroscience, digital libraries, astrophysics, content-based image retrieval of medical images, computational biology, chemistry, evidence-based medicine, detecting lesions in the MRIs of epilepsy patients, and predicting disease progression for MS patients. For the last four years, my focus has been on my second passion: increasing diversity in CS.
In April, NSF requested input from the research community on a policy change to eliminate/reduce deadlines for core programs in the CISE Directorate, and we passed along your feedback. This month, NSF announced a change to remove deadlines for all proposals to the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.
Recently, Nancy Amato, a robotics expert and CRA board member, was selected to lead the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science. She will be the first woman to hold this position at the University.
NSF CISE/IIS has several open program director positions. We encourage you consider serving in this role and sharing the opportunity with your colleagues.
This work directly follows previous work that analyzed current and future Computer Science needs via advertised tenure-track faculty searches for 2018. This follow-on work looks to understand the relative success of institutions in hiring the tenured/tenure-track faculty in the areas of Computer Science that were being sought.
We are less than two weeks away from the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird. CRA is excited to welcome the computing research leadership to this invitation-only biennial conference in Snowbird, Utah July 16-18.
July 1 marked a new fiscal year for CRA. We welcome seven new members to our board of directors: James Allan, Mark Hill, Ayanna Howard, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Margaret Martonosi, Rachel Pottinger, and Chris Ramming. Retiring from the board as of June 30 are Sarita Adve, Joel Emer, Greg Hager, Julia Hirschberg, H.V. Jagadish, Farnam Jahanian, and Elizabeth Mynatt. CRA would like to thank each of them for contributions during their service on the board.
The National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) brings together organizations throughout the United States that are committed to informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, computer science, and mathematics. NGCP serves more than 35,000 programs in 41 states and uses a collective impact model that builds the capacity of educational programs.
I’m Amita, a rising junior at Columbia University in New York City where I’m majoring in computer engineering and minoring in political science. I’m also really interested in data science and just joined the WuLab at Columbia’s Data Science Institute.
The fourth (and last NSF-funded) New Computing Faculty Workshops will be held August 5-10, 2018 in San Diego. The goal of the workshops is to help new computing faculty to be better and more efficient teachers. By learning a little about teaching, we will help new faculty (a) make their teaching more efficient and effective and (b) make their teaching more enjoyable. We want students to learn more and teachers to have fun teaching them.
On April 13-14, more than 400 women graduate students in computing from more than 150 institutions converged on San Francisco, CA, for the 2018 CRA-W Graduate Cohort for Women (CRA-W Grad Cohort). Throughout the two-day workshop, professional connections were made, new friendships were formed, and mentoring relationships with senior researchers were established.
CRA’s Education Committee (CRA-E) has recently selected its 2018 CRA-E Graduate Fellow – Robert (“Rob”) Bowden. Rob is a Ph.D. student in computer science at Harvard University. After earning his undergraduate degree at Harvard in 2013, he spent a year working as the course preceptor for Harvard’s CS50 course, and then returned to graduate school with Margo Seltzer as his adviser. Rob’s Ph.D. research includes work on file systems and code synthesis. His current work focuses on how to use the vast amount of CS50 solutions generated by students to not only detect errors in student programs but also propose ways to fix them. Rob’s goal is to advance automated program repair of buggy solutions to introductory programming assignments.
This article and the accompanying figures and tables present the results from the 47th annual CRA Taulbee Survey. The survey, conducted annually by the Computing Research Association, documents trends in student enrollment, degree production, employment of graduates, and faculty salaries in academic units in the United States and Canada that grant the Ph.D. in computer science (CS), computer engineering (CE), or information (I). Most of these academic units are departments, but some are colleges or schools of information or computing.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) is pleased to honor Mary Fernández with the 2018 Service to CRA Award for her work in transforming the visual identity and communications of the organization. Mary was a member of the CRA Board from 2009 to 2015, during which time she spearheaded several key initiatives to re-brand and revitalize communications.
Recently ACM announced that former CRA and CRA-W board member Jan Cuny has been named the recipient of the 2017 ACM Distinguished Service Award. She received the award for the establishment and tireless promotion of projects that have nationally transformed computer science education by increasing and diversifying access to high-quality CS education. From the announcement: When she joined […]
As you prepare to attend the biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird, we invite you to join an important event that is being organized by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) on Monday, July 16, 2018, from 10:00am to 1:00pm, in Salt Lake City, UT (this event will take place just prior to the main conference, and just a short distance away from Snowbird). This three-hour workshop will be an opportunity for the CISE community – and as department chairs, you all are a key part of this community! – to gather regarding a new effort on Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC). This effort involves the NSF/CISE core research programs, as well as the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace and Cyber-Physical Systems programs. The effort therefore impacts nearly all faculty who submit proposals to NSF/CISE.
Two recent articles have addressed the shortage of Computer Science professors at many institutions.
Inside Higher Ed featured an article titled “System Crash” on CS student complaints that their departments can’t meet demand. The article highlights the CRA Generation CS Report, the National Academies study, and Craig Wills’ November 2017 CRN article on faculty search results. The article places the concerns of students at specific institutions within the national context.
CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) recently underwent staffing changes when former Director Jane Stout left the CRA. Burçin Tamer, Ph.D., is now the Director of CERP and Heather Wright is the Associate Director. Under their leadership, CERP will extend its reach as a resource for the computing community through its Data Buddies Project, evaluation services, and other activities. Heather and Burçin are both excited to make contributions to the computing community and drive the broader mission of CRA to facilitate the development of strong, diverse talent in the field.
Our friends at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have asked for research community input on a proposed policy change to eliminate/reduce deadlines for core programs in the CISE Directorate. Given the increased pressures on securing federal funding and, in some cases, reduced capacity for grant management at computing research institutions, do you think the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate should follow the lead of the BIO and GEO directorates and consider eliminating or reducing deadlines for proposal submissions? What positive or negative impact could such a shift have on our community?
Supporting, celebrating, and advocating for women in computing is the mission that lies at the heart of the activities of ACM-W. Our longstanding projects of scholarships, celebrations, and student chapters provide opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to increase their technical knowledge while networking and building community. Recently we have begun to expand our activity to include projects that support populations of women in computing beyond students. This article provides an overview of all of our projects, old and new.
Approximately 100 graduate students in computing and more than 20 speakers assembled on March 16-17 in San Diego, CA, to convene the inaugural CRA Graduate Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities (URMD Grad Cohort). It was the first gathering of its kind hosted by CRA. This new iteration of the Grad Cohort Workshop focused on the following underrepresented groups in computing: Alaska Native, Black/African American, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and persons with disabilities. The workshop aimed to increase representation from these groups in computing research by building and mentoring nationwide communities through their graduate studies, and is modeled on the highly successful CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop for Women.
After serving for more than five years as CERP director, Jane Stout has left CRA to pursue a senior project director position for YOUGOV. During Jane’s tenure at CRA, she oversaw the Data Buddies Project; led CERP in evaluation work for the CRA-W, CCC, and CRA-E; and obtained an NSF grant to conduct computing education research focusing on diversity. Jane also gave numerous talks and interviews on the importance of diversity in computing and shared CERP’s research findings with the computing community.
While she will be missed by her colleagues at CRA, CERP, and the CRA-W community, we wish all the best for her as she embarks on this next stage of her career.
Last fall, the CRA Education Committee added a new resource to its website for “Teaching Computer Science: Capacity Building and Scaling.” Across the United States and Canada, universities and colleges are facing significant increases in undergraduate computer science (CS) enrollments. This surge has exceeded all previous CS program booms and there is a general sense that the current enrollment growth is substantially different than that of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. CRA’s Generation CS Study provides excellent insight into enrollment trends and their impact on computer science units, diversity, enrollment management strategies, and more.
The Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) is a consortium of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) committed to consolidating the strengths, resources, and efforts of public, private, federal, state, and local organizations that share the core value of increasing the number of Hispanics who pursue and complete baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing areas. CAHSI plays a critical role in evaluating, documenting, and disseminating effective practices that support students in computing disciplines at the critical junctures in the academic pipeline.
The 2018 NSF Workshop for Aspiring Principal Investigators (PIs) in Computer Systems Research (CSR) will help aspiring PIs gain a better understanding of the CSR program and prepare them for developing competitive CSR proposals in the future.
CRA-E’s new “Undergraduate Research Highlights” series showcases outstanding research done by undergraduate students at universities and colleges across North America. Each article features the story of a successful undergraduate researcher and offers personal insights into their experiences with finding an advisor, undertaking new research projects, and discovering how research can impact their personal and professional futures.
ACM has named John L. Hennessy, former president of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, professor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, recipients of the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry. Patterson is a former CRA Board Chair and will be a plenary speaker at the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird, and Hennessy was the keynote speaker at the 2012 CRA Conference at Snowbird.
Submissions opened March 15 for the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships. The fellowships were created to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field. The program will support students pursuing degrees at institutions anywhere in the world.
CRA members have elected five new members to its board of directors: James Allan, Maria Ebling, Ayanna Howard, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, and Rachel Pottinger. Current board members Michael Franklin, Stephanie Forrest, Kathryn McKinley, Greg Morrisett, and Vivek Sarkar were re-elected to the CRA board. Their terms run from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2021. CRA […]
Please nominate colleagues and peers who have extraordinarily advanced the scientific enterprise for this prestigious honor. Nominations and three letters of support must be submitted to NSF by April 16, 2018.
CRA Board Member Farnam Jahanian has been named President of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). From 2011 to 2014, Jahanian served as Assistant Director (AD) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2015, he was elected to the CRA Board of Directors and also received the CRA Distinguished Service Award. Jahanian is currently […]
On Monday, February 26, in Arlington, VA, the CRA hosted its annual Computing Research Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX Association) and the CSTB.
This year, the CRA Board of Directors selected two recipients of the 2018 A. Nico Habermann Award: Juan E. Gilbert from the University of Florida and Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Both individuals are being recognized for their contributions aimed at increasing the number and success of members of underrepresented groups in the computing research community. Gilbert has had an incredible impact on diversifying the field of computer science, especially on increasing the number of African-American Ph.D. recipients and faculty members in all of the institutions in which he has worked. Pérez Quiñones has tirelessly and passionately worked throughout his career for diversity and inclusion in computing at all levels, spanning from high school to Ph.D., especially for Latino/as.
Paul Messina was selected as the 2018 recipient of the CRA Distinguished Service Award for his significant contributions to the advancement of high performance computing and decades of service to the field. Messina has an incredible record of building and managing large-scale, diverse research activities. Over the course of his career, he has designed, directed, and otherwise executed numerous initiatives that have influenced U.S. policy and programs resulting in the U.S. leadership position in high-performance computing.
The ACM/IEEE Computer Society George Michael Memorial HPC (GMM) Fellowship is endowed in memory of George Michael, one of the founding fathers of the SC Conference series. The fellowship honors exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is on high performance computing applications, networking, storage or large-scale data analytics using the most powerful computers that are currently available. The Fellowship includes a $5,000 honorarium and travel expenses to attend SC18 in Dallas on November 15, where the GMM Fellowships will be formally presented.
CRA has recently hired Daniela Cárdenas as a program assistant. In her new role, Daniela supports CRA and CRA-W program activities with administrative and logistical matters such as planning meetings, workshops, outreach activities, and committee support.
The program for the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird has recently been updated. A third plenary session will consist of a panel on “Diversity in Computing Leadership” chaired by Carla Brodley. The confirmed participants include Shinder Dhillon, Head of Global Diversity & Inclusion – Engineering & Corporate Functions, Microsoft, Brian Reaves, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Dell, Inc., and Ayanna Howard, Chair, School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.
CRA wishes to thank the computing departments who distributed CERP’s Data Buddies survey during the fall of 2017. These departments’ collective effort provided vital data for CERP’s research and evaluation assessing students’ varied experiences in computing degree programs.
The Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant aims to recognize, support, and mentor diverse doctoral students as they complete their dissertation research in computing-related fields.
The President’s budget request for FY 2019 was released on February 12. CRA Director of Government Affairs Peter Harsha provided his analysis of the request in a post titled, “President’s Budget Request a Mixed Bag for Science, but it Could Have Been Much Worse.”
In addition to honoring exceptionally successful students, these awards identify some of the departments that are particularly effective at cultivating and promoting undergraduate research. A total of 94 colleges and universities have nominated students during the last three years.
The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce two recipients of the 2018 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award: Michael Ernst from the University of Washington in Seattle and Catherine Putonti from Loyola University in Chicago.
My research focuses on empowering individuals through computing technologies that more effectively match their knowledge, experience, abilities, and goals. The majority of my recent research has focused on accessibility-related issues. Working with my students, our research employs a broad definition of accessibility, seeking to empower individuals with disabilities as well as individuals who may experience challenges due to the environment in which they are using computing technologies.
The biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird is the flagship invitation-only conference for the leadership of the North American computing research community. A preliminary program is now available and will be updated on the CRA website as additional information becomes available.
The CRA Education Committee is now accepting applications for the CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program. The program provides opportunities for Ph.D. candidates in computing fields to contribute to CRA-E projects, network with computer science education advocates on the committee, engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students and promote undergraduate research and education at the national level.
AnitaB.org celebrates and recognizes the success of women technologists with a series of awards presented at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration to honor women making significant contributions to technology.
CRA-Women invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award (BECA). The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research.
On December 12, 2017, CRA hosted the Summit on Technology and Jobs in Washington, DC. The day was packed with sessions that explored issues surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence and the future of work. Leading technologists, economists, and policy experts offered their views on where technology is headed and what its impact may be, and on policy issues raised by these projections and possible policy responses. Videos and slides from the event are now available.
Greg Byrd has been appointed the new IEEE-CS representative on the CRA board of directors. Byrd joins David Ebert and replaces Tom Conte on the board. CRA would like to thank Conte for his contributions during his term of service on the board. Byrd is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina […]
The sessions will focus on how teaching faculty can strategize their involvement in departmental as well as research activities, different forms of scholarship and leadership activities to pursue, and best practices for success, promotion, and advancement.
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2018 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. This year’s nominees are a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several are authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others have made presentations at major conferences, and some have produced software artifacts that were in widespread use.
This work uses the same methodology as work from previous years to study where Computer Science departments are choosing to invest faculty positions by examining data obtained from advertised faculty searches for the current hiring season. While the number of and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline.
The ACM recently named 54 of its members as ACM Fellows for transformative contributions and advancing technology in the digital age. They were honored for seminal work in areas including artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, computer graphics, cloud computing, and software engineering.
Join Dr. Jane Stout, Director of the CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) for a webinar titled “Low Diversity in Tech: How Did It Happen and How Do We Fix It?”
Retention and graduation of underrepresented minorities and students with disabilities is critical to creating a strong pipeline of employees for both industry and academia. In early 2017, the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT) announced the call for nominations for the first annual CMD-IT University Award for Retention of Minorities and Students with Disabilities in Computer Science. The University Award was created to recognize a U.S. academic institution that has demonstrated a commitment and shown results for the retention of students from underrepresented groups in undergraduate computer science programs over the last five years.
The CS undergraduate program at the University of Illinois is among the largest in the nation. It has grown by 250 percent over the last decade to nearly 1,800 undergraduates—and it is still growing. In the last four years, the percentage of women in our CS programs rose from 10 percent to more than 25 percent. And our freshmen class in the College of Engineering rose from 11 percent women in 2012 to about 45 percent in 2016.
CRA Executive Director Andrew Bernat, board member H.V. Jagadish and former board member M. Tamer Özsu have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
What does it take to produce application code that performs as close as possible to a parallel architecture’s compute or memory peak performance? This question is one that programmers of high-performance architectures contemplate regularly since using such systems efficiently can solve problems faster, or solve larger or more complex problems.
This question fundamentally changes the approach to programming.
The biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird is the flagship invitation-only conference for the leadership of the North American computing research community. The upcoming conference will be held July 16-18, 2018 in Snowbird, Utah.
Facebook has launched an invitation to university faculty to submit short research proposals on hardware and software systems; a total of 5 awards are available. During this proposal cycle, Facebook is especially interested in soliciting proposals for research at the intersection of computer systems and machine learning, including, but not limited to:
The latest US News and World Report (USN&WR) ranking of Computer Science (CS) at global universities does a grave disservice to USN&WR readers and to CS departments all over the world. Last week, we respectfully asked for the ranking to be withdrawn. Unfortunately USN&WR declined.
The methodology used — rankings based on journal publications collected by Web of Science — ignores conference publications and as a consequence does not accurately reflect how research is disseminated in the CS community or how faculty receive recognition or have impact. Furthermore, the list of venues is not public. So while some may debate the soundness of any bibliometric-based rankings, there will be no debate about the flaws in the rankings USN&WR has published; the methodology makes inferences from the wrong data without transparency and, consequently, it arrives at an absurd ranking.
“The Disappearing American Grad Student” in last week’s New York Times explores reasons why foreign students in STEM (and computer science in particular) often outnumber domestic students at the graduate level.
The NAS report discusses strategies central for managing enrollment and resources, and makes recommendations for departments and institutions. Its findings and recommendations provide much-needed guidelines on how institutions can allocate resources to meet growing student demand and to adequately support their computer science department in the increasingly central role of computer science in education and research.
The Sixth Heidelberg Laureate Forum will be held September 23-28, 2018. The application process begins November 6, 2017. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum was created by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies, ACM, the International Mathematical Union, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters to provide an opportunity for young researchers to spend a week with winners of the ACM Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Abel Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, and Fields Medal.
The New York Times recently published an article on jobs in STEM. The main takeaway from the piece – job opportunities in STEM fields vary widely; but computer science job openings outpace graduates. Here’s a snippet: Much of the public enthusiasm for STEM education rests on the assumption that these fields are rich in job opportunity. Some […]
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released a new report titled “Assessing and Responding to the Growth of Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments“. The report urges U.S colleges and universities to respond to the ongoing surge in undergraduate enrollments in computer science programs, which is straining resources. The report was prepared by the NAS Committee on […]
The VMware academic team is pleased to announce the second annual award in support of the computer science research community. The objective of this award is to call attention to a valuable and promising body of emerging computer science systems research and provide support for continued advances by an emerging research leader.
For more information about the symposium please see the agenda and symposium website. The event will be livestreamed here starting at 8:30AM EDT on Monday, October 23rd. You can also join the twitter conversation using #CCCsymposium!
Professor Craig E. Wills presents new work that directly follows his previous analysis of current and future computer science needs via advertised tenure-track faculty searches for 2017. This follow-on work looks to understand the relative success of institutions in hiring the tenured/tenure-track faculty in the areas of computer science that were being sought.
The Computing Research Association seeks your help in suggesting nominations for its board of directors. We want individuals who have the time, energy and initiative to work on CRA issues on behalf of the entire CRA community. We have a working board, and all members are expected to be involved with community issues.
This award program honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
Recently, CRA board member Kim Hazelwood (Facebook) and Natalie Enright Jerger (University of Toronto) published an article in Computer Architecture Today that analyzed gender diversity in the sub-discipline. CRA’s Jane Stout provides her commentary.
CRA’s biennial Career Mentoring Workshop will be offered on February 26-27, 2018 at The Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Va.
The workshop provides career advice and mentoring activities for junior assistant professors in computer science and engineering. The workshop will include a series of panels, plus opportunities to network with senior researchers and representatives from government agencies. The 2018 workshop will also feature a session held at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Participants will have the opportunity to visit NSF and meet with NSF CISE program directors.
Applications are open for the upcoming CRA-Women Graduate Student Cohort for Women which will be held April 13-14, 2018 in San Francisco, CA. CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women is a two-day workshop for female students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields.
IBM is pleased to announce the 2018 IBM Two-Year Worldwide PhD Fellowship for the academic years of 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. Strong collaboration with faculty, students and universities is vital to IBM. The PhD Fellowship Program advances this collaboration by recognizing and supporting exceptional PhD students who want to make their mark in promising and disruptive technologies. In 2018, the Fellowship Program is focusing on: AI, blockchain, security, and quantum computing. IBM is well positioned to advance these technologies and exploit their ability to transform industries and societies.
Engaging undergraduates in research can be an effective way to increase their confidence, perception of science, and sense of belonging. But at many large research universities, it can be difficult for undergraduate students—especially early undergraduates—to find research opportunities. Furthermore, even when they find opportunities, they might not have the background, training, or support to be successful. These issues are particularly acute for women and other underrepresented groups in computer science as they tend to have less pre-college computer science experience.
This year, CRA Board Chair Susan Davidson received the IEEE TCDE Impact Award for “expanding the reach of data engineering within scientific disciplines.” In this interview, Davidson reveals how her interest in bioinformatics came about and how her career led to this award. Two of her favorite problems have been data integration and data provenance.
If you have ever held a position as an Assistant Professor in computing at a US college/university, we respectfully request that you take a few moments of your time to complete a survey about your experience. The survey solicits feedback on a variety of potential factors that can influence a common expectation in the Assistant Professor rank, publishing and presentation of scholarly research. Analysis of survey responses will hopefully yield results that inform how to better support graduate students and new professors in generating more productive publication and presentation records. Retention of junior faculty is of heightened concern at present due to booming enrollments in many Computer Science programs.
The CRA-Education Committee has added to its website a new resource for “Teaching Computer Science: Capacity Building and Scaling.” Across the United States and Canada, universities and colleges are facing significant increases in undergraduate computer science (CS) enrollments. This surge has exceeded all previous CS program booms and there is a general sense that the current enrollment growth is substantially different than that of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. CRA’s Generation CS Study provides excellent insight into enrollment trends and their impact on computer science units, diversity, enrollment management strategies, and more.
In fall 2017, CRA will be conducting the usual Taulbee Survey and a one-time Teaching Faculty Survey. The Taulbee Survey schedule will be as follows.
By September 8: All doctoral departments will be contacted to update Taulbee user information. The academic unit head will receive an email and so will the Taulbee primary contact, if separate.
September 13: PDF will be available for data gathering.
September 19: Salary section opens for input.
September 25: Main section opens for input.
November 20: Due date for salary section.
December 18: Preliminary salary report available to participants.
January 8, 2018: Due date for the main Taulbee section.
April 2018: Full Taulbee report to CRA members and participating departments.
May 2018: Published in CRN.
If you have any questions, contact Betsy Bizot at bizot@cra.org
On December 12, 2017, the Computing Research Association will host a Summit on Technology and Jobs in Washington, DC. The goal of the summit is to put the issue of technology and jobs on the national agenda in an informed and deliberate manner. It will bring together leading technologists, economists, and policy experts who will offer their views on where technology is headed and what its impact may be, and on policy issues raised by these projections and possible policy responses.
The Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) held the 2017 Change Leader Forum in Westminster, Colorado from June 12 – 14, 2017. The Forum provided attendees an unparalleled opportunity to engage with diversity and inclusion advocates, and learn research based best-practices related to gender equity and inclusion in engineering. Nearly 200 attendees representing a variety of institutions and roles participated in the Forum, including university leaders, corporate partners, engineering faculty, K-12 teachers, and academic diversity officers.
The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is excited to announce a new and improved version of its Conquer website (conquer.cra.org) for CS undergraduates interested in research and graduate school. The site also hasresources for faculty who are interested in mentoring undergraduate research and helping their students apply to graduate school.
The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2018 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award. The deadline for receipt of nominations is December 8, 2017.
We are excited to announce the eleventh year of the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship program which aims to recognize, support, and mentor students as they continue their doctoral education in computer science, electrical engineering and mathematics, as well as interdisciplinary studies intersecting with those domains.
Two years ago, the leadership of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee looked to our organization, the Computing Research Association, to endorse an approach to reauthorize funding at a number of key Federal science agencies. The proposed legislation would provide increases for computing research funding at the National Science Foundation while keeping the overall agency budget essentially flat by bolstering computing — along with mathematics, physics, biology, and engineering — at the expense of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences (and the geosciences). The committee Chair hoped that CRA, which represents nearly 200 academic computing departments and industrial research labs — including computing research labs at IBM, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft — would support the approach, given the direct and indirect benefits increased investment in computing research at NSF would have to our member institutions.
Just about every day we learn about a new application of cognitive computing. From predicting schizophrenia to analyzing Wimbledon fan experiences, cognitive computing and artificial intelligence have arrived and are making a measurable difference in our daily lives. But with all the excitement around real-world applications of this powerful technology, it is easy to forget that the Cognitive Era, as we call it at IBM, is still in its infancy. And there is a tremendous amount of work yet to be done. Collaborating with leading minds around the world is the key to fulfilling the true potential of cognitive computing. And that’s why IBM formed the Cognitive Horizons Network (CHN), a network of the world’s leading universities committed to working with IBM to accelerate the development of core technologies needed to advance the promise of cognitive computing.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a wonderful way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
I study how data and people interact. For more than a decade, I have been studying how to help humans access and manage information. While there is a lot of good work on human-computer interaction and on data visualization, much less work exists on “human-data interaction.” Why can anyone use Google to get information of interest while it is so difficult to get useful information from a structured database? The difference lies in the specificity of the request. A web search engine receives your request and tries to guess your intention. You know that it has a limited understanding of your need, and are happy to have it get you into “the zone,” from where you can explore for yourself. On the other hand, a traditional database query engine can give you complete answers to complex questions but requires that you precisely specify your query. If you make a small mistake, you are out of luck. Wouldn’t it be helpful to devise database query mechanisms that you can actually use and get reasonable results from even if you don’t ask it totally correctly? Complementarily, can the system help you ask a better question in the first place? Similar concerns also apply to the creation of a database, and helping users manage their data.
The 2016 Taulbee Survey report, published in the May 2017 issue of CRN, did not include the results of a component that was introduced in the most recent survey–namely, bachelor’s enrollment data from specific courses in the curriculum. This component was introduced as a result of what was learned in the CRA Enrollment Report (see https://turing.cra.org/data/generation-cs). Unfortunately, we were unable to compile the data in time to feature the results in the May issue.
Given the convergence of burgeoning enrollments in CS across many universities and colleges in the United States and the need to re-imagine the way computer science is taught to address 21st century challenges, the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting a 2-day summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pending anticipated funding.
Non-tenure-track teaching faculty are becoming more important to doctoral departments to help them meet their educational goals and responsibilities, particularly in response to the current enrollments surge. In the Generation CS report (available at https://turing.cra.org/data/Generation-CS/), 65% of doctoral departments reported in fall 2015 that they had increased the number of teaching faculty on continuing appointments in response to increased enrollments, and an additional 16% were considering it. Similarly, between fall 2006 and fall 2016, the proportion of Taulbee Survey respondents reporting at least one full-time non-tenure-track teaching faculty member increased from 81% to 87% and, more notably, the median number of such teaching faculty at the departments reporting nonzero counts rose from 3 to 6.
CRA’s own Jane Stout, director of the CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP), was recently featured in the article “Q&A: Researcher Shares Strategies to Increase Diversity in Tech,” in EdTech Magazine: Focus on Higher Education. Amy Burroughs, managing editor of EdTech spoke to Jane about why the lack of diversity in tech persists, how institutions benefit from diverse groups and how IT leaders can build more diverse teams. Drawing from her social science background and her current research on factors that influence women and minorities pursuing computing careers, Jane emphasized building a sense of belonging and community and encouraged IT managers to actively recruit women who can serve as role models and mentors. She also encourages IT managers to recognize that there are different types of effective leadership styles.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce a new iteration of the Graduate Cohort Workshop designed specifically for underrepresented minorities in computing and persons with disabilities. Applications are now open for the inaugural CRA URM Graduate Cohort Workshop, which will be held March 16-17, 2018 in San Diego, CA.
After serving the CRA-W community as a Program Associate for two and a half years, Melissa Borts has left CRA to return to school. Melissa is returning to her alma mater, the University of Maryland, to pursue her MBA.
On Tuesday, July 11, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2017 class of Eben Tisdale Fellows to the CRA Washington, DC office. These fellows, all of whom are undergraduates at universities and colleges across the United States, spent the summer at high-tech companies, firms, or trade associations in Washington, learning the intricacies of technology policy. Additionally, they took two class credits at George Mason University, and attended briefings at the U.S. Capitol, Department of State, World Bank, Federal Reserve, and other institutions. The fellows visited the office to attend a presentation by Brian Mosley, CRA’s Office of Government Affairs policy analyst, that covered the policy concerns and issues the association works on and influences at the federal level.
At the CRA Education Committee (CRA-E) meeting in June, Lori Pollock (University of Delaware) stepped up to replace Ran Libeskind-Hadas (Harvey Mudd College) as CRA-E co-chair. She will join current co-chair Susanne Hambrusch (Purdue University), and Ran will remain a member of the CRA-E committee.
The 2017 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing is being held September 20-23 in Atlanta Georgia. This year’s theme, Diversity: Simply Smarter, evokes the basic yet irrefutable concept that diversity is simply the smarter choice.
July 1 marks a new fiscal year for CRA. We welcome four new members to our board of directors: Carla Brodley, Kim Hazelwood, Brian Noble, and Jaime Teevan. Retiring from the board as of June 30, 2017 are David Culler, Mary Czerwinksi, Margaret Martonosi, and Margo Seltzer. CRA would like to thank each of them for contributions during their service on the board.
On June 30, Laura Haas, former CRA vice chair, will retire from IBM research after 36 years in order to tackle a new challenge. In August, she will become dean of the new College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She reflects on her time at IBM a blog post – “Laura Haas: 36 years of making IBM Research ‘Famous for our science, vital to the world.'”
This article describes strategies we have employed at the University of Washington to increase the prominence and impact of our program. In the past few years we have been elevated from a department to the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, we have begun construction on a second building that will double our space, and we have received legislative investments that will double our enrollment while preserving our ability to closely mentor students. While we have some important advantages (principal among them Seattle’s emergence as a leading center of technology in multiple sectors) and some particular circumstances (such as our role as a public university, dependent upon legislative support and bearing regional responsibilities), we believe that many of these strategies will be usable by others.
Over the 30 years since I began graduate school, my computer architecture research has explored many topics, but the ongoing theme has been attention to how technology and application trends and constraints influence hardware and system design, particularly at the hardware-software interface.
By Emily Tang, CRA Tisdale Fellow I’ve just finished my second year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I’m majoring in electrical engineering and computer science with additional focuses in linguistics and applied international studies. I’m currently figuring out whether I’d like to pursue studying education technology (in particular technology to assist bilingual learning), […]
The ACM International Computing Education Research (ICER) Conference will hold a workshop on Research on Learning about Machine Learning Organizers: Ben Shapiro (University of Colorado Boulder) Peter Norvig (Google) Rebecca Fiebrink (Goldsmiths University of London) When: Monday, August 21, 2017 09:00-17:00 Machine learning is transforming many areas of computer science. From natural language processing and search […]
The third New Computing Faculty Workshop will be held August 6-8, 2017 in San Diego. The goal of the workshop is to help computing faculty at research intensive universities to be better and more efficient teachers. By learning a little about teaching, we will help new faculty (a) make their teaching more efficient and effective (e.g., students learn more with less input time from faculty) and (b) make their teaching more enjoyable. The workshops were described in Communications of the ACM in the May 2017 issue.
With graduate enrollment increasing for women in computer and information sciences, the entry point for the field’s educational pipeline is more robust than ever. Yet, it appears that the challenge remains to increase retention and completion of degrees. In order to expand the pipeline, our efforts must focus on both recruitment of potential talents and support throughout graduate studies that leads to desired career outcomes.
Lydia Tapia, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, was recently named the recipient of the 2017 CRA-W Borg Early Career Award (BECA). The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W, and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research. The annual award is given to a woman in computer science or engineering who has made significant research contributions and contributed to her profession, especially in the outreach to women.
As part of its mission to develop a next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the fourth offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We seek nominations for participants.
Most broadening participation efforts have focused on women and underrepresented minorities. However, for more than 10 years, AccessComputing has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to increase the successful participation of students with disabilities in academic programs and careers. AccessComputing addresses underrepresentation by providing multiple activities for students with disabilities.
“What are computer users doing that is wasting their time?” This question guides my research. I construe computer systems research quite broadly; if I can build it, it’s a systems problem. This breadth has let me pursue questions in visualization as well as operating systems; machine learning and computer architecture; file systems, performance analysis, graph processing, databases, and numerous other areas. Some people might say I have a short attention span; I just like to claim that I have broad interests!
Today, more than 50,000 high school students will take the inaugural Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP-CSP) exam. Ruthe Farmer, former senior policy advisor for Tech Inclusion in the White House explains why this is such a significant milestone for computer science education in an article in the Huffington Post.
Former CRA Board Member Alfred Z. Spector was named one of the recipients of the 2016 ACM Software System Award. Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Michael L. Kazar, Robert N. Sidebotham, David A. Nichols, Michael J. West, John H. Howard, Spector and Sherri M. Nichols were honored with the award for developing the Andrew File System (AFS).
The CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) turns four years old this month. During the past four years, CERP has been working steadily toward its goal of building diversity in computing through evaluation and social science research. CERP is staffed by Director Jane Stout, Research Scientist Burcin Tamer, and Research Associate Heather Wright. As seen on CERP’s About page, CERP staff are an eclectic mix of social scientists with expertise in quantitative and qualitative methods and a passion for diversity research.
On May 1, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger announced that Jeannette M. Wing, currently corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, will become the Avanessians Director of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and Professor of Computer Science. From Columbia’s Announcement: “Jeannette Wing is a pioneering figure in the world of computer science research and education. Her addition to the […]
What value should a memory read return? The answer to this simple question is surprisingly complex for modern systems running parallel software. The memory consistency model, which governs this answer, is a fundamental part of the hardware-software interface, but has been one of the most challenging and contentious areas in parallel hardware and software specification. […]
At the CRA board meeting in February, Executive Director Andrew Bernat presented members of the CRA Enrollment Committee: Institution Subgroup with glass awards to thank them for their service on the project, which spanned nearly two years. Former CRA Board Member Tracy Camp leads the CRA Enrollment Committee.
Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) is the North American subsidiary of the corporate research and development organization of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and a Lab and Center member of CRA.
CRA has recently hired Claire Brady as a program manager. In her new role, she is responsible for planning CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) program events and providing support to initiatives that enrich the community’s awareness of CRA, its committees, mission, and services.
Former CRA Board Member Valerie Taylor has been appointed as the next director of the Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS) division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, effective July 3, 2017. She most recently served as the senior associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Engineering and a Regents Professor and the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.
As a little girl growing up in the Dominican Republic, Yerika Jimenez, currently a Ph.D. student in computing at the University of Florida, noticed she had a knack for fixing things – cell phones, TVs, radios. Everyone in her community would bring her broken items, and she would return them repaired. A few years later, when Jimenez was nine years old, her family settled in New Jersey, and her fascination with technology continued.
The main focus of my recent research has been computer science education and the role computer science can play in defining and advancing its own education research. Learning computational principles and learning to code is hard, and teaching these subjects is even harder. For most computer science topics, we know very little about how different learners’ best learn; how to effectively teach the material to audiences with different abilities, backgrounds, and goals; and how to reliably assess learning.
CRA Board Member Greg Hager Inducted to American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows. CCC’s Cynthia Dwork Co-winner of 2017 Godel Prize.
Microsoft, Inc. and Google are now offering scholarships to support students to attend the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. Encourage your students to apply to these scholarship opportunities.
Since May 2013, the CERP team has published a graphic in each issue of Computing Research News (CRN) that analyzes the experiences of underrepresented students and professionals in computing. Each month, this newsletter will share the infographic published in CRN and news about CERP. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, subscribe here.
CRA’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is pleased to welcome its new 2017 CRA-E Graduate Student Fellow – Booma Sowkarthiga Balasubramani. The Graduate Fellows Program was established in 2015 to give graduate students the opportunity to contribute to CRA-E projects, engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students, and promote computer science research and undergraduate education at the national level.
Thanks to the continued support from sponsors, the NCWIT Academic Alliance (AA) is pleased to announce the call for nominations and proposals for the latest round of awards.
On Monday, February 27, in Washington, D.C., the Computing Research Association hosted its annual Computing Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX Association) and the CSTB.
CRA members have elected two new members to its board of directors: Carla Brodley and Kim Hazelwood. Current board members Nancy Amato, Susan Davidson, Dan Grossman, Brent Hailpern, Susanne Hambrusch, Barbara Ryder and Ellen Zegura were re-elected to the CRA board. Also beginning July 1, Brian Noble will be the USENIX representative to the CRA board replacing Margo Seltzer. Retiring from the board as of June 30, 2017 are David Culler, Mary Czerwinski and Seltzer. CRA thanks them all for contributions during their service on the board.
At the CRA board meeting on February 28, the CRA board of directors voted to re-elect its current board officers to serve new two-year terms beginning July 1, 2017. The board officers include: Susan Davidson (chair), Susanne Hambrusch (vice chair), Ron Brachman (treasurer), and Greg Morrisett (secretary).
CERP recently extracted Web data to observe the career progression of women who had participated in the CRA-W’s 2008 or 2009 Career Mentoring Workshops (CMWs) compared to a sample of women who had never participated in CMWs. We obtained the comparison sample from a population of women who earned their Ph.D.s in computer science during the same time period as the participants. We collected current career information including job titles (e.g., associate professor) and job setting (e.g., academia vs. industry/labs) for both groups. We then categorized job titles as entry level (e.g., assistant professor, software engineer), mid level (e.g., associate professor, senior engineer), and senior level (e.g., professor, principal program manager), collapsed across job setting. To test for a systematic difference in job rankings between workshop participants and the comparison group, we ran a 2 (Group) x 3 (Job Title Rank) Chi-squared test and found a statistically significant difference in rankings across the two groups, χ2 (2, N = 181) = 8.46, p < 0.05. Specifically, CMW participants were less likely than non-participants to be in an entry level position, p < .05, and more likely to be in a senior level position than non-participants, p < .05.
Since I started graduate school in 1997, I have considered myself a member of the programming languages research community — and I continue to attend and publish in the annual conferences of this vibrant computing subfield. But over the last 5-10 years, I have also found myself increasingly passionate about opportunities for computing researchers to focus on ways to influence computing education beyond, for those of us who are academics, our own classrooms and independent studies. Let me share some of the projects I have enjoyed (seriously!) and others I wish I had more time to pursue.
Generation CS: Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments Surge Since 2006 Across the United States and Canada, universities and colleges are facing a significant increase in enrollment in both undergraduate computer science (CS) courses and programs. The current enrollment surge has exceeded previous CS booms, and there is a general sense that the current growth in enrollment […]
My research revolves around tracking and understanding users’ emotional states and leveraging that information as additional context for the design of emotionally sentient systems. Some of the systems we have built have been designed for a user’s own personal reflection. Our first application, AffectAura, provided users with their own behavior patterns over time, such as what they were doing, where they were, who they were with and how they felt. This information could be used to make personal decisions about behavior change—if certain activities usually result in your feeling good or bad, perhaps you want to increase or decrease those behaviors.
A paper from CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) was recently named an “Exemplary paper” in the 2017 SIGCSE Proceedings. New this year, the SIGCSE program chairs recognized a new category of the top 25% of accepted papers as “Exemplary papers”, highlighted for their accomplishment of high quality, novelty and broad appeal to […]
Today, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced it has elected 84 new members and 22 foreign members. Among those elected were Julia Hirschberg, CRA-W co-chair and former CRA board member, and Katherine Yelick, CCC council member. Several of the members elected have a background in computing research; congratulations to all. Julia Hirschberg: Percy K. and Vida […]
My research involves understanding and facilitating the life cycle of cognitive software, which is substantially different than the life cycle of conventional software. This difference has profound implications for the methodology and tools required to build such software. Cognitive software possesses at least one “cognitive” or “intelligent” component, such as a component implemented using machine learning, neural networks, or rules. Multiple cognitive components will often be involved in a cognitive application or service, but even just one component is enough to impart special and challenging complications.
The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce three winners of the CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award. Congratulations to the 2017 award recipients: Margaret Burnett from Oregon State University, Nayda Santiago from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus, and Margo Seltzer from Harvard University. These outstanding individuals are recognized for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate […]
The Computing Research Association released the following statement in response to President Trump’s new Executive Order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States”:
Yesterday, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) announced the release of the 2017 Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (WMPD) report, the federal government’s most comprehensive look at the participation of these three demographic groups in science and engineering education and employment.
CRA wishes to thank the computing departments who distributed CERP’s Data Buddies survey during the fall of 2016! The collective effort of these departments provides data for CERP’s research on students’ experiences and successes in computing degree programs.
CRA brings together people from academia, government labs, and industrial labs. For me, coming from industry, Snowbird is an unbeatable opportunity to take the pulse of academia. One of the hot topics in 2016 was the Data Science juggernaut. I was glad to join Barbara Ryder (Chair) and Lise Getoor (Co-Chair) in organizing the panel session: Data Science in the 21st Century, which was well attended and full of energy and ideas. After CRA’s Committee on Data Science (Lise Getoor, Chair, David Culler, Eric de Sturler, David Ebert, Mike Franklin, and H.V. Jagadish) published the bulletin article Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science, David Culler and I sat down for a follow-up chat: A Conversation on Data Science.
The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is pleased to announce the “Undergraduate Research Listing Service.” This free service is now available for faculty and other researchers to advertise undergraduate research opportunities and for undergraduates to find such opportunities. The site can be found here: http://conquer.cra.org/research-opportunities.
Krintz believes it is important in computing research to push technology forward by including people with diverse perspectives and ideas. To do that, she supports increasing underrepresented minority participation in computing. “I think it benefits both society and technology in general. Personally, it’s just so inspiring to see young people have new ideas, get excited, and want to go out and change the world.”
In CERP’s 2015 Data Buddies survey, computing majors were asked whether they had thought about changing to a non-computing major during the past year. Thirteen percent of students who responded to this question said that they had. The word clouds here were created using students’ comments about the reasons they considered leaving computing and factors that helped them stay. Some of the most frequently encountered words in students’ reasons for considering leaving computing were “classes”, “hard”, “difficult”, “work”, and “time”. On the other hand, students’ responses regarding the factors that helped them stay in computing contained words such as “job”, “degree”, and “friends”.
The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) will host a one-day workshop on CAREER Proposal Writing on March 20, 2017. This workshop will be held at the Hilton Arlington, near the National Science Foundation. The goal of this workshop is to introduce junior CAREER-eligible faculty to the NSF CAREER program and help them to prepare their CAREER proposals to target CISE programs. Attendees will have the opportunity to improve their skills in proposal writing, as well as to interact with NSF program directors from different CISE divisions (ACI, CCF, CNS, and IIS) and recent NSF CAREER awardees.
CRA Board Member Ellen Zegura was named one of the “10 Women in Networking/Communications That You Should Know” by Networking Networking Women (N2 Women), a discipline-specific community of researchers in the communications and networking research fields. Zegura is a faculty member at Georgia Tech and also a member of the CRA executive committee.
The Computing Research Association Education Committee (CRA-E) is now accepting applications for the CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program. The program provides opportunities for Ph.D. candidates in computing fields to contribute to CRA-E projects, network with computer science education advocates on the committee, engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students and promote undergraduate research and education at the national level.
CRA-E plans to appoint up to two graduate fellows per year, who will serve as members of the committee, providing a voice for graduate students. The fellows will attend the annual CRA-E meeting (travel expenses funded by CRA-E), serve on a CRA-E subcommittee related to their interests and expertise, and contribute to the CRA-E Conquer site that provides resources for undergraduate research and applying to graduate school.
CRA-Women invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award (BECA). he award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research.
As computer science departments across the country grow rapidly, we all may feel overwhelmed by the staggering growth of our enrollments. While faculty growth still has not caught up with the influx of students, we cannot be anything but happy at the diversity of students who are choosing to become computer science majors. Many people may believe that alumni engagement begins after students earn their diplomas. That assumption is false. Alumni engagement begins the moment that students start their education in our departments. With planning, outreach, and genuine interest in their lives and careers, we make alumni engagement an important part of our mission in the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland (UMD).
You can now view videos from the De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQFpLGNQdPn62wuMuITAbFg. Recently, CRA was a sponsor and participated in the De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, which focused on the impact of the amazing technologies being developed by the computing research community on the […]
Microsoft is a Lab and Center member of CRA. This article is the second in a series of our industry member profiles.
Jeannette M. Wing joined Microsoft Research in January 2013, after holding positions in academia and government, most recently at Carnegie Mellon University and the National Science Foundation (NSF). From 2007 to 2010, she served as assistant director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the NSF. Wing is a former CRA board member and recipient of the 2011 CRA Distinguished Service Award. Her areas of expertise are in trustworthy computing, formal methods, concurrent and distributed systems, programming languages, and software engineering.
CRA recently was a sponsor and participated in the De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, which focused on the impact of the amazing technologies being developed by the computing research community on the nature of work and employment. The conference was held at Rice University with primary funding from the De Lange Conference Fund at Rice, which brings top experts and major figures to its campus in order to focus on a topic of great concern to society.
Tanya Amert, a computer science Ph.D. student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found herself drawn to computer science because she enjoyed figuring out how things work. At 13 years old, she was a big fan of the Neopets website and online community. Amert noticed some users had customized homepages, and her interest grew even more. Despite not knowing any HTML at the time, she learned how to look at the source code and figured out how to change the color of the scroll bar within the CSS. “I discovered that specific lines of HTML made that happen. And I thought that was mind boggling and awesome.”
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced its 2016 Elected Fellows. Former CRA Board Treasurer Phillip Bernstein (Microsoft Research) and current CRA Board Member Josep Torrellas (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) were both elected Fellows.
This year’s nominees were a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several were authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others had made presentations at major conferences, and some had produced software artifacts that were in widespread use.
The mission of the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) is to increase the success and participation of women in computing research and education at all levels. There are several ways you can get involved by mentoring students, submitting proposals and sharing these opportunities with your colleagues and students.
The ACM recently named 53 of its members as ACM Fellows for major contributions in areas including artificial intelligence, cryptography, computer architecture, high performance computing and programming languages.
A recent White House blog post by Ruthe Farmer, Senior Policy Advisor for Tech Inclusion, emphasizes that Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an opportunity to join the #CSforAll movement and give every student the opportunity to learn computer science. On that note, with the kick off of CSEdWeek yesterday, the White House released a fact sheet detailing the great scope of CS for All efforts, including a new CSforAll program solicitation from NSF called Computer Science for All: Researcher Practitioner Partnerships (CS for All: RPP).
The eighth annual Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) will be held next week, December 5 – 11. CSEdWeek is “a call to action to raise awareness of computer science education and computing careers for students, educators, and the public.” This is a great opportunity to raise awareness about the impact of computing and the critical need for computer science education. Originally conceived by the Computing in the Core coalition, Code.org organizes CSEdWeek as a grassroots campaign supported by 350 partners and 100,000 educators worldwide.
In February, Ayanna Howard from Georgia Institute of Technology received the 2016 A. Nico Habermann Award for her sustained commitment to increasing diversity in computing. Howard is currently a CRA-W board member, and at Georgia Tech, she has provided research opportunities to dozens of undergraduates – more than 75% of whom are underrepresented minorities or women, and a majority of these students have gone on to graduate school. Nominations for the 2017 A. Nico Habermann Award are due on Friday, December 9.
By Shar Steed, CRA Communications Specialist Earlier this year, Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College (HMC), received the CRA Distinguished Service award for her tireless commitment to and profound impact on the computing research community. Nominations for the 2017 Distinguished Service Award are due on Friday, December 9. Throughout her career thus far, Klawe has […]
Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) shared a summary of actions to take to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and technology. The post titled, “Raising the Floor: Sharing What Works in Workplace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” was written by Megan Smith, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and […]
The Heidelberg Laureate Forum was created by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies, ACM, the International Mathematical Union, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters to provide an opportunity for young researchers to spend a week with winners of the ACM Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Abel Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, and Fields Medal. To date four have been held and all have been viewed as a major success by the laureates and the 200 young researchers in computer science and mathematics who attended each forum. Details can be found at http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/. The inclusion of the ACM Prize in Computing is new this year and will further enrich the computing content of the Forum.
The wealth of faculty searches in Computer Science during this hiring season for positions starting in 2017 again affords the opportunity to study areas of Computer Science where departments are choosing to invest in new faculty hires. While the number and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline.
We analyzed ads from 347 institutions seeking to fill hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science. There is a 30% one-year (and 56% two-year) increase in the number of institutions searching for tenure-track faculty in Computer Science and a 35% one-year(and 71% two-year) increase in the number of positions being searched for. The number of institutions searching and positions seeking to be filled has increased even more for non-PhD-granting institutions.
Recently, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named computational mathematician Richard Tapia from Rice University, the recipient of the 2016 AAAS Public Engagement with Science Award. The award recognizes Tapia’s “remarkable career blending world-class scholarship, admirable mentoring and profound contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and public engagement.”
On Monday, November 14, CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) distributed its annual Data Buddies surveys to more than 110 participating “buddy” computing departments.
Buddy departments send the survey to students affiliated with computing (e.g., majors; minors; students enrolled in CS courses; graduate students), and in return they receive a customized report on their students’ responses. The survey measures students’ experiences in computing (e.g., sense of belonging), aspirations for the future (e.g., intentions to pursue a Ph.D.), and participation in computing activities (e.g., formal research experiences).
CERP uses data buddies data to conduct evaluation as well as social science research on diversity issues in computing.
Is your department a buddy? If not, help the computing community by volunteering your department to become a Data Buddy today! Visit CERP’s website to learn more, view our list of buddies, and sign up: http:/cra.org/cerp/data-buddies/.
By Shar Steed, CRA Communications Specialist Morgan Carroll, a senior studying computer science at University of Texas at Tyler, fondly remembers her grandfather buying her a HP Pavilion with Windows 98 when she was eight years old. “From then on I just loved computers. In high school, I figured out that I was good at […]
Today, former CRA board member Martha Pollack was named the 14th president of Cornell University. Pollack is currently provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan. Cornell University Board of Trustees unanimously elected her, and the position will begin on April 17, 2017.
The CRA Taulbee Survey is in progress. The deadline for the salary section is November 18 and the deadline for the rest of the survey is January 18, 2017. If you are the academic unit head of a U.S. or Canadian department granting doctoral degrees in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and/or Information, you should have received emails about […]
Facebook has announced the Facebook Emerging Scholar Program, which is designed to identify promising doctoral students and support them in their research efforts. The Facebook Emerging Scholar award is also specifically designed to support talented students from underrepresented minority groups pursuing their Ph.D.’s while delivering innovative research. The award is open to first or second year Ph.D. students who are members of an underrepresented minority group in the technology sector. Emerging Scholar recipients studying computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system architecture, or a related area will be awarded tuition and fees for two years in addition to a two year $37,000 annual stipend and
The Karlstrom Award is presented annually to an outstanding educator who is appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution; recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies; effecting new curriculum development or expansion in computer science and engineering; or making a significant contribution to ACM’s educational mission. Those teachers with ten years or less experience are given special consideration.
The University at Buffalo (UB) Department of Computer Science and Engineering is celebrating its 50th anniversary this academic year. It has chosen this occasion to honor successful women in computing with a year-long speaker series. The Distinguished Speaker Series highlights several CRA board members.
Calling all teachers, counselors, administrators, mentors, or other influencers who support high school women’s passion for computing and technology! Applications for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Aspirations in Computing Educator Award are open through November 28, 2016. Each winner receives $250 in cash and up to $750 for participation in computing-related professional development activities, recognition at a local Affiliate Award event and increased visibility in his or her school district and community, NCWIT resources and promotional items, as well as an engraved award for both the Educator and his or her school. Educators can apply online at http://bit.ly/AiCEdAward no later than 11:59 p.m. EST on November 28, 2016.
The 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) brought together more than 30 accomplished speakers and 550 female graduate students in computing. Rita H. Wouhaybi who is a research scientist with Intel Labs’ Systems and Software Research at Intel Corporation, was one of the speakers who shared her unique perspective with the attendees.
Today, more than ever, industry leaders are looking to partner with academic computer science programs. With available computer science expertise at a premium, they’re looking for ideas, for new hires, for help on crucial projects. Universities are the mother lode for the personnel and expertise they crave. On July 18, I presented at the CRA Conference at Snowbird session, “Local Corporate Labs, Centers and Development Offices: Optimizing Department/Industry,” which explored the growth of corporate lab culture, and I’d like to share some of insights from that talk.
The CRA Education Committee (CRA-E) hosts a series of workshops on Engaging Undergraduates in Research at major computer science research conferences. The next workshop titled “Best Practices in Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Supercomputing,” will be held at Supercomputing 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The workshop will run as BoF session on Wednesday, November 16, 5:15-7 pm and is run by Nancy Amato (Texas A&M) and CRA-E Fellow Max Grossman (Rice University).
Back in January the Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA), the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM), and Code.org announced an initiative to develop a K-12 Computer Science Framework for use throughout the country’s education system. The plan was to develop a high level framework, not education standards, that states and school districts could use to create individual CS curriculums for their needs and wants. On Monday, the group, which now includes Cyber Innovation Center and the National Math and Science Initiative, announced that they had completed their work and made the framework public.
Last July, a distinguished panel of computer scientists – David Culler (UC Berkeley), Rayid Ghani (U of Chicago), Rahel Jhirad (Hearst) and Rob Rutenbar (UIUC) — discussed this question with a group of approximately 100 CRA Conference at Snowbird attendees. There was agreement that data science is an interdisciplinary field, combining techniques from machine learning, natural language processing, data mining, algorithms, information retrieval, etc.
CRA’s newest award program honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
Correction to Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science: H.V. Jagadish is a member of CRA’s Committee on Data Science, and was not listed on yesterday’s author list. The full committee includes: Lise Getoor (Chair), David Culler, Eric de Sturler, David Ebert, Mike Franklin, and H.V. Jagadish.
Our ability to collect, manipulate, analyze, and act on vast amounts of data is having a profound impact on all aspects of society. This transformation has led to the emergence of data science as a new discipline. The explosive growth of interest in this area has been driven by research in social, natural, and physical sciences with access to data at an unprecedented scale and variety, by industry assembling huge amounts of operational and behavioral information to create new services and sources of revenue, and by government, social services and non-profits leveraging data for social good. This emerging discipline relies on a novel mix of mathematical and statistical modeling, computational thinking and methods, data representation and management, and domain expertise. While computing fields already provide many principles, tools and techniques to support data science applications and use cases, the computer science community also has the opportunity to contribute to the new research needed to further drive the development of the field. In addition, the community has the obligation to engage in developing guidelines for the responsible use of data science.
We are pleased to announce a new award in support of the computer science research community. The objective of this award is to call attention to a valuable and promising body of emerging computer science systems research and provide support for continued advances by an emerging research leader. This will be an annual award in the amount of USD 100,000, granted to the recipient’s university in support of her/his research.
Eligible nominees are faculty worldwide within 5 years of their first tenure-track appointment. Nominations must be submitted by a university department chair and each submission should include a one-page letter of nomination, a proposed citation and three references with contact information. Each department chair is limited to a single nomination which must be submitted via email at sysaward@vmware.com. The deadline for the nominations submission is November 15, 2016.
The upcoming CRA-Women Graduate Student Cohort (Grad Cohort) will be held April 7-8, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Grad Cohort is a two-day workshop for female students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields. The application closes November 30.
Grad Cohort is generously funded by sponsors from industry, academia, the National Science Foundation, and the computing community. The workshop aims to increase the ranks of senior women in computing-related studies and research by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women through their graduate studies.
On September 14, 21 computing researchers from across the country visited Washington, D.C. to make the case before Congress for federally funded computing research. The volunteers, traveling from as near as Maryland and Pennsylvania, and as far away as Utah and California, participated in nearly 50 House and Senate meetings. Their message to Congress was very simple: Federally supported computing research is vital to the nation’s future. Using their own research and individual stories as support, and reinforced with additional information from CRA, they made the “Federal case” for computing to members of Congress and their staff. Just as important as the message they presented, they also made valuable connections with the officials who represent them in D.C. Those members now know more about the expertise and interesting (and important) computing work that occurs in their districts and states, and our participants have a better sense of just who represents them in Congress. And they’ve hopefully started a lasting dialogue on both sides.
The Computing Research Association seeks your help in suggesting nominations for its board of directors. We want individuals who have the time, energy, initiative, and resources to work on CRA issues on behalf of the entire CRA community. We have a working board, and all members are expected to work on community issues.
The board provides the membership for various standing committees, including the Government Affairs, Snowbird Conference, Taulbee Survey, Finance, and Elections committees. In addition, issues affecting computing research arise unexpectedly, and board members must take the initiative and lead CRA’s responses. Many CRA committees and initiatives involve year-round attention, regular conference calls, communications with lab directors and department chairs, proposal writing, and sometimes travel at the expense of the individual board member.
In an advertisement that ran in the New York Times on September 26, and in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, 39 CEOs and top executives of American companies argued that federally supported scientific research is, “an investment in our prosperity, security, and well-being.”
The ad points out that without federally supported research, we would not have such things as smart phones, the internet, or microprocessors, to name but a few of the examples cited. Some of the companies whose leaders signed the advertisement are members of the Task Force on American Innovation, a coalition which CRA is a member. The Task Force is a coalition of science organizations, American colleges and universities, and high-tech companies, which supports federally-funded scientific research and promote its benefits to America’s economy, security, and quality of life. The advertisement has the full list of signatories, some of which are well known to our community, such as Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, and Meg Whitman, President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprises.
The ad was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.
First, the good news: the government won’t have to shut down on Saturday, as Congressional leaders have agreed to a continuing resolution (CR) through December 9. As our regular readers will remember, the Fiscal Year 2016 budget year runs from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016 and if Congress has not passed a budget or a CR by this Saturday October 1, federal agencies must stop operations. The last government shutdown happened back in 2013, but we’ve been dealing with the potential of one every year since. The agreed to CR puts funding for federal agencies generally, and science research accounts specifically, on autopilot at Fiscal Year 2016 levels.
The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2017 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award.
Distinguished Service Award
CRA presents an award, usually annually, to a person who has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community. This award recognizes service in the areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications or conferences, and leadership that has a major impact on computing research.
A. Nico Habermann Award
CRA presents an award, usually annually, to a person who has made outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community. This award recognizes work in areas of government affairs, educational programs, professional societies, public awareness, and leadership that has a major impact on advancing these groups in the computing research community. Recognized contributions can be focused directly at the research level or at its immediate precursors, namely students at the undergraduate or graduate levels.
From an early age, current Ph.D. student and 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) attendee Caroline Trippel had a positive image of women in computing. Her mother earned an undergraduate degree in math, a Master’s degree in computer science, and currently works as an embedded systems software engineer.
Please share this opportunity with your students. During CRA-W’s Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall Event, students from around the world will learn about cutting edge research in the field of computing, and have the opportunity to ask questions to distinguished computer scientists. The next event will be held October 13 at 7PM EST. Speaker: Deb Agarwal, Senior […]
IBM Research is a Lab and Center member of CRA. This article is the first in a series of our industry member profiles.
It’s not surprising that the public’s imagination has been ignited by artificial intelligence since the term was first coined in 1955. In the ensuing 60 years, we have been alternately captivated by its promise, wary of its potential for abuse, and frustrated by its sometimes slow development.
But like so many advanced technologies that were conceived before their time, artificial intelligence has come to be widely misunderstood—co-opted by Hollywood, mischaracterized by the media, and portrayed as everything from savior to scourge of humanity. Those of us engaged in serious information science and in its application in the real world of business and society understand the enormous potential of intelligent systems.
The future of this technology—which we believe will be cognitive, not “artificial”—has very different characteristics from those generally attributed to AI, spawning different types of technological, scientific, and societal challenges and opportunities, with different requirements for governance, policy, and management.
Computer science and education researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Florida, both CRA member institutions, are launching an initiative that will use a custom-designed video game to boost both computational thinking in middle school science classrooms and foster both gender and racial diversity in computing.
Back in July, we got a good sense of how Hillary Clinton would approach science and technology policy in her presidency when her campaign released her Technology and Innovation agenda, which we covered here. At the time, there wasn’t much information about how a President Trump would approach similar issues. Today, the folks behind ScienceDebate.org have released the answers provided by Clinton and Trump, along with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, to 20 questions about science policy issues facing the country. While Clinton’s answers are consistent with those she outlined in her Tech and Innovation agenda, the answers Trump provided give us a first real glimpse at the candidate’s views on things like innovation policy and the importance of the federal investment in fundamental research. I thought I’d highlight two question responses in particular, but invite you to read the whole 20 questions.
Today, CRA Executive Director, Andrew Bernat was a speaker at the White House Summit on Computer Science for All. The audience heard from students and leaders of CS education efforts as part of the CS for All initiative. The initiative aims to ensure CS education is available to all K-12 students across the U.S.
Bernat expressed his excitement about the incredible success of the initiative and explained CRA’s commitment to strengthening the computing research community by supporting the development of strong, diverse talent. He announced that so far more than 75 university and college computing departments from across the country have agreed on behalf of their departments to take action to support the goals of the CS for All Initiative through a variety of concrete actions. And he is confident many more will sign up. CRA member institutions’ support will include faculty expertise and effort, the development of innovative computing education products, and teacher development.
The BRAID (Building, Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity) initiative is a joint project led by the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) and Harvey Mudd College. The BRAID project addresses the lack of diversity in computer science departments and specifically looks at the underrepresentation of women and racial/ethnic minorities.
Would your school like to participate? BRAID is now accepting applications for new BRAID affiliate schools, and proposals are due by 5 pm on December 30, 2016.
The 2016 CRA Taulbee Survey will be starting soon. As we did last year, the survey will be split into two parts, salary and main (everything else). This allows us to set an earlier deadline for the salary section in order to produce a preliminary salary report in December, while giving departments more time to collect and enter the information in the rest of the survey.
The schedule will be as follows:
By September 9: All doctoral departments will be contacted to update Taulbee user information. The academic unit head will receive an email and so will the Taulbee primary contact, if separate.
September 13: PDF will be available for data gathering.
September 27: Both sections of the Taulbee will open for input.
November 18: Due date for salary section.
December 19: Preliminary salary report available.
January 18, 2017: Due date for the main Taulbee section.
April 2017: Full Taulbee report to CRA members and participating departments.
May 2017: Published in CRN.
If you have any questions, contact Betsy Bizot at bizot@cra.org.
The CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award recognizes undergraduates who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing. Here’s an update on last year’s awardees. Information on the 2017 competition is available here.
For Volcano Kyungyoon Kim, current Ph.D. student and 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) attendee, choosing to study computer science was an easy decision. She knew since elementary school that she would have a career in computing. Volcano comes from a computer science family – her father is a computer science professor, her mother also has a degree in computer science, and now her younger brother is currently pursuing a master’s degree in computer science. “Every single one of them is in computer science. So I never really thought of anything else. My parents think that it’s the most exciting and valuable field of study and it will lead to a great career in the future.”
While this influenced her enough to begin studying computer science in college, during her first two years she wasn’t totally convinced that it was a perfect fit for her. It wasn’t until Volcano discovered the flexibility of the field and its interdisciplinary nature that she was completely hooked. “There was a moment later on when I thought this is really perfect for me. It is not only about computer science, it is about applying it to all the other areas. If you have an interest in art, having a computer science background can boost your art skills or it can even open up a new art genre such as 3D painting in a virtual reality. Computer science is like a magic powder that you can add to other fields. ”
The ACM Athena Lecturer Award celebrates female researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. Each year ACM honors a preeminent female computer scientist as the Athena Lecturer. The recipient gives an invited talk at a major ACM conference of her choice. A video of the talk is made available on the ACM website. The award carries a cash prize of $25,000. Financial support for the Athena Lecturer Award is provided by Google.
The National Science Foundation is currently accepting nominations for two prestigious awards. Consider nominating an individual from your department today! The Alan Waterman Award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF. The Vannevar Bush Award honors truly exceptional lifelong leaders in science and technology who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the Nation through public service activities in science, technology, and public policy.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) and its education committee (CRA-E) are excited to announce the creation of five short videos entitled “Choosing a PhD in Computer Science.” These videos were designed in conjunction with award-winning producer Patrick Sammon (co-producer of “Codebreaker”) to explain the benefits of pursuing a PhD in CS. The videos showcase young researchers with PhDs who are now working in industry as they talk about what compelled them to pursue a doctorate and how they are using their advanced training in their work. While many undergraduates understand that a PhD is needed for a position in academia, these videos demonstrate how a PhD can be useful in industry as well.
How can a CS Department benefit from hiring tenure-track faculty in the field of Computing Education Research (CER)? What are some of the major research questions in CER? How can CER enhance existing research in a CS department? A panel at the CRA Conference at Snowbird Meeting in July 2016 addressed these and other questions. The panelists included Diana Franklin (University of Chicago), Mark Guzdial (Georgia Tech), Scott Klemmer (UC San Diego), Andy Ko (University of Washington) and Ben Shapiro (University of Colorado-Boulder) in a session moderated by Ran Libeskind-Hadas (Harvey Mudd College).
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a terrific way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
The 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) brought together more than 30 accomplished speakers and 550 female graduate students in computing. Kim Hazelwood, who leads a performance and datacenter capacity engineering and analysis team within Facebook’s infrastructure division, was one of the speakers who shared her unique perspective with the attendees. Kim has always had an interest in technology and a love for math. Like many undergraduate students, Kim didn’t take any computer science classes in high school. However, she took a leap and declared computer engineering as her major heading into her undergraduate degree at Clemson University. “First time was a charm on actually picking the right area for me,” she explained.
The NSF-wide Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.
CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) will host early and mid career mentoring workshops on November 19-20 in Washington, D.C. The goal of these workshops is to provide an environment for mentoring, practical information, advice, and support among researchers and educators in computing. The application is free, there is a $250 registration fee for the workshop (for those accepted), and CRA-W will reimburse participants for expenses (hotel and airfare) after the workshop. In order to receive reimbursement applicants must be affiliated with a U.S. institution or be employed in the U.S. These workshops are open to individuals in their early career in research and labs, and mid career in education, research, and labs.
The Latinas in Computing (LiC) community was established with the help of The Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology (ABI) at the 2006 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). Recognizing the status of Latinas as a double minority in North America, this community defines and implements strategies to improve the participation of the current and next generations of Latinas in technology. These dual strategies complement the work done by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) that focused on the recruitment and retention of minority students in computing-based fields in North America, and the work done by the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) to grow the research pipeline of women in computing. National Science Foundation (NSF) data shows Hispanic or Latino enrollment increased from 7.2% in 2002 to 9.9% in 2012, but the hiring of underrepresented minorities seems to be “stuck in neutral.”
CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) recently announced a new program for undergraduates, the CRA-W Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Research Scholars Program. The GHC Research Scholars program brings undergraduate women to the annual Grace Hopper Celebration. The purpose of this program is to provide attendees with an unique experience, providing them a mentor, networking opportunities, and advising.
An early love of science fiction is what initially lured Drew to a career in STEM. Her fascination with outer space and the future, recurrent themes in science fiction, inspired her to study astronomy and become a physics major. Although she didn’t take any high school computer science courses, she always enjoyed tinkering with computer programs on her own. She decided in college to take a coding class and “really loved it.” Drew soon changed her major to computer science because she wanted to be part of the movement that brings to life the technologies we dream about in science fiction.
Those who attended this year’s CRA Snowbird conference may have heard Moshe Vardi’s provocative panel session on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, discussing the potential impact of computing technologies on employment and the nature of work over the coming years. Vardi makes a compelling case that the computing research community ought to be concerned with the impact its innovations will have on society, both positive and negative. To that end, Vardi has led an effort to pull together some of the leading thinkers from the computing, economics, and social science communities to consider the issue in Houston in December. The De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work will be held December 5-6, 2016, at Rice University. Here’s an announcement from the organizers (CRA is a co-sponsor).
CCC’s Catalyzing Computing Podcast Included on NSF’s Science360 Radio Stream
/In: Featured Announcements, NSF /The Computing Community Consortium (CCC)’s recently launched Catalyzing Computing podcast is now included on the NSF’s Science360 Radio stream. Science360 Radio showcases shows from radio and podcast series, and also includes webcasts, events, in-depth interviews, and documentaries from NSF and other contributors. Catalyzing Computing focuses on topics of interest within the computing research community and is hosted by CCC […]
Expanding the Pipeline: The Second Annual CRA Grad Cohort for URMD Supports a Diverse Computing Research Community
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students /On March 22-23, CRA hosted the second annual Graduate Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities (URMD Grad Cohort) in picturesque Waikoloa Village, Hawaii. The location provided beautiful scenery as students spent two days learning how to succeed in graduate school and networked with a diverse group of peers and senior researchers.
Thank you, Data Buddies!
/In: CRA /The Data Buddies Survey came to a close at the end of February 2019. CERP wishes to thank all the departments who made data collection possible, with special appreciation extended to departments with at least a 20% response rate.
Creating Institutional Homes for Computing: Transforming a Department into a School or College
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources /The Computing Research Association has released its latest white paper, “Creating Institutional Homes for Computing: Transforming a Department into a School or College.” This white paper addresses the growing interest and trend in transforming a department of computer science, usually housed within a college of engineering or science, into a school or college of computing. It follows up on a successful panel at the 2016 CRA Conference at Snowbird on Schools and Colleges of Computing and a second panel on transitioning to Colleges of Computing at the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird.
CCC Council Member Shwetak Patel Receives ACM Prize in Computing
/In: Awards, ACM /The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced it’s 2018 Prize in Computing award to Shwetak Patel, of the University of Washington and Google and a Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member. The ACM Prize in Computing is their second most prestigious award in all of computing (after the Turing Award – known as the Nobel Prize in Computing). Patel is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to creative and practical sensing systems for sustainability and health. In just a decade, he has had incredible impact in the applications of AI and sensing in two broad areas – developing methods for disaggregating energy and water usage in the home and developing new methods of health sensing and advancing clinical science through the use of commodity sensors.
CRA Board Member Charles Isbell Named Dean of College of Computing at Georgia Tech
/In: Featured Announcements, People /CRA Board Member Charles Isbell has been named the next dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, effective July 1. Isbell serves as the AAAI representative to the CRA Board.
Graduate Diversity Fellowships in Computational and Data Science
/In: Funding /Submissions opened March 15 for the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships. The fellowships were created to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field. The program will support students pursuing degrees at institutions anywhere in the world.
Expanding the Pipeline: CERP Data Buddies Survey Finishes Strong with More Insights About Students’ Experiences
/In: Featured Announcements /The CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline concluded its fall 2018 Data Buddies Survey. The survey was modified to provide additional insight on student experiences in computing degree programs. These new data will be used in annual reporting and program evaluation.
Board Member Highlight: CRA Board Member Ran Libeskind-Hadas
/In: Research, People, CRA Board of Directors, Education, Board Member Profiles /My research explores algorithmic methods for determining whether a pair of species are likely to have coevolved and, if so, finding the “best” scenarios that explain their evolutionary histories. This work explores the computational complexity of these reconciliation problems, seeks to develop efficient reconciliation algorithms where possible, and, ultimately, to implement these algorithms in practical tools for biologists and educators.
Expanding the Pipeline: The Participation and Challenges of Community College Students in Undergraduate Research
/In: CRA /Convention tells us that research involves a selection of topic, literature review, framework development, refining/defining your research question, developing a design, collecting data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions, but at a community college the formality cannot always be used as a rule, but as a guideline for developing a realistic, learning opportunity. Community college participation in undergraduate research is an important part of education, but can be easily fall by the wayside to address life challenges often faced by community college students. However, given the opportunity to participate, research can be a rewarding and valuable skill that should be afforded to more students.
Highlights of the 2019 CRA Computing Leadership Summit
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements /On February 25, CRA hosted its annual Computing Research Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX). Several engaging talks at the Leadership Summit provided useful information on current issues important to the organizations.
CRA Launches BPCnet.org: A Resource Portal for Broadening Participation in Computing Efforts
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity /In partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT), CRA announces an initial launch of BPCnet.org, a resource portal designed to amplify the NSF CISE Directorate’s efforts in broadening participation in computing (BPC). CRA anticipates that BPCnet.org will provide a much-needed clearinghouse for the community to learn about and engage with ongoing projects to diversify computing.
Re-envisioning Computing in Undergraduate Education
/In: NSF /Colleges and universities across the country are experiencing a significant influx of students in their undergraduate computer science (CS) courses. Many of these students are seeking the “traditional,” CS-centric undergraduate degrees that have evolved over decades, along with changes in our field. But many other students are quite different from the students whom we have found in our undergraduate majors. While they are interested in computing, they are more interested in creatively applying sophisticated computational skills and methods to a range of disciplines from biology to linguistics to art. They understand that CS knowledge is critical to helping them succeed in nearly any job, that “every field is becoming an information field.”
2019 CRA Board Election Results and FY20 Executive Committee
/In: Featured Announcements, People, CRA Board of Directors /CRA members have elected three new members to its board of directors: Lorrie Cranor, Divesh Srivastava and Marvin Theimer. The CRA board of directors has elected new board officers to serve two-year terms beginning July 1, 2019. At the February board meeting, Ellen Zegura was elected chair; Nancy Amato was elected vice-chair; Ran Libeskind-Hadas was elected secretary; and James Allan was elected treasurer.
2019 CRA Distinguished Service and A. Nico Habermann Awardees Announced
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, Mentoring, Awards, A. Nico Habermann, Distinguished Service /The CRA board of directors is pleased to announce its selections for the 2019 CRA Awards.
Edward Felten – Distinguished Service Award Winner
Maria Gini – A. Nico Habermann Award Winner
Applications Open for the 2019 CRA-W Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Research Scholars Program
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, Mentoring, CRA-W /This CRA-W program provides guidance to research-interested students on how to navigate the vast offerings at the GHC conference and opportunities to meet and interact with students and mentors with similar interests in small-group settings
2019 Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant Accepting Proposals
/In: Funding, For Researchers /By Meredith Ringel Morris, Principal Researcher & MSR Dissertation Grant Chair Broadening participation in computing is a core part of Microsoft‘s values; accordingly, we are excited to continue the Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant that aims to recognize, support, and mentor diverse doctoral students as they complete their dissertation research in computing-related fields. This grant is open to doctoral students in their fourth […]
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: NSF Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
/In: Featured Announcements, People, NSF /The National Science Foundation is initiating a national search for the Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).
Former Board Member Margo Seltzer Elected to National Academy of Engineering
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA-E Faculty Mentoring Award /Recently, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) elected 86 new members and 18 foreign members. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,297 and the number of foreign members to 272. Former CRA Board Member Margo Seltzer was among those elected.
2018 Grad Cohort for Women Attendees Share Reflections in Short Video
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA-W /Find out what participants thought about the 2018 CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women in this recently released video. In testimonials collected at the end of the workshop, a resounding theme was the participants’ renewed motivation to complete their Ph.D.
2019 NSF CISE CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop
/In: Funding, NSF /The goal of this workshop is to introduce junior CAREER-eligible faculty to the NSF CAREER program and help them to prepare their CAREER proposals to target CISE programs.
Jennifer Rexford and Westley Weimer Receive the 2019 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, Awards, Education, CRA-E Faculty Mentoring Award /The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce two recipients of the 2019 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award: Jennifer Rexford from Princeton University and Westley Weimer from the University of Michigan. These outstanding individuals are being recognized for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of their students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
CCC Launches the “Catalyzing Computing” Podcast
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is launching the “Catalyzing Computing” podcast, which will focus on topics of interests within the computing research community. The podcast is hosted by CCC Program Associate Khari Douglas and will feature interviews with researchers and policy makers about their background and experiences in the computing community. You can stream or download the podcast on Soundcloud now.
CRA Board Member Highlight: James Allan
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /My current work focuses on support for critical literacy and efforts to foster new paths for equity in the sciences.
New York Times Article on High Demand for Computer Science Professors
/In: Featured Announcements, People /Today’s New York Times features an article “The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class.” The story explores how the increasing student demand for computer science courses is outstripping the supply of professors. The article cites CRA Taulbee data and quotes several current and former CRA board members.
2019 Nominees for CRA Board; Petition Nominees Sought
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /CRA is pleased to announce the 2019 Election Committee’s slate of nominees for the CRA Board. CRA also encourages nominations by petition.
CRA Board Member Highlight: Barbara G. Ryder
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /My computer science research career started during my college internship at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, during the early 1970s in the center that later produced UNIX and the portable C compiler. This experience taught me that computing was broader than the introduction to scientific programming in my undergraduate studies in applied math. (There was no computer science undergraduate major at the time.) For most of my career, I was interested in deriving descriptions of program execution behaviors from code in order, for example, to optimize program time and/or memory performance, to validate desirable properties such as correctness or data security, or to refactor code for ease of maintenance.
CRA Board Member Highlight: Rachel Pottinger
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /Increasingly, jobs rely on the ability to use computers to interpret, understand, and trust data. For example, my students and I have worked with ornithologists who cannot understand the representations of their bird sightings, civil engineers who cannot easily use their own building data, finance experts who cannot trace money between companies and their subsidiaries, and an XML document company whose clients cannot understand data that appears outside of their reports. In each case, the data users have been hampered because their data is exceedingly difficult to understand and trust, even though the users are experts in their fields. One reason for this difficulty is that the organization of the data is often designed for computers, not for people (i.e., for storage, not accessibility). Another reason is that data often come from different sources, leaving users with the challenge of integrating data that they neither understand nor trust.
2019 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award Winners
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Awards, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers, Education /Congratulations to the recipients of the 2019 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. This year’s nominees are a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several are authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others have made presentations at major conferences, and some have produced software artifacts that were in widespread use.
CACM Blog Post on Broadening Participation in Computing Based on 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird Session
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity /The organizers of the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird session, “Increasing Diversity in Computing is Easier Than You Think: Some Small Steps that Make a Big Difference,” recently published a list of 10 small steps departments can take to increase diversity at their institutions.
Professional Development Workshop for Teaching-Track Faculty at SIGCSE 2019
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /The CRA Education Committee, with support from Google, is organizing a Professional Development Workshop for Teaching-Track Faculty at SIGCSE 2019. The workshop will be held on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 from 8:30 AM- 4:00 PM. We are now accepting applications to the workshop! Click here for more information and a tentative agenda.
Analysis of Current and Future Computer Science Needs via Advertised Faculty Searches for 2019
/In: Resources /This work uses the same methodology as work over the past five years to study where Computer Science departments are choosing to invest faculty positions by examining data obtained from advertised faculty searches for the current hiring season. While the number of and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline.
We analyzed ads from 409 institutions seeking to fill hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science. There was a small one-year increase in the number of institutions searching but there has been a 83% increase over the five years of our studies. The number of tenure-track positions sought shows a one-year increase of 5% and a 118% increase over the five years.
Congratulations to the 2018 ACM Fellows
/In: CRA /The ACM recently named 56 of its members as ACM Fellows for transformative contributions and advancing technology in the digital age. The Fellows were honored for significant contributions in areas including computer architecture, mobile networks, robotics, and systems security. From the ACM Press Release: The accomplishments of the 2018 ACM Fellows underpin the technologies that define the digital age […]
Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Tech List
/In: Featured Announcements /Three CRA contributors were recently recognized on Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Tech List. From Forbes: “The Top 50 Women In Tech is an unranked assessment of technologists in five categories: Moguls, Founders, Innovators, Engineers and Warriors. The list showcases the breadth and depth of entrepreneurial women who are changing the world.” CRA and […]
Applications Open for the Heidelberg Laureate Forum
/In: For Students /The young researcher application process has opened for the 2019 Heidelberg Laureate Forum, http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/.
AAAS Honors 2018 Elected Fellows
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements /The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently announced its 2018 Elected Fellows. The Fellows are recognized with this lifetime honor for their extraordinary achievements in advancing science. Several individuals involved with CRA have been elected Fellows to the Section on Information, Computing & Communication.
NSF Research Traineeships: Supporting Effective Training of CISE Graduate Students
/In: NSF /New solicitation opportunity in National Research Traineeships.
Announcements
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards /Upcoming Nomination Deadlines and Taulbee deadlines.
Expanding the Pipeline: 2018 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference
/In: CRA /The 2018 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, presented by CMD-IT, was held September 19-22 in Orlando, Florida. The Tapia conferences bring together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities.
CRA Board Member Highlight: Jaime Teevan
/In: Featured Announcements, People, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /Research shows that it takes 25 minutes to reach full productivity after an interruption, yet we are interrupted every 3 minutes. And even without external interruptions, our focus is fragmented. We look at any given desktop window for an average of only 40 seconds, constantly self-interrupting to check email or Facebook. We also try to complete multiple tasks at once, even though we all know that multitasking typically fails. Our tendency to be easily distracted kept our hunter-and-gatherer ancestors alive when they needed to attend to potential predators, but now, in the safety of our offices, it is amazing we manage to get anything done. Chances are you won’t even read this entire article in one go.
Serve as a Rotator at the National Science Foundation to Influence Computer and Information Science Research and Funding
/In: CRA /It is an exciting, impactful, and important time to be in computer science, not only as a researcher or educator, but also as an expert serving the community – and we want to invite you to consider opportunities for service at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Former Board Member Sarita Adve Named Recipient of the ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Awards, ACM /Former CRA Board Member Sarita Adve (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was recently named the 2018 recipient of the ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. She is being recognized “for research contributions and leadership in the development of memory consistency models for C++ and Java, for service to numerous computer science organizations, and for exceptional mentoring.” […]
New from CRA: Database of Candidates for Academic and Industrial/Government Laboratory Positions
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources /The number of faculty openings in computing has increased significantly in recent years, which has placed stress on the faculty recruiting process. Both academic departments and faculty candidates go through an arduous process. CRA has started a new service intended to improve the recruiting process for academic and industrial/government laboratory research positions. Candidates for these positions […]
New NSF Faculty Fellowship Opportunities in Quantum Computing & Information Science
/In: NSF /The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) has just announced a new program, NSF 19-507, NSF Quantum Computing & Information Science Faculty Fellows (QCIS-FF). This program aims to grow academic research capacity in the computing and information science fields to support advances in quantum computing and/or communication over the long term.
Omidyar Network launches #ResponsibleCS Challenge
/In: Awards, Opportunities /A new initiative, backed by the foundations of Pierre Omidyar, Eric Schmidt, Craig Newmark and Mozilla aims to convince the nation’s computer science departments to spend more time teaching the ethics of the profession alongside the basics of coding.
Applications Open for 2019 Graduate Cohort Workshops
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, CRA-W, Opportunities /We will again host two Graduate Cohort Workshops in 2019. The CRA URMD Grad Cohort Workshop is designed specifically for underrepresented minorities in computing and persons with disabilities in graduate school in computing fields. The CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop is designed for women students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields. The workshops will include a mix of formal presentations, informal discussions and social events. By attending Grad Cohort, participants will be able to build mentoring relationships and develop peer networks that are intended to form the basis for ongoing activities during their graduate career and beyond. Both applications are open now and will close on November 15.
CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program Accepting Nominations
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Mentoring, Education /The Computing Research Association Education Committee (CRA-E) is now accepting applications for the CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program. The program opportunities for Ph.D. candidates in a computing field to contribute to CRA-E projects, to network with computer science education advocates on the committee, and to engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students and promote computer science research and undergraduate education at the national level.
Nominations Open for 2019 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, For Researchers, Education /The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. It recognizes those who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
VMware Systems Research Award
/In: Research, Funding, For Researchers /The VMware academic team is pleased to announce the third annual award in support of the computer science research community. The objective of this award is to call attention to a valuable and promising body of emerging computer science systems research and provide support for continued advances by an emerging research leader.
CRA Taulbee Survey Announcement
/In: Featured Announcements, Taulbee, Taulbee Announcements /The 2018 CRA Taulbee Survey will be starting soon. As has been our recent practice, the survey will be split into two parts, salary and main (everything else). This allows us to set an earlier deadline for the salary section in order to produce a preliminary salary report in December, while giving departments more time to collect and enter the information in the rest of the survey if needed.
Candidates Sought for CRA Board of Directors
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors /The Computing Research Association seeks your help in recruiting candidates for its Board of Directors. We want individuals who have time, energy, initiative, and resources to work on CRA issues on behalf of the entire CRA community. We have a working Board, and all members are expected to work on community issues.
CRA is hiring a Deputy Director for the Computing Community Consortium
/In: Featured Announcements /The Computing Research Association seeks a highly motivated individual to serve as a Deputy Director for the Computing Community Consortium. The Deputy Director works with the CCC Director, Council Members, and the CRA staff to ensure that the CCC succeeds in its mission: to serve as a catalyst and enabler for the computing research community, to provide mechanisms for the community to identify compelling research visions for the future of the field and to articulate those visions to key stakeholders.
NSF Announces New Measures to Protect Research Community from Harassment
/In: Research, NSF /New policy requires awardee institutions to report sexual harassment findings.
iAAMCS Releases Guidelines for Successfully Mentoring Black/African-American Computing Sciences Doctoral Students
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, Diversity, Mentoring /These guidelines were established to articulate successful strategies for mentoring African-American doctoral students in Computing Sciences (CS). iAAMCS defines “student mentoring” as the process of supporting, encouraging and guiding students’ academic and social progress with the goal of facilitating career and personal development. Grounded in project-based results and similar empirical research, the following guidelines emerged: (1) recruit strategically, (2) establish community, (3) foster a research culture, (4) provide holistic advising, (5) provide funding and (6) promote professional development. iAAMCS hopes that institutions, departments and faculty use these guidelines to bolster the participation of African-American students pursuing doctoral degrees in CS.
Although the iAAMCS Guidelines serve as best practices for mentoring African-American students in computing, these strategies are useful for optimal mentoring all students.
Participants Reflect on the 2018 CRA URMD Grad Cohort in Short Video
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, CRA-W /Listen to what participants have to say about the inaugural CRA Graduate Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities (URMD Grad Cohort) in this recently released video.
Nominations Open for CRA Distinguished Service and A. Nico Habermann Awards
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, A. Nico Habermann, Distinguished Service /The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2018 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award.
The CRA Distinguished Service Award is presented to a person or multiple people who have made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community. The CRA A. Nico Habermann Award is presented to a person or multiple people who have made outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community.
Nominations Open for 2019 CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers, Education /The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a wonderful way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
CRA Taulbee Survey Correction to Tables by Specialty Area
/In: Taulbee /In the report of the CRA Taulbee Survey published in the May 2018 CRN, there is an error in specialty area labeling in Tables D4 (Employment of New PhD Recipients by Specialty) and D4a (Detail of Industry Employment). In both D4 and D4a, the column labels for High Performance Computing and Human Computer Interaction were swapped. In addition, in D4a the column labels in alphabetical sequence between Informatics: Biomedical/Other Science and Social Computing/Social Informatics were incorrect.
Eben Tisdale Fellows Attend Policy Presentation at CRA Government Affairs Office
/In: Policy /On Friday, June 29th, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2018 class of Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellows to the CRA office in Washington, D.C. These fellows, undergraduates at universities and colleges from across the United States, spent the summer at high-tech companies, firms, or trade associations in Washington, learning the intricacies of technology policy. Additionally, they took two class credits at George Mason University, and attended briefings at institutions such as the U.S. Capitol, Department of State, World Bank, and Federal Reserve. The fellows were in the office to attend a presentation by Brian Mosley, policy analyst in CRA’s Office of Government Affairs, covering the policy concerns and issues that the association works on and attempts to influence legislation and other concerns at the federal level.
My Parallel Careers in Industry and Academia
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /As a researcher, I am fascinated by the challenge of advancing the high-level foundations of computer software (programming models, compilers, and runtimes) to productively exploit the latest advances in computing systems. While there has been a long tradition of research in this area since the dawn of computing, the rapid evolution of hardware has continuously fueled a need for new software technologies as old approaches quickly become obsolete. Current explorations of new hardware directions that go beyond Moore’s law have further amplified the motivation for this research direction.
Highlights from the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird
/In: Featured Announcements, Conference at Snowbird /From July 16-18, the Computing Research Association (CRA) held its biennial Conference at Snowbird with more than 300 people in attendance. Every two years, the chairs of computing and information departments, as well as the leaders of government and industrial laboratories from across the country and the world, gather in Snowbird, Utah, to network and discuss common issues concerning the future of the field.
National Academies Webinar: Preventing Sexual Harassment in Academia and Beyond – August 30
/In: Misc. /The National Academies’ Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently released a study on the sexual harassment of women in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine, specifically looking at how it affects the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in these fields. The report examines the factors that predict high rates of sexual harassment and includes recommendations for addressing and preventing sexual harassment. Evidence reviewed in the study shows that organizational climate is the strongest predictor of sexual harassment in an environment and that it can either encourage or discourage sexually harassing behavior. Please join GUIRR for a webinar with two members of the authoring committee—Gilda Barabino, dean of the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York, and Vicki Magley, professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut—to discuss why addressing organizational climate is important to preventing sexual harassment and how certain policies and strategies recommended in the report can be applied in academia and industry to prevent sexual harassment.
Why Women (and Everyone Else) Should Code
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, Mentoring, CRA-W /Stuart Reges’ recent article entitled “Why Women Don’t Code” elicited strong reactions. I am a colleague of Reges’ in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (UW). Like a number of my colleagues, I found myself surprised and troubled by his article.
CRA and CRA-W Welcome Alejandra Guzman
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA-W /CRA has recently hired Alejandra Guzman as a program associate. In this role, Alejandra supports CRA and CRA-W program activities with meeting planning, workshops, outreach activities, and committee support.
Congratulations to Ayanna Howard – 2018 Richard Tapia Award Winner
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, CRA Board of Directors /CRA and CRA-W Board Member Ayanna Howard was recently named the recipient of the 2018 Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science and Diversifying Computing from the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT). “The Richard A. Tapia Award is awarded annually to an individual who demonstrates significant research leadership and strong commitment and contributions to diversifying computing.
Applications Open for Upcoming CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop: Deadline September 1
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, CRA-W /CRA-W will hold early and mid career mentoring workshops for women on November 3-4 in Phoenix, AZ. The goal of these workshops is to provide an environment for mentoring, practical information, advice, and support among computing researchers.
Laying a Foundation: Best Practices for Engaging Teaching Faculty in Research Computing Departments
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Resources, Best Practices, CRA Board of Directors /To achieve their educational mission, computing departments at research universities increasingly depend on full-time teaching faculty who choose teaching as a long-term career. This memo discusses the need for teaching faculty, explores the impact of teaching faculty, and recommends best practices.
CRA Board Member Highlight: Carla Brodley
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /For the past 30 years I have had two passions – machine learning (ML) that makes a difference in the real world and increasing diversity in computer science (CS). For the first 26 years, I focused on my first passion and developed new approaches to ML though applications to remote sensing, neuroscience, digital libraries, astrophysics, content-based image retrieval of medical images, computational biology, chemistry, evidence-based medicine, detecting lesions in the MRIs of epilepsy patients, and predicting disease progression for MS patients. For the last four years, my focus has been on my second passion: increasing diversity in CS.
Removal of Deadlines for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Program
/In: Featured Announcements, Research, Funding, NSF /In April, NSF requested input from the research community on a policy change to eliminate/reduce deadlines for core programs in the CISE Directorate, and we passed along your feedback. This month, NSF announced a change to remove deadlines for all proposals to the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.
CRA Board Member Nancy Amato to Head University of Illinois Department of Computer Science
/In: People, Diversity, CRA Board of Directors /Recently, Nancy Amato, a robotics expert and CRA board member, was selected to lead the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science. She will be the first woman to hold this position at the University.
Dear Colleague Letter: NSF CISE, Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) – Employment Opportunity for Multiple Program Director Positions
/In: NSF /NSF CISE/IIS has several open program director positions. We encourage you consider serving in this role and sharing the opportunity with your colleagues.
2018 Computer Science Tenure-Track Faculty Hiring Outcomes
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources /This work directly follows previous work that analyzed current and future Computer Science needs via advertised tenure-track faculty searches for 2018. This follow-on work looks to understand the relative success of institutions in hiring the tenured/tenure-track faculty in the areas of Computer Science that were being sought.
2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird is Almost Here!
/In: Featured Announcements, Conference at Snowbird /We are less than two weeks away from the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird. CRA is excited to welcome the computing research leadership to this invitation-only biennial conference in Snowbird, Utah July 16-18.
CRA Welcomes New FY 2018 Board Members
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /July 1 marked a new fiscal year for CRA. We welcome seven new members to our board of directors: James Allan, Mark Hill, Ayanna Howard, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Margaret Martonosi, Rachel Pottinger, and Chris Ramming. Retiring from the board as of June 30 are Sarita Adve, Joel Emer, Greg Hager, Julia Hirschberg, H.V. Jagadish, Farnam Jahanian, and Elizabeth Mynatt. CRA would like to thank each of them for contributions during their service on the board.
Expanding the Pipeline: The Computer Science Outreach Program Evaluation Network – Increasing Quality and Capacity
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, Mentoring /The National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) brings together organizations throughout the United States that are committed to informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, computer science, and mathematics. NGCP serves more than 35,000 programs in 41 states and uses a collective impact model that builds the capacity of educational programs.
CRA Welcomes Amita Shukla as its 2018 Eben Tisdale Fellow
/In: CRA /I’m Amita, a rising junior at Columbia University in New York City where I’m majoring in computer engineering and minoring in political science. I’m also really interested in data science and just joined the WuLab at Columbia’s Data Science Institute.
Meet the 2018 BECA Winners – Yejin Choi and Reetuparna Das
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, CRA-W /CRA-W recently announced two recipients of the 2018 Borg Early Career Award (BECA) – Reetuparna Das and Yejin Choi.
New Computing Faculty Workshops in Summer 2018
/In: Featured Announcements, NSF, For Researchers, Education /The fourth (and last NSF-funded) New Computing Faculty Workshops will be held August 5-10, 2018 in San Diego. The goal of the workshops is to help new computing faculty to be better and more efficient teachers. By learning a little about teaching, we will help new faculty (a) make their teaching more efficient and effective and (b) make their teaching more enjoyable. We want students to learn more and teachers to have fun teaching them.
Expanding the Pipeline: 2018 CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women Inspires Attendees to Persist in Computing
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, Mentoring, CRA-W /On April 13-14, more than 400 women graduate students in computing from more than 150 institutions converged on San Francisco, CA, for the 2018 CRA-W Graduate Cohort for Women (CRA-W Grad Cohort). Throughout the two-day workshop, professional connections were made, new friendships were formed, and mentoring relationships with senior researchers were established.
CRA-E Selects 2018 Graduate Fellow
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /CRA’s Education Committee (CRA-E) has recently selected its 2018 CRA-E Graduate Fellow – Robert (“Rob”) Bowden. Rob is a Ph.D. student in computer science at Harvard University. After earning his undergraduate degree at Harvard in 2013, he spent a year working as the course preceptor for Harvard’s CS50 course, and then returned to graduate school with Margo Seltzer as his adviser. Rob’s Ph.D. research includes work on file systems and code synthesis. His current work focuses on how to use the vast amount of CS50 solutions generated by students to not only detect errors in student programs but also propose ways to fix them. Rob’s goal is to advance automated program repair of buggy solutions to introductory programming assignments.
2017 CRA Taulbee Survey: Another Year of Record Undergrad Enrollment; Doctoral Degree Production Steady While Master’s Production Rises Again
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, Taulbee /This article and the accompanying figures and tables present the results from the 47th annual CRA Taulbee Survey. The survey, conducted annually by the Computing Research Association, documents trends in student enrollment, degree production, employment of graduates, and faculty salaries in academic units in the United States and Canada that grant the Ph.D. in computer science (CS), computer engineering (CE), or information (I). Most of these academic units are departments, but some are colleges or schools of information or computing.
Mary Fernández Receives 2018 Service to CRA Award
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, Awards, CRA Board of Directors, CRA-W, Conference at Snowbird /The Computing Research Association (CRA) is pleased to honor Mary Fernández with the 2018 Service to CRA Award for her work in transforming the visual identity and communications of the organization. Mary was a member of the CRA Board from 2009 to 2015, during which time she spearheaded several key initiatives to re-brand and revitalize communications.
Jan Cuny Receives 2017 ACM Distinguished Service Award
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors /Recently ACM announced that former CRA and CRA-W board member Jan Cuny has been named the recipient of the 2017 ACM Distinguished Service Award. She received the award for the establishment and tireless promotion of projects that have nationally transformed computer science education by increasing and diversifying access to high-quality CS education. From the announcement: When she joined […]
SAVE THE DATE: An NSF/CISE Workshop for Department Chairs at Snowbird
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Diversity /As you prepare to attend the biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird, we invite you to join an important event that is being organized by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) on Monday, July 16, 2018, from 10:00am to 1:00pm, in Salt Lake City, UT (this event will take place just prior to the main conference, and just a short distance away from Snowbird). This three-hour workshop will be an opportunity for the CISE community – and as department chairs, you all are a key part of this community! – to gather regarding a new effort on Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC). This effort involves the NSF/CISE core research programs, as well as the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace and Cyber-Physical Systems programs. The effort therefore impacts nearly all faculty who submit proposals to NSF/CISE.
Articles Addressing Shortage of CS Professors Across Many Institutions
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA News Coverage /Two recent articles have addressed the shortage of Computer Science professors at many institutions.
Inside Higher Ed featured an article titled “System Crash” on CS student complaints that their departments can’t meet demand. The article highlights the CRA Generation CS Report, the National Academies study, and Craig Wills’ November 2017 CRN article on faculty search results. The article places the concerns of students at specific institutions within the national context.
Envisioning the Future of CERP
/In: Featured Announcements, CERP /CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) recently underwent staffing changes when former Director Jane Stout left the CRA. Burçin Tamer, Ph.D., is now the Director of CERP and Heather Wright is the Associate Director. Under their leadership, CERP will extend its reach as a resource for the computing community through its Data Buddies Project, evaluation services, and other activities. Heather and Burçin are both excited to make contributions to the computing community and drive the broader mission of CRA to facilitate the development of strong, diverse talent in the field.
CRA-W Accepting Proposals for Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates: May 18 Deadline
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, For Researchers, CRA-W /CRA-W is now accepting applications for the Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) program. Application Deadline: May 18.
Dan Reed Named Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Utah
/In: Featured Announcements, People /Former CRA Board Chair Dan Reed has been named senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Utah.
Should NSF CISE Implement a No-Deadlines Approach?
/In: Featured Announcements, Research, Funding, NSF, For Researchers /Our friends at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have asked for research community input on a proposed policy change to eliminate/reduce deadlines for core programs in the CISE Directorate. Given the increased pressures on securing federal funding and, in some cases, reduced capacity for grant management at computing research institutions, do you think the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate should follow the lead of the BIO and GEO directorates and consider eliminating or reducing deadlines for proposal submissions? What positive or negative impact could such a shift have on our community?
Expanding the Pipeline: ACM-W Programs Expand to Support Students and Professional Women in Computing
/In: Diversity, Mentoring, CRA-W /Supporting, celebrating, and advocating for women in computing is the mission that lies at the heart of the activities of ACM-W. Our longstanding projects of scholarships, celebrations, and student chapters provide opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to increase their technical knowledge while networking and building community. Recently we have begun to expand our activity to include projects that support populations of women in computing beyond students. This article provides an overview of all of our projects, old and new.
Expanding the Pipeline: CRA URMD Grad Cohort Fosters a Diverse and Inclusive Generation of Computing Researchers
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, Mentoring /Approximately 100 graduate students in computing and more than 20 speakers assembled on March 16-17 in San Diego, CA, to convene the inaugural CRA Graduate Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities (URMD Grad Cohort). It was the first gathering of its kind hosted by CRA. This new iteration of the Grad Cohort Workshop focused on the following underrepresented groups in computing: Alaska Native, Black/African American, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and persons with disabilities. The workshop aimed to increase representation from these groups in computing research by building and mentoring nationwide communities through their graduate studies, and is modeled on the highly successful CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop for Women.
CRA and CERP Bid Farewell to Jane Stout
/In: Featured Announcements, CERP /After serving for more than five years as CERP director, Jane Stout has left CRA to pursue a senior project director position for YOUGOV. During Jane’s tenure at CRA, she oversaw the Data Buddies Project; led CERP in evaluation work for the CRA-W, CCC, and CRA-E; and obtained an NSF grant to conduct computing education research focusing on diversity. Jane also gave numerous talks and interviews on the importance of diversity in computing and shared CERP’s research findings with the computing community.
While she will be missed by her colleagues at CRA, CERP, and the CRA-W community, we wish all the best for her as she embarks on this next stage of her career.
Teaching Computer Science: Capacity Building and Scaling
/In: Education /Last fall, the CRA Education Committee added a new resource to its website for “Teaching Computer Science: Capacity Building and Scaling.” Across the United States and Canada, universities and colleges are facing significant increases in undergraduate computer science (CS) enrollments. This surge has exceeded all previous CS program booms and there is a general sense that the current enrollment growth is substantially different than that of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. CRA’s Generation CS Study provides excellent insight into enrollment trends and their impact on computer science units, diversity, enrollment management strategies, and more.
Expanding the Pipeline: CAHSI Broadens Hispanics’ Participation in Computing
/In: Featured Announcements, Research, Diversity, CRA-W /The Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) is a consortium of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) committed to consolidating the strengths, resources, and efforts of public, private, federal, state, and local organizations that share the core value of increasing the number of Hispanics who pursue and complete baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing areas. CAHSI plays a critical role in evaluating, documenting, and disseminating effective practices that support students in computing disciplines at the critical junctures in the academic pipeline.
2018 NSF Workshop for Aspiring Principal Investigators in Computer Systems Research
/In: NSF /The 2018 NSF Workshop for Aspiring Principal Investigators (PIs) in Computer Systems Research (CSR) will help aspiring PIs gain a better understanding of the CSR program and prepare them for developing competitive CSR proposals in the future.
CRA-E Showcases Stories of Undergraduate Researchers on its Conquer Website
/In: Featured Announcements, People, For Students, Education /CRA-E’s new “Undergraduate Research Highlights” series showcases outstanding research done by undergraduate students at universities and colleges across North America. Each article features the story of a successful undergraduate researcher and offers personal insights into their experiences with finding an advisor, undertaking new research projects, and discovering how research can impact their personal and professional futures.
John Hennessy and David Patterson Receive 2017 Turing Award
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Conference at Snowbird /ACM has named John L. Hennessy, former president of Stanford University, and David A. Patterson, professor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, recipients of the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry. Patterson is a former CRA Board Chair and will be a plenary speaker at the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird, and Hennessy was the keynote speaker at the 2012 CRA Conference at Snowbird.
Graduate Diversity Fellowships in Computational and Data Science
/In: Funding /Submissions opened March 15 for the ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational & Data Science Fellowships. The fellowships were created to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field. The program will support students pursuing degrees at institutions anywhere in the world.
2018 Board Election Results and New Appointed Board Members
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /CRA members have elected five new members to its board of directors: James Allan, Maria Ebling, Ayanna Howard, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, and Rachel Pottinger. Current board members Michael Franklin, Stephanie Forrest, Kathryn McKinley, Greg Morrisett, and Vivek Sarkar were re-elected to the CRA board. Their terms run from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2021. CRA […]
Call for Nominations: 2018 National Medal of Science
/In: CRA, Awards, NSF, For Researchers /Please nominate colleagues and peers who have extraordinarily advanced the scientific enterprise for this prestigious honor. Nominations and three letters of support must be submitted to NSF by April 16, 2018.
CRA Board Member Farnam Jahanian Named President of Carnegie Mellon University
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Research, People, CRA Board of Directors /CRA Board Member Farnam Jahanian has been named President of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). From 2011 to 2014, Jahanian served as Assistant Director (AD) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2015, he was elected to the CRA Board of Directors and also received the CRA Distinguished Service Award. Jahanian is currently […]
2018 CRA Computing Leadership Summit
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, Career Mentoring Workshop /On Monday, February 26, in Arlington, VA, the CRA hosted its annual Computing Research Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX Association) and the CSTB.
Juan E. Gilbert and Manuel Pérez Quiñones Receive the 2018 A. Nico Habermann Award
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, Awards, A. Nico Habermann /This year, the CRA Board of Directors selected two recipients of the 2018 A. Nico Habermann Award: Juan E. Gilbert from the University of Florida and Manuel A. Pérez Quiñones from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Both individuals are being recognized for their contributions aimed at increasing the number and success of members of underrepresented groups in the computing research community. Gilbert has had an incredible impact on diversifying the field of computer science, especially on increasing the number of African-American Ph.D. recipients and faculty members in all of the institutions in which he has worked. Pérez Quiñones has tirelessly and passionately worked throughout his career for diversity and inclusion in computing at all levels, spanning from high school to Ph.D., especially for Latino/as.
Paul Messina Receives 2018 CRA Distinguished Service Award
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Awards, Distinguished Service /Paul Messina was selected as the 2018 recipient of the CRA Distinguished Service Award for his significant contributions to the advancement of high performance computing and decades of service to the field. Messina has an incredible record of building and managing large-scale, diverse research activities. Over the course of his career, he has designed, directed, and otherwise executed numerous initiatives that have influenced U.S. policy and programs resulting in the U.S. leadership position in high-performance computing.
Nominations Open for the George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship
/In: Research /The ACM/IEEE Computer Society George Michael Memorial HPC (GMM) Fellowship is endowed in memory of George Michael, one of the founding fathers of the SC Conference series. The fellowship honors exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is on high performance computing applications, networking, storage or large-scale data analytics using the most powerful computers that are currently available. The Fellowship includes a $5,000 honorarium and travel expenses to attend SC18 in Dallas on November 15, where the GMM Fellowships will be formally presented.
CRA Welcomes Daniela Cárdenas
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, People, CRA-W /CRA has recently hired Daniela Cárdenas as a program assistant. In her new role, Daniela supports CRA and CRA-W program activities with administrative and logistical matters such as planning meetings, workshops, outreach activities, and committee support.
2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird Program Update
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Conference at Snowbird /The program for the 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird has recently been updated. A third plenary session will consist of a panel on “Diversity in Computing Leadership” chaired by Carla Brodley. The confirmed participants include Shinder Dhillon, Head of Global Diversity & Inclusion – Engineering & Corporate Functions, Microsoft, Brian Reaves, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Dell, Inc., and Ayanna Howard, Chair, School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.
Thank You, Data Buddies!
/In: Featured Announcements, CERP /CRA wishes to thank the computing departments who distributed CERP’s Data Buddies survey during the fall of 2017. These departments’ collective effort provided vital data for CERP’s research and evaluation assessing students’ varied experiences in computing degree programs.
Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant Accepting Applications
/In: Research, Funding, Diversity /The Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant aims to recognize, support, and mentor diverse doctoral students as they complete their dissertation research in computing-related fields.
NSF CISE CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop
/In: Featured Announcements, Research /The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) will host a one-day workshop on CAREER Proposal Writing on April 9, 2018.
Analysis of the President’s Budget Request
/In: Featured Announcements, Research, Funding /The President’s budget request for FY 2019 was released on February 12. CRA Director of Government Affairs Peter Harsha provided his analysis of the request in a post titled, “President’s Budget Request a Mixed Bag for Science, but it Could Have Been Much Worse.”
Which Departments Most Often Nominate Students for the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers Award?
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Awards, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers, Education /In addition to honoring exceptionally successful students, these awards identify some of the departments that are particularly effective at cultivating and promoting undergraduate research. A total of 94 colleges and universities have nominated students during the last three years.
Michael Ernst and Catherine Putonti Receive the 2018 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Mentoring, Awards, For Researchers, Education, CRA-E Faculty Mentoring Award /The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce two recipients of the 2018 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award: Michael Ernst from the University of Washington in Seattle and Catherine Putonti from Loyola University in Chicago.
Meeting the Needs of Individuals with Disabilities- Accessible Computing
/In: Featured Announcements, People, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /My research focuses on empowering individuals through computing technologies that more effectively match their knowledge, experience, abilities, and goals. The majority of my recent research has focused on accessibility-related issues. Working with my students, our research employs a broad definition of accessibility, seeking to empower individuals with disabilities as well as individuals who may experience challenges due to the environment in which they are using computing technologies.
2018 Conference at Snowbird Preliminary Agenda
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Conference at Snowbird /The biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird is the flagship invitation-only conference for the leadership of the North American computing research community. A preliminary program is now available and will be updated on the CRA website as additional information becomes available.
CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program Accepting Nominations
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Education /The CRA Education Committee is now accepting applications for the CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program. The program provides opportunities for Ph.D. candidates in computing fields to contribute to CRA-E projects, network with computer science education advocates on the committee, engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students and promote undergraduate research and education at the national level.
2018 Nominees for CRA Board; Petition Nominees Sought
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /CRA is pleased to announce the 2018 Election Committee’s slate of nominees for the CRA Board. CRA also encourages nominations by petition.
Nominations Open for the 2018 Abie Awards
/In: Diversity, Awards, For Researchers /AnitaB.org celebrates and recognizes the success of women technologists with a series of awards presented at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration to honor women making significant contributions to technology.
Nominations Open for 2018 Borg Early Career Award
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, Awards, For Researchers, CRA-W /CRA-Women invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award (BECA). The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research.
Videos Now Available from the CRA Summit on Technology and Jobs
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, For Researchers /On December 12, 2017, CRA hosted the Summit on Technology and Jobs in Washington, DC. The day was packed with sessions that explored issues surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence and the future of work. Leading technologists, economists, and policy experts offered their views on where technology is headed and what its impact may be, and on policy issues raised by these projections and possible policy responses. Videos and slides from the event are now available.
Greg Byrd Joins the CRA Board of Directors
/In: CRA Board of Directors /Greg Byrd has been appointed the new IEEE-CS representative on the CRA board of directors. Byrd joins David Ebert and replaces Tom Conte on the board. CRA would like to thank Conte for his contributions during his term of service on the board. Byrd is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina […]
CRA-E Professional Development Workshop for Teaching-Track Faculty
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /The sessions will focus on how teaching faculty can strategize their involvement in departmental as well as research activities, different forms of scholarship and leadership activities to pursue, and best practices for success, promotion, and advancement.
2018 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award Winners
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Awards, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers /Congratulations to the recipients of the 2018 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. This year’s nominees are a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several are authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others have made presentations at major conferences, and some have produced software artifacts that were in widespread use.
Analysis of Current and Future Computer Science Needs via Advertised Faculty Searches for 2018
/In: For Researchers /This work uses the same methodology as work from previous years to study where Computer Science departments are choosing to invest faculty positions by examining data obtained from advertised faculty searches for the current hiring season. While the number of and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline.
Congratulations to the 2017 ACM Fellows
/In: Research, For Researchers /The ACM recently named 54 of its members as ACM Fellows for transformative contributions and advancing technology in the digital age. They were honored for seminal work in areas including artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, computer graphics, cloud computing, and software engineering.
Low Diversity in Tech: How Did It Happen and How Do We Fix It?
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity /Join Dr. Jane Stout, Director of the CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) for a webinar titled “Low Diversity in Tech: How Did It Happen and How Do We Fix It?”
Expanding the Pipeline: Key Learnings on Retaining Underrepresented Minorities and Students with Disabilities in Computer Science
/In: Diversity, For Students, CRA-W /Retention and graduation of underrepresented minorities and students with disabilities is critical to creating a strong pipeline of employees for both industry and academia. In early 2017, the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT) announced the call for nominations for the first annual CMD-IT University Award for Retention of Minorities and Students with Disabilities in Computer Science. The University Award was created to recognize a U.S. academic institution that has demonstrated a commitment and shown results for the retention of students from underrepresented groups in undergraduate computer science programs over the last five years.
Expanding the Pipeline: Toward Gender Parity in CS @ ILLINOIS
/In: Diversity, CRA-W /The CS undergraduate program at the University of Illinois is among the largest in the nation. It has grown by 250 percent over the last decade to nearly 1,800 undergraduates—and it is still growing. In the last four years, the percentage of women in our CS programs rose from 10 percent to more than 25 percent. And our freshmen class in the College of Engineering rose from 11 percent women in 2012 to about 45 percent in 2016.
Application Open for 2018 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Career Mentoring Workshop /We are pleased to announce that CRA’s Career Mentoring Workshop will take place February 26-27, 2018, in Arlington, VA.
CRA Announcements
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Awards, For Researchers, Career Mentoring Workshop, CRA-W, Opportunities /Check out opportunities to get involved with CRA!
CRA Executive Director Andrew Bernat Elected 2017 AAAS Fellow
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, People, CRA Board of Directors /CRA Executive Director Andrew Bernat, board member H.V. Jagadish and former board member M. Tamer Özsu have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
New Approaches to Producing High-Performance Code, Thanks to Compiler Technology
/In: CRA, People, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles, Profiles in Computing /What does it take to produce application code that performs as close as possible to a parallel architecture’s compute or memory peak performance? This question is one that programmers of high-performance architectures contemplate regularly since using such systems efficiently can solve problems faster, or solve larger or more complex problems.
This question fundamentally changes the approach to programming.
CRA Summit on Technology and Jobs Livestream
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /The event will be livestreamed on Tuesday, December 12 at 8:45 AM EST.
Save the Date: 2018 CRA Conference at Snowbird
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Conference at Snowbird /The biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird is the flagship invitation-only conference for the leadership of the North American computing research community. The upcoming conference will be held July 16-18, 2018 in Snowbird, Utah.
Facebook Request for Proposals on Hardware and Software Systems
/In: Awards /Facebook has launched an invitation to university faculty to submit short research proposals on hardware and software systems; a total of 5 awards are available. During this proposal cycle, Facebook is especially interested in soliciting proposals for research at the intersection of computer systems and machine learning, including, but not limited to:
CRA Statement on US News and World Report Rankings of Computer Science Universities
/In: Featured Announcements, Research, For Researchers /The latest US News and World Report (USN&WR) ranking of Computer Science (CS) at global universities does a grave disservice to USN&WR readers and to CS departments all over the world. Last week, we respectfully asked for the ranking to be withdrawn. Unfortunately USN&WR declined.
The methodology used — rankings based on journal publications collected by Web of Science — ignores conference publications and as a consequence does not accurately reflect how research is disseminated in the CS community or how faculty receive recognition or have impact. Furthermore, the list of venues is not public. So while some may debate the soundness of any bibliometric-based rankings, there will be no debate about the flaws in the rankings USN&WR has published; the methodology makes inferences from the wrong data without transparency and, consequently, it arrives at an absurd ranking.
CRA Data in NYTimes Article: The Disappearing American Grad Student
/In: CRA /“The Disappearing American Grad Student” in last week’s New York Times explores reasons why foreign students in STEM (and computer science in particular) often outnumber domestic students at the graduate level.
NAS Report Investigates the Growth of Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /The NAS report discusses strategies central for managing enrollment and resources, and makes recommendations for departments and institutions. Its findings and recommendations provide much-needed guidelines on how institutions can allocate resources to meet growing student demand and to adequately support their computer science department in the increasingly central role of computer science in education and research.
2018 Heidelberg Laureate Forum
/In: For Students, Awards, For Researchers, Opportunities /The Sixth Heidelberg Laureate Forum will be held September 23-28, 2018. The application process begins November 6, 2017. The Heidelberg Laureate Forum was created by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies, ACM, the International Mathematical Union, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters to provide an opportunity for young researchers to spend a week with winners of the ACM Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Abel Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, and Fields Medal.
New York Times Highlights Job Opportunities in Computer Science and Data Science
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students /The New York Times recently published an article on jobs in STEM. The main takeaway from the piece – job opportunities in STEM fields vary widely; but computer science job openings outpace graduates. Here’s a snippet: Much of the public enthusiasm for STEM education rests on the assumption that these fields are rich in job opportunity. Some […]
NAS Report Released: Assessing and Responding to the Growth of Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, For Researchers /The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has released a new report titled “Assessing and Responding to the Growth of Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments“. The report urges U.S colleges and universities to respond to the ongoing surge in undergraduate enrollments in computer science programs, which is straining resources. The report was prepared by the NAS Committee on […]
VMware Systems Research Award
/In: Awards /The VMware academic team is pleased to announce the second annual award in support of the computer science research community. The objective of this award is to call attention to a valuable and promising body of emerging computer science systems research and provide support for continued advances by an emerging research leader.
Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs Symposium Livestream
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /For more information about the symposium please see the agenda and symposium website. The event will be livestreamed here starting at 8:30AM EDT on Monday, October 23rd. You can also join the twitter conversation using #CCCsymposium!
Statement on Diversity at MICRO-50
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, CRA-W /Former CRA Board Member Margaret Martonosi organized a statement on diversity at the MICRO-50 conference.
Outcomes of Advertised Computer Science Faculty Searches for 2017
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /Professor Craig E. Wills presents new work that directly follows his previous analysis of current and future computer science needs via advertised tenure-track faculty searches for 2017. This follow-on work looks to understand the relative success of institutions in hiring the tenured/tenure-track faculty in the areas of computer science that were being sought.
Nominees Sought for CRA Board of Directors
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors /The Computing Research Association seeks your help in suggesting nominations for its board of directors. We want individuals who have the time, energy and initiative to work on CRA issues on behalf of the entire CRA community. We have a working board, and all members are expected to be involved with community issues.
Nominations Open for 2018 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Education, CRA-E Faculty Mentoring Award /This award program honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
Gender Diversity Article in Computer Architecture Today
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Diversity, CERP, For Researchers, CRA-W /Recently, CRA board member Kim Hazelwood (Facebook) and Natalie Enright Jerger (University of Toronto) published an article in Computer Architecture Today that analyzed gender diversity in the sub-discipline. CRA’s Jane Stout provides her commentary.
Save the Date: 2018 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, Career Mentoring Workshop /CRA’s biennial Career Mentoring Workshop will be offered on February 26-27, 2018 at The Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Va.
The workshop provides career advice and mentoring activities for junior assistant professors in computer science and engineering. The workshop will include a series of panels, plus opportunities to network with senior researchers and representatives from government agencies. The 2018 workshop will also feature a session held at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Participants will have the opportunity to visit NSF and meet with NSF CISE program directors.
Applications Open for 2018 CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, Mentoring, CRA-W /Applications are open for the upcoming CRA-Women Graduate Student Cohort for Women which will be held April 13-14, 2018 in San Francisco, CA. CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women is a two-day workshop for female students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields.
2018 IBM Two-Year Worldwide PhD Fellowship
/In: For Researchers, Opportunities /IBM is pleased to announce the 2018 IBM Two-Year Worldwide PhD Fellowship for the academic years of 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. Strong collaboration with faculty, students and universities is vital to IBM. The PhD Fellowship Program advances this collaboration by recognizing and supporting exceptional PhD students who want to make their mark in promising and disruptive technologies. In 2018, the Fellowship Program is focusing on: AI, blockchain, security, and quantum computing. IBM is well positioned to advance these technologies and exploit their ability to transform industries and societies.
Expanding the Pipeline – Engaging Undergraduates in Research: UC San Diego Early Research Scholars Program
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, For Researchers, Education /Engaging undergraduates in research can be an effective way to increase their confidence, perception of science, and sense of belonging. But at many large research universities, it can be difficult for undergraduate students—especially early undergraduates—to find research opportunities. Furthermore, even when they find opportunities, they might not have the background, training, or support to be successful. These issues are particularly acute for women and other underrepresented groups in computer science as they tend to have less pre-college computer science experience.
CRA Board Member Highlight: IEEE Honors Susan Davidson With TCDE Impact Award
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Awards, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles, Profiles in Computing /This year, CRA Board Chair Susan Davidson received the IEEE TCDE Impact Award for “expanding the reach of data engineering within scientific disciplines.” In this interview, Davidson reveals how her interest in bioinformatics came about and how her career led to this award. Two of her favorite problems have been data integration and data provenance.
Survey on Publication and Presentation Experiences for CS Faculty
/In: For Researchers /If you have ever held a position as an Assistant Professor in computing at a US college/university, we respectfully request that you take a few moments of your time to complete a survey about your experience. The survey solicits feedback on a variety of potential factors that can influence a common expectation in the Assistant Professor rank, publishing and presentation of scholarly research. Analysis of survey responses will hopefully yield results that inform how to better support graduate students and new professors in generating more productive publication and presentation records. Retention of junior faculty is of heightened concern at present due to booming enrollments in many Computer Science programs.
New CRA-E Resource – Teaching Computer Science: Capacity Building and Scaling
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, For Researchers /The CRA-Education Committee has added to its website a new resource for “Teaching Computer Science: Capacity Building and Scaling.” Across the United States and Canada, universities and colleges are facing significant increases in undergraduate computer science (CS) enrollments. This surge has exceeded all previous CS program booms and there is a general sense that the current enrollment growth is substantially different than that of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. CRA’s Generation CS Study provides excellent insight into enrollment trends and their impact on computer science units, diversity, enrollment management strategies, and more.
CRA Surveys, Fall 2017
/In: Taulbee, Taulbee Announcements /In fall 2017, CRA will be conducting the usual Taulbee Survey and a one-time Teaching Faculty Survey. The Taulbee Survey schedule will be as follows.
If you have any questions, contact Betsy Bizot at bizot@cra.org
CRA Summit on Technology and Jobs
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /On December 12, 2017, the Computing Research Association will host a Summit on Technology and Jobs in Washington, DC. The goal of the summit is to put the issue of technology and jobs on the national agenda in an informed and deliberate manner. It will bring together leading technologists, economists, and policy experts who will offer their views on where technology is headed and what its impact may be, and on policy issues raised by these projections and possible policy responses.
Expanding the Pipeline – WEPAN’S 2017 Change Leader Forum: Creating the Mindset for Action
/In: Diversity, For Researchers, CRA-W /The Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) held the 2017 Change Leader Forum in Westminster, Colorado from June 12 – 14, 2017. The Forum provided attendees an unparalleled opportunity to engage with diversity and inclusion advocates, and learn research based best-practices related to gender equity and inclusion in engineering. Nearly 200 attendees representing a variety of institutions and roles participated in the Forum, including university leaders, corporate partners, engineering faculty, K-12 teachers, and academic diversity officers.
CRA Education Committee Presents Updated Conquer Website
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, For Students, For Researchers, Education /The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is excited to announce a new and improved version of its Conquer website (conquer.cra.org) for CS undergraduates interested in research and graduate school. The site also has resources for faculty who are interested in mentoring undergraduate research and helping their students apply to graduate school.
Nominations Open for CRA Distinguished Service and A. Nico Habermann Awards
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, For Researchers, A. Nico Habermann, Distinguished Service /The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2018 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award. The deadline for receipt of nominations is December 8, 2017.
Announcing the 2018 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship
/In: CRA /We are excited to announce the eleventh year of the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship program which aims to recognize, support, and mentor students as they continue their doctoral education in computer science, electrical engineering and mathematics, as well as interdisciplinary studies intersecting with those domains.
Why Social Science? Because It Makes Computing Work for People
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Funding, For Researchers, CRA News Coverage /Two years ago, the leadership of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee looked to our organization, the Computing Research Association, to endorse an approach to reauthorize funding at a number of key Federal science agencies. The proposed legislation would provide increases for computing research funding at the National Science Foundation while keeping the overall agency budget essentially flat by bolstering computing — along with mathematics, physics, biology, and engineering — at the expense of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences (and the geosciences). The committee Chair hoped that CRA, which represents nearly 200 academic computing departments and industrial research labs — including computing research labs at IBM, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft — would support the approach, given the direct and indirect benefits increased investment in computing research at NSF would have to our member institutions.
Collaborative Research as the Key to Advancing AI
/In: For Researchers, Lab and Center Profiles /Just about every day we learn about a new application of cognitive computing. From predicting schizophrenia to analyzing Wimbledon fan experiences, cognitive computing and artificial intelligence have arrived and are making a measurable difference in our daily lives. But with all the excitement around real-world applications of this powerful technology, it is easy to forget that the Cognitive Era, as we call it at IBM, is still in its infancy. And there is a tremendous amount of work yet to be done. Collaborating with leading minds around the world is the key to fulfilling the true potential of cognitive computing. And that’s why IBM formed the Cognitive Horizons Network (CHN), a network of the world’s leading universities committed to working with IBM to accelerate the development of core technologies needed to advance the promise of cognitive computing.
Nominations Open for 2018 CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers
/In: Awards, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers /The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a wonderful way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
CRA Board Member Highlight: H. V. Jagadish
/In: People, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /I study how data and people interact. For more than a decade, I have been studying how to help humans access and manage information. While there is a lot of good work on human-computer interaction and on data visualization, much less work exists on “human-data interaction.” Why can anyone use Google to get information of interest while it is so difficult to get useful information from a structured database? The difference lies in the specificity of the request. A web search engine receives your request and tries to guess your intention. You know that it has a limited understanding of your need, and are happy to have it get you into “the zone,” from where you can explore for yourself. On the other hand, a traditional database query engine can give you complete answers to complex questions but requires that you precisely specify your query. If you make a small mistake, you are out of luck. Wouldn’t it be helpful to devise database query mechanisms that you can actually use and get reasonable results from even if you don’t ask it totally correctly? Complementarily, can the system help you ask a better question in the first place? Similar concerns also apply to the creation of a database, and helping users manage their data.
The 2016 Taulbee Survey: Supplementary Report on Course-level Enrollment
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Taulbee, Taulbee Announcements /The 2016 Taulbee Survey report, published in the May 2017 issue of CRN, did not include the results of a component that was introduced in the most recent survey–namely, bachelor’s enrollment data from specific courses in the curriculum. This component was introduced as a result of what was learned in the CRA Enrollment Report (see https://turing.cra.org/data/generation-cs). Unfortunately, we were unable to compile the data in time to feature the results in the May issue.
A CS Education Summit in Pittsburgh: Addressing the Challenges of Increasing Interest in Computing at the Undergraduate Level through Institutional Transformation
/In: For Researchers, Education /Given the convergence of burgeoning enrollments in CS across many universities and colleges in the United States and the need to re-imagine the way computer science is taught to address 21st century challenges, the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting a 2-day summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pending anticipated funding.
The CRA Taulbee Survey and Teaching Faculty Data
/In: Featured Announcements, Taulbee, For Researchers /Non-tenure-track teaching faculty are becoming more important to doctoral departments to help them meet their educational goals and responsibilities, particularly in response to the current enrollments surge. In the Generation CS report (available at https://turing.cra.org/data/Generation-CS/), 65% of doctoral departments reported in fall 2015 that they had increased the number of teaching faculty on continuing appointments in response to increased enrollments, and an additional 16% were considering it. Similarly, between fall 2006 and fall 2016, the proportion of Taulbee Survey respondents reporting at least one full-time non-tenure-track teaching faculty member increased from 81% to 87% and, more notably, the median number of such teaching faculty at the departments reporting nonzero counts rose from 3 to 6.
CERP Director Discusses Strategies to Promote Diversity in Tech in EdTech Magazine
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Diversity, Mentoring, For Researchers /CRA’s own Jane Stout, director of the CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP), was recently featured in the article “Q&A: Researcher Shares Strategies to Increase Diversity in Tech,” in EdTech Magazine: Focus on Higher Education. Amy Burroughs, managing editor of EdTech spoke to Jane about why the lack of diversity in tech persists, how institutions benefit from diverse groups and how IT leaders can build more diverse teams. Drawing from her social science background and her current research on factors that influence women and minorities pursuing computing careers, Jane emphasized building a sense of belonging and community and encouraged IT managers to actively recruit women who can serve as role models and mentors. She also encourages IT managers to recognize that there are different types of effective leadership styles.
CRA Launches New URMD Grad Cohort Workshop – Apply Today!
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, Mentoring, CRA-W /The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce a new iteration of the Graduate Cohort Workshop designed specifically for underrepresented minorities in computing and persons with disabilities. Applications are now open for the inaugural CRA URM Graduate Cohort Workshop, which will be held March 16-17, 2018 in San Diego, CA.
CRA Bids Farewell to Melissa Borts
/In: People, CRA-W /After serving the CRA-W community as a Program Associate for two and a half years, Melissa Borts has left CRA to return to school. Melissa is returning to her alma mater, the University of Maryland, to pursue her MBA.
Eben Tisdale Fellows Attend Presentation at CRA Government Affairs Office
/In: CRA /On Tuesday, July 11, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2017 class of Eben Tisdale Fellows to the CRA Washington, DC office. These fellows, all of whom are undergraduates at universities and colleges across the United States, spent the summer at high-tech companies, firms, or trade associations in Washington, learning the intricacies of technology policy. Additionally, they took two class credits at George Mason University, and attended briefings at the U.S. Capitol, Department of State, World Bank, Federal Reserve, and other institutions. The fellows visited the office to attend a presentation by Brian Mosley, CRA’s Office of Government Affairs policy analyst, that covered the policy concerns and issues the association works on and influences at the federal level.
New CRA Education Committee Co-Chair
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /At the CRA Education Committee (CRA-E) meeting in June, Lori Pollock (University of Delaware) stepped up to replace Ran Libeskind-Hadas (Harvey Mudd College) as CRA-E co-chair. She will join current co-chair Susanne Hambrusch (Purdue University), and Ran will remain a member of the CRA-E committee.
Expanding the Pipeline – Simply Smarter: 2017 Tapia Conference Celebrates Diversity
/In: Diversity, For Students /The 2017 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing is being held September 20-23 in Atlanta Georgia. This year’s theme, Diversity: Simply Smarter, evokes the basic yet irrefutable concept that diversity is simply the smarter choice.
CRA Welcomes New FY 2017-18 Board Members
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /July 1 marks a new fiscal year for CRA. We welcome four new members to our board of directors: Carla Brodley, Kim Hazelwood, Brian Noble, and Jaime Teevan. Retiring from the board as of June 30, 2017 are David Culler, Mary Czerwinksi, Margaret Martonosi, and Margo Seltzer. CRA would like to thank each of them for contributions during their service on the board.
Former CRA Vice Chair Laura Haas Reflects on 35+ Years at IBM
/In: People, CRA Board of Directors /On June 30, Laura Haas, former CRA vice chair, will retire from IBM research after 36 years in order to tackle a new challenge. In August, she will become dean of the new College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
She reflects on her time at IBM a blog post – “Laura Haas: 36 years of making IBM Research ‘Famous for our science, vital to the world.'”
Maximizing Opportunity and Building Capacity: Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /This article describes strategies we have employed at the University of Washington to increase the prominence and impact of our program. In the past few years we have been elevated from a department to the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, we have begun construction on a second building that will double our space, and we have received legislative investments that will double our enrollment while preserving our ability to closely mentor students. While we have some important advantages (principal among them Seattle’s emergence as a leading center of technology in multiple sectors) and some particular circumstances (such as our role as a public university, dependent upon legislative support and bearing regional responsibilities), we believe that many of these strategies will be usable by others.
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Margaret Martonosi
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /Over the 30 years since I began graduate school, my computer architecture research has explored many topics, but the ongoing theme has been attention to how technology and application trends and constraints influence hardware and system design, particularly at the hardware-software interface.
Former CRA Board Member Moshe Vardi Receives 2017 ACM Presidential Award
/In: Featured Announcements, People /Today, ACM announced that former CRA Board Member Moshe Vardi will receive the 2017 ACM Presidential Award.
Save the Date – 2018 CRA Career Mentoring Workshop
/In: Featured Announcements, Career Mentoring Workshop /CRA’s biennial Career Mentoring Workshop will be offered on February 26 and 27, 2018 at The Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Va.
Jahanian Appointed Interim President of Carnegie Mellon University
/In: People, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors /CRA Board Member Farnam Jahanian was recently appointed Interim President of Carnegie Mellon University.
CRA Welcomes Emily Tang as a Tisdale Fellow
/In: People /By Emily Tang, CRA Tisdale Fellow I’ve just finished my second year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I’m majoring in electrical engineering and computer science with additional focuses in linguistics and applied international studies. I’m currently figuring out whether I’d like to pursue studying education technology (in particular technology to assist bilingual learning), […]
Workshop – Research on Learning about Machine Learning
/In: For Researchers /The ACM International Computing Education Research (ICER) Conference will hold a workshop on Research on Learning about Machine Learning Organizers: Ben Shapiro (University of Colorado Boulder) Peter Norvig (Google) Rebecca Fiebrink (Goldsmiths University of London) When: Monday, August 21, 2017 09:00-17:00 Machine learning is transforming many areas of computer science. From natural language processing and search […]
New Computing Faculty Workshops in Summer 2017
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /The third New Computing Faculty Workshop will be held August 6-8, 2017 in San Diego. The goal of the workshop is to help computing faculty at research intensive universities to be better and more efficient teachers. By learning a little about teaching, we will help new faculty (a) make their teaching more efficient and effective (e.g., students learn more with less input time from faculty) and (b) make their teaching more enjoyable. The workshops were described in Communications of the ACM in the May 2017 issue.
Expanding the Pipeline: Beyond Graduate Admissions – Strategies for Diversifying the Computer Science Workforce
/In: Diversity, CRA-W /With graduate enrollment increasing for women in computer and information sciences, the entry point for the field’s educational pipeline is more robust than ever. Yet, it appears that the challenge remains to increase retention and completion of degrees. In order to expand the pipeline, our efforts must focus on both recruitment of potential talents and support throughout graduate studies that leads to desired career outcomes.
Borg Early Career Award Winner: Lydia Tapia
/In: Awards /Lydia Tapia, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, was recently named the recipient of the 2017 CRA-W Borg Early Career Award (BECA). The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W, and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research. The annual award is given to a woman in computer science or engineering who has made significant research contributions and contributed to her profession, especially in the outreach to women.
Call for Nominations! — 2017 CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute
/In: Featured Announcements, Policy, Opportunities /As part of its mission to develop a next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the fourth offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We seek nominations for participants.
Expanding the Pipeline: Broadening Participation in Computing Fields by Preparing More Professionals with Disabilities
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, CRA-W /Most broadening participation efforts have focused on women and underrepresented minorities. However, for more than 10 years, AccessComputing has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to increase the successful participation of students with disabilities in academic programs and careers. AccessComputing addresses underrepresentation by providing multiple activities for students with disabilities.
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Margo Seltzer
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /“What are computer users doing that is wasting their time?” This question guides my research. I construe computer systems research quite broadly; if I can build it, it’s a systems problem. This breadth has let me pursue questions in visualization as well as operating systems; machine learning and computer architecture; file systems, performance analysis, graph processing, databases, and numerous other areas. Some people might say I have a short attention span; I just like to claim that I have broad interests!
2016 Taulbee Survey: Generation CS Continues to Produce Record Undergrad Enrollment; Graduate Degree Production Rises at both Master’s and Doctoral Levels
/In: Featured Announcements, Taulbee Announcements, For Researchers /This article and the accompanying figures and tables present the results from the 46th annual CRA Taulbee Survey.
AP Computer Science Principles Course Increases High School Student Participation in CS
/In: For Researchers, Education /Today, more than 50,000 high school students will take the inaugural Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP-CSP) exam. Ruthe Farmer, former senior policy advisor for Tech Inclusion in the White House explains why this is such a significant milestone for computer science education in an article in the Huffington Post.
Former CRA Board Member Receives 2016 ACM Software System Award
/In: People, Awards /Former CRA Board Member Alfred Z. Spector was named one of the recipients of the 2016 ACM Software System Award. Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Michael L. Kazar, Robert N. Sidebotham, David A. Nichols, Michael J. West, John H. Howard, Spector and Sherri M. Nichols were honored with the award for developing the Andrew File System (AFS).
The Social Science Side of CERP
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Diversity, CERP /The CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) turns four years old this month. During the past four years, CERP has been working steadily toward its goal of building diversity in computing through evaluation and social science research. CERP is staffed by Director Jane Stout, Research Scientist Burcin Tamer, and Research Associate Heather Wright. As seen on CERP’s About page, CERP staff are an eclectic mix of social scientists with expertise in quantitative and qualitative methods and a passion for diversity research.
Jeannette Wing to Lead Columbia University’s Data Science Institute
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements /On May 1, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger announced that Jeannette M. Wing, currently corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, will become the Avanessians Director of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and Professor of Computer Science. From Columbia’s Announcement: “Jeannette Wing is a pioneering figure in the world of computer science research and education. Her addition to the […]
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Sarita Adve
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /What value should a memory read return? The answer to this simple question is surprisingly complex for modern systems running parallel software. The memory consistency model, which governs this answer, is a fundamental part of the hardware-software interface, but has been one of the most challenging and contentious areas in parallel hardware and software specification. […]
CRA Enrollment Committee: Institution Subgroup Recognized
/In: Featured Announcements, People, For Researchers /At the CRA board meeting in February, Executive Director Andrew Bernat presented members of the CRA Enrollment Committee: Institution Subgroup with glass awards to thank them for their service on the project, which spanned nearly two years. Former CRA Board Member Tracy Camp leads the CRA Enrollment Committee.
Inside MERL: Making Innovation Happen
/In: Featured Announcements, People, For Researchers /Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) is the North American subsidiary of the corporate research and development organization of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and a Lab and Center member of CRA.
CRA Welcomes Claire Brady
/In: CRA, People, CRA-W /CRA has recently hired Claire Brady as a program manager. In her new role, she is responsible for planning CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) program events and providing support to initiatives that enrich the community’s awareness of CRA, its committees, mission, and services.
New CRA Board Member: Jaime Teevan
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, CRA-W /Jaime Teevan will replace Margaret Martonosi on the CRA Board on July 1.
CRA Activities and Initiatives
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, For Researchers /Over the past few months, CRA and its committees have been actively promoting our mission areas of policy, leadership, and talent development.
Valerie Taylor Named Argonne National Laboratory Division Director
/In: CRA Board of Directors /Former CRA Board Member Valerie Taylor has been appointed as the next director of the Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS) division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, effective July 3, 2017. She most recently served as the senior associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Engineering and a Regents Professor and the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Profiles in Computing: Yerika Jimenez
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, CRA-W, Education, Profiles in Computing /As a little girl growing up in the Dominican Republic, Yerika Jimenez, currently a Ph.D. student in computing at the University of Florida, noticed she had a knack for fixing things – cell phones, TVs, radios. Everyone in her community would bring her broken items, and she would return them repaired. A few years later, when Jimenez was nine years old, her family settled in New Jersey, and her fascination with technology continued.
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Susanne Hambrusch
/In: Diversity, CRA Board of Directors, CRA-W, Board Member Profiles /The main focus of my recent research has been computer science education and the role computer science can play in defining and advancing its own education research. Learning computational principles and learning to code is hard, and teaching these subjects is even harder. For most computer science topics, we know very little about how different learners’ best learn; how to effectively teach the material to audiences with different abilities, backgrounds, and goals; and how to reliably assess learning.
CRA Board and Committee Members Honored
/In: Awards /CRA Board Member Greg Hager Inducted to American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows. CCC’s Cynthia Dwork Co-winner of 2017 Godel Prize.
Additional Tapia Conference Scholarship Opportunities
/In: Diversity, For Students /Microsoft, Inc. and Google are now offering scholarships to support students to attend the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. Encourage your students to apply to these scholarship opportunities.
CERP Offers New Resource
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, Diversity, CERP /Since May 2013, the CERP team has published a graphic in each issue of Computing Research News (CRN) that analyzes the experiences of underrepresented students and professionals in computing. Each month, this newsletter will share the infographic published in CRN and news about CERP. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, subscribe here.
CRA-E Selects New Graduate Student Fellow
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /CRA’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is pleased to welcome its new 2017 CRA-E Graduate Student Fellow – Booma Sowkarthiga Balasubramani. The Graduate Fellows Program was established in 2015 to give graduate students the opportunity to contribute to CRA-E projects, engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students, and promote computer science research and undergraduate education at the national level.
NCWIT AA Now Accepting Award Nominations & Proposals & Winners Announced
/In: For Students, Awards, For Researchers /Thanks to the continued support from sponsors, the NCWIT Academic Alliance (AA) is pleased to announce the call for nominations and proposals for the latest round of awards.
2017 CRA Computing Leadership Summit
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements /On Monday, February 27, in Washington, D.C., the Computing Research Association hosted its annual Computing Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX Association) and the CSTB.
2017 Board Election Results
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors, CRA-W /CRA members have elected two new members to its board of directors: Carla Brodley and Kim Hazelwood. Current board members Nancy Amato, Susan Davidson, Dan Grossman, Brent Hailpern, Susanne Hambrusch, Barbara Ryder and Ellen Zegura were re-elected to the CRA board. Also beginning July 1, Brian Noble will be the USENIX representative to the CRA board replacing Margo Seltzer. Retiring from the board as of June 30, 2017 are David Culler, Mary Czerwinski and Seltzer. CRA thanks them all for contributions during their service on the board.
2017 CRA Distinguished Service and A. Nico Habermann Awardees Announced
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, Awards, A. Nico Habermann, Distinguished Service /Carol Frieze – A. Nico Habermann Award
Tom Kalil – Distinguished Service Award
CRA Board Officers Re-Elected
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /At the CRA board meeting on February 28, the CRA board of directors voted to re-elect its current board officers to serve new two-year terms beginning July 1, 2017. The board officers include: Susan Davidson (chair), Susanne Hambrusch (vice chair), Ron Brachman (treasurer), and Greg Morrisett (secretary).
Nearly 10 Years Later, CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop Participants are More Advanced in their Careers Than Non-Participants
/In: Diversity, CERP, For Researchers /CERP recently extracted Web data to observe the career progression of women who had participated in the CRA-W’s 2008 or 2009 Career Mentoring Workshops (CMWs) compared to a sample of women who had never participated in CMWs. We obtained the comparison sample from a population of women who earned their Ph.D.s in computer science during the same time period as the participants. We collected current career information including job titles (e.g., associate professor) and job setting (e.g., academia vs. industry/labs) for both groups. We then categorized job titles as entry level (e.g., assistant professor, software engineer), mid level (e.g., associate professor, senior engineer), and senior level (e.g., professor, principal program manager), collapsed across job setting. To test for a systematic difference in job rankings between workshop participants and the comparison group, we ran a 2 (Group) x 3 (Job Title Rank) Chi-squared test and found a statistically significant difference in rankings across the two groups, χ2 (2, N = 181) = 8.46, p < 0.05. Specifically, CMW participants were less likely than non-participants to be in an entry level position, p < .05, and more likely to be in a senior level position than non-participants, p < .05.
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Dan Grossman
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Education, Board Member Profiles /Since I started graduate school in 1997, I have considered myself a member of the programming languages research community — and I continue to attend and publish in the annual conferences of this vibrant computing subfield. But over the last 5-10 years, I have also found myself increasingly passionate about opportunities for computing researchers to focus on ways to influence computing education beyond, for those of us who are academics, our own classrooms and independent studies. Let me share some of the projects I have enjoyed (seriously!) and others I wish I had more time to pursue.
CRA Releases Report on Surge in Computer Science Enrollments
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Education /Generation CS: Computer Science Undergraduate Enrollments Surge Since 2006 Across the United States and Canada, universities and colleges are facing a significant increase in enrollment in both undergraduate computer science (CS) courses and programs. The current enrollment surge has exceeded previous CS booms, and there is a general sense that the current growth in enrollment […]
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Mary Czerwinski
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /My research revolves around tracking and understanding users’ emotional states and leveraging that information as additional context for the design of emotionally sentient systems. Some of the systems we have built have been designed for a user’s own personal reflection. Our first application, AffectAura, provided users with their own behavior patterns over time, such as what they were doing, where they were, who they were with and how they felt. This information could be used to make personal decisions about behavior change—if certain activities usually result in your feeling good or bad, perhaps you want to increase or decrease those behaviors.
CERP Receives Exemplary Paper Award for SIGCSE 2017
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, CERP, Education /A paper from CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) was recently named an “Exemplary paper” in the 2017 SIGCSE Proceedings. New this year, the SIGCSE program chairs recognized a new category of the top 25% of accepted papers as “Exemplary papers”, highlighted for their accomplishment of high quality, novelty and broad appeal to […]
National Academy of Engineering Announces New Members
/In: CRA, People /Today, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced it has elected 84 new members and 22 foreign members. Among those elected were Julia Hirschberg, CRA-W co-chair and former CRA board member, and Katherine Yelick, CCC council member. Several of the members elected have a background in computing research; congratulations to all. Julia Hirschberg: Percy K. and Vida […]
Research Highlight: CRA Board Member Brent Hailpern
/In: CRA Board of Directors, Board Member Profiles /My research involves understanding and facilitating the life cycle of cognitive software, which is substantially different than the life cycle of conventional software. This difference has profound implications for the methodology and tools required to build such software. Cognitive software possesses at least one “cognitive” or “intelligent” component, such as a component implemented using machine learning, neural networks, or rules. Multiple cognitive components will often be involved in a cognitive application or service, but even just one component is enough to impart special and challenging complications.
2017 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award Winners Announced
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, Education, CRA-E Faculty Mentoring Award /The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce three winners of the CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award. Congratulations to the 2017 award recipients: Margaret Burnett from Oregon State University, Nayda Santiago from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus, and Margo Seltzer from Harvard University. These outstanding individuals are recognized for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate […]
CRA Expresses Concern at New Executive Order Suspending Visas
/In: Featured Announcements, Policy /The Computing Research Association released the following statement in response to President Trump’s new Executive Order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States”:
NCSES Publishes Latest Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering Report
/In: Diversity, NSF, For Researchers /Yesterday, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) announced the release of the 2017 Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (WMPD) report, the federal government’s most comprehensive look at the participation of these three demographic groups in science and engineering education and employment.
Thank You Data Buddies!
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, CERP /CRA wishes to thank the computing departments who distributed CERP’s Data Buddies survey during the fall of 2016! The collective effort of these departments provides data for CERP’s research on students’ experiences and successes in computing degree programs.
A Conversation on Data Science
/In: For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors /CRA brings together people from academia, government labs, and industrial labs. For me, coming from industry, Snowbird is an unbeatable opportunity to take the pulse of academia. One of the hot topics in 2016 was the Data Science juggernaut. I was glad to join Barbara Ryder (Chair) and Lise Getoor (Co-Chair) in organizing the panel session: Data Science in the 21st Century, which was well attended and full of energy and ideas. After CRA’s Committee on Data Science (Lise Getoor, Chair, David Culler, Eric de Sturler, David Ebert, Mike Franklin, and H.V. Jagadish) published the bulletin article Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science, David Culler and I sat down for a follow-up chat: A Conversation on Data Science.
Undergraduate Research Opportunity Listing Service
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, For Students, For Researchers /The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is pleased to announce the “Undergraduate Research Listing Service.” This free service is now available for faculty and other researchers to advertise undergraduate research opportunities and for undergraduates to find such opportunities. The site can be found here: http://conquer.cra.org/research-opportunities.
Profiles in Computing: Chandra Krintz
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /Krintz believes it is important in computing research to push technology forward by including people with diverse perspectives and ideas. To do that, she supports increasing underrepresented minority participation in computing. “I think it benefits both society and technology in general. Personally, it’s just so inspiring to see young people have new ideas, get excited, and want to go out and change the world.”
Why Students Consider Leaving Computing and What Encourages Them to Stay
/In: Featured Announcements, CERP, Education /In CERP’s 2015 Data Buddies survey, computing majors were asked whether they had thought about changing to a non-computing major during the past year. Thirteen percent of students who responded to this question said that they had. The word clouds here were created using students’ comments about the reasons they considered leaving computing and factors that helped them stay. Some of the most frequently encountered words in students’ reasons for considering leaving computing were “classes”, “hard”, “difficult”, “work”, and “time”. On the other hand, students’ responses regarding the factors that helped them stay in computing contained words such as “job”, “degree”, and “friends”.
NSF CISE 2017 CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop
/In: Featured Announcements, NSF, For Researchers /The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) will host a one-day workshop on CAREER Proposal Writing on March 20, 2017. This workshop will be held at the Hilton Arlington, near the National Science Foundation. The goal of this workshop is to introduce junior CAREER-eligible faculty to the NSF CAREER program and help them to prepare their CAREER proposals to target CISE programs. Attendees will have the opportunity to improve their skills in proposal writing, as well as to interact with NSF program directors from different CISE divisions (ACI, CCF, CNS, and IIS) and recent NSF CAREER awardees.
CRA Board Member Named in Women You Should Know List
/In: Awards, CRA Board of Directors /CRA Board Member Ellen Zegura was named one of the “10 Women in Networking/Communications That You Should Know” by Networking Networking Women (N2 Women), a discipline-specific community of researchers in the communications and networking research fields. Zegura is a faculty member at Georgia Tech and also a member of the CRA executive committee.
Call for Applications: CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Education /The Computing Research Association Education Committee (CRA-E) is now accepting applications for the CRA-E Graduate Fellows Program. The program provides opportunities for Ph.D. candidates in computing fields to contribute to CRA-E projects, network with computer science education advocates on the committee, engage in advocacy for mentoring undergraduate students and promote undergraduate research and education at the national level.
CRA-E plans to appoint up to two graduate fellows per year, who will serve as members of the committee, providing a voice for graduate students. The fellows will attend the annual CRA-E meeting (travel expenses funded by CRA-E), serve on a CRA-E subcommittee related to their interests and expertise, and contribute to the CRA-E Conquer site that provides resources for undergraduate research and applying to graduate school.
Nominations Open for Borg Early Career Award
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, Awards, For Researchers, CRA-W /CRA-Women invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award (BECA). he award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research.
How to Engage Your Alumni: The Story of UMD’s New Iribe Building
/In: People /As computer science departments across the country grow rapidly, we all may feel overwhelmed by the staggering growth of our enrollments. While faculty growth still has not caught up with the influx of students, we cannot be anything but happy at the diversity of students who are choosing to become computer science majors. Many people may believe that alumni engagement begins after students earn their diplomas. That assumption is false. Alumni engagement begins the moment that students start their education in our departments. With planning, outreach, and genuine interest in their lives and careers, we make alumni engagement an important part of our mission in the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland (UMD).
Videos Available: De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work
/In: CRA /You can now view videos from the De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQFpLGNQdPn62wuMuITAbFg. Recently, CRA was a sponsor and participated in the De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, which focused on the impact of the amazing technologies being developed by the computing research community on the […]
Executive Q&A: Jeannette M. Wing, Head of Microsoft Research
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Lab and Center Profiles /Microsoft is a Lab and Center member of CRA. This article is the second in a series of our industry member profiles.
Jeannette M. Wing joined Microsoft Research in January 2013, after holding positions in academia and government, most recently at Carnegie Mellon University and the National Science Foundation (NSF). From 2007 to 2010, she served as assistant director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the NSF. Wing is a former CRA board member and recipient of the 2011 CRA Distinguished Service Award. Her areas of expertise are in trustworthy computing, formal methods, concurrent and distributed systems, programming languages, and software engineering.
De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /CRA recently was a sponsor and participated in the De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, which focused on the impact of the amazing technologies being developed by the computing research community on the nature of work and employment. The conference was held at Rice University with primary funding from the De Lange Conference Fund at Rice, which brings top experts and major figures to its campus in order to focus on a topic of great concern to society.
Profiles in Computing: Tanya Amert
/In: Diversity, For Students, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /Tanya Amert, a computer science Ph.D. student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found herself drawn to computer science because she enjoyed figuring out how things work. At 13 years old, she was a big fan of the Neopets website and online community. Amert noticed some users had customized homepages, and her interest grew even more. Despite not knowing any HTML at the time, she learned how to look at the source code and figured out how to change the color of the scroll bar within the CSS. “I discovered that specific lines of HTML made that happen. And I thought that was mind boggling and awesome.”
Congratulations to 2016 AAAS Fellows
/In: Awards /The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced its 2016 Elected Fellows. Former CRA Board Treasurer Phillip Bernstein (Microsoft Research) and current CRA Board Member Josep Torrellas (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) were both elected Fellows.
2017 Election Committee’s Slate of Nominees for the CRA Board; Petition Nominees Sought
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, CRA Board of Directors /2017 Election Committee’s Slate of Nominees for the CRA Board
CRA is pleased to announce the 2017 Election Committee’s slate of nominees for the CRA Board.
2017 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award Winners
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers, Education /This year’s nominees were a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several were authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others had made presentations at major conferences, and some had produced software artifacts that were in widespread use.
Get Involved with CRA-Women Activities
/In: Diversity, CRA-W /The mission of the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) is to increase the success and participation of women in computing research and education at all levels. There are several ways you can get involved by mentoring students, submitting proposals and sharing these opportunities with your colleagues and students.
Congratulations to the 2016 Class of ACM Fellows
/In: Awards /The ACM recently named 53 of its members as ACM Fellows for major contributions in areas including artificial intelligence, cryptography, computer architecture, high performance computing and programming languages.
Computer Science Education Week and new NSF CSforAll Solicitation
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /A recent White House blog post by Ruthe Farmer, Senior Policy Advisor for Tech Inclusion, emphasizes that Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an opportunity to join the #CSforAll movement and give every student the opportunity to learn computer science. On that note, with the kick off of CSEdWeek yesterday, the White House released a fact sheet detailing the great scope of CS for All efforts, including a new CSforAll program solicitation from NSF called Computer Science for All: Researcher Practitioner Partnerships (CS for All: RPP).
Computer Science Education Week – December 5-11
/In: Education /The eighth annual Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) will be held next week, December 5 – 11. CSEdWeek is “a call to action to raise awareness of computer science education and computing careers for students, educators, and the public.” This is a great opportunity to raise awareness about the impact of computing and the critical need for computer science education. Originally conceived by the Computing in the Core coalition, Code.org organizes CSEdWeek as a grassroots campaign supported by 350 partners and 100,000 educators worldwide.
Ayanna Howard: 2016 A. Nico Habermann Award Winner
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, Awards, A. Nico Habermann, CRA-W /In February, Ayanna Howard from Georgia Institute of Technology received the 2016 A. Nico Habermann Award for her sustained commitment to increasing diversity in computing. Howard is currently a CRA-W board member, and at Georgia Tech, she has provided research opportunities to dozens of undergraduates – more than 75% of whom are underrepresented minorities or women, and a majority of these students have gone on to graduate school. Nominations for the 2017 A. Nico Habermann Award are due on Friday, December 9.
Maria Klawe: 2016 CRA Distinguished Service Award Recipient
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, A. Nico Habermann /By Shar Steed, CRA Communications Specialist Earlier this year, Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College (HMC), received the CRA Distinguished Service award for her tireless commitment to and profound impact on the computing research community. Nominations for the 2017 Distinguished Service Award are due on Friday, December 9. Throughout her career thus far, Klawe has […]
OSTP Shares Resource on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Science and Technology
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity /Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) shared a summary of actions to take to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and technology. The post titled, “Raising the Floor: Sharing What Works in Workplace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” was written by Megan Smith, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and […]
Nominations Open for the Fifth Heidelberg Laureate Forum
/In: For Students, Awards, Opportunities /The Heidelberg Laureate Forum was created by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Heidelberg Institute of Theoretical Studies, ACM, the International Mathematical Union, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters to provide an opportunity for young researchers to spend a week with winners of the ACM Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Abel Prize, Nevanlinna Prize, and Fields Medal. To date four have been held and all have been viewed as a major success by the laureates and the 200 young researchers in computer science and mathematics who attended each forum. Details can be found at http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/. The inclusion of the ACM Prize in Computing is new this year and will further enrich the computing content of the Forum.
Analysis of Current and Future Computer Science Needs via Advertised Faculty Searches for 2017
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers /The wealth of faculty searches in Computer Science during this hiring season for positions starting in 2017 again affords the opportunity to study areas of Computer Science where departments are choosing to invest in new faculty hires. While the number and areas for faculty searches does not necessarily translate into the same for faculty hires, we believe that they provide insight into current and future needs within the discipline.
We analyzed ads from 347 institutions seeking to fill hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science. There is a 30% one-year (and 56% two-year) increase in the number of institutions searching for tenure-track faculty in Computer Science and a 35% one-year(and 71% two-year) increase in the number of positions being searched for. The number of institutions searching and positions seeking to be filled has increased even more for non-PhD-granting institutions.
Richard Tapia Receives the AAAS Public Engagement with Science Award
/In: People, Diversity, Awards /Recently, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) named computational mathematician Richard Tapia from Rice University, the recipient of the 2016 AAAS Public Engagement with Science Award. The award recognizes Tapia’s “remarkable career blending world-class scholarship, admirable mentoring and profound contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and public engagement.”
Data Buddies 2016 is underway!
/In: Featured Announcements, CERP /On Monday, November 14, CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) distributed its annual Data Buddies surveys to more than 110 participating “buddy” computing departments.
Buddy departments send the survey to students affiliated with computing (e.g., majors; minors; students enrolled in CS courses; graduate students), and in return they receive a customized report on their students’ responses. The survey measures students’ experiences in computing (e.g., sense of belonging), aspirations for the future (e.g., intentions to pursue a Ph.D.), and participation in computing activities (e.g., formal research experiences).
CERP uses data buddies data to conduct evaluation as well as social science research on diversity issues in computing.
Is your department a buddy? If not, help the computing community by volunteering your department to become a Data Buddy today! Visit CERP’s website to learn more, view our list of buddies, and sign up: http:/cra.org/cerp/data-buddies/.
Profiles in Computing: Morgan Carroll
/In: For Students, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /By Shar Steed, CRA Communications Specialist Morgan Carroll, a senior studying computer science at University of Texas at Tyler, fondly remembers her grandfather buying her a HP Pavilion with Windows 98 when she was eight years old. “From then on I just loved computers. In high school, I figured out that I was good at […]
Martha Pollack Named the 14th President of Cornell University
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, People /Today, former CRA board member Martha Pollack was named the 14th president of Cornell University. Pollack is currently provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan. Cornell University Board of Trustees unanimously elected her, and the position will begin on April 17, 2017.
Are you working on the Taulbee Survey?
/In: Taulbee Announcements /The CRA Taulbee Survey is in progress. The deadline for the salary section is November 18 and the deadline for the rest of the survey is January 18, 2017. If you are the academic unit head of a U.S. or Canadian department granting doctoral degrees in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and/or Information, you should have received emails about […]
Facebook Emerging Scholar Program
/In: CRA /Facebook has announced the Facebook Emerging Scholar Program, which is designed to identify promising doctoral students and support them in their research efforts. The Facebook Emerging Scholar award is also specifically designed to support talented students from underrepresented minority groups pursuing their Ph.D.’s while delivering innovative research. The award is open to first or second year Ph.D. students who are members of an underrepresented minority group in the technology sector. Emerging Scholar recipients studying computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system architecture, or a related area will be awarded tuition and fees for two years in addition to a two year $37,000 annual stipend and
Call for ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award Nominations
/In: Awards /The Karlstrom Award is presented annually to an outstanding educator who is appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution; recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies; effecting new curriculum development or expansion in computer science and engineering; or making a significant contribution to ACM’s educational mission. Those teachers with ten years or less experience are given special consideration.
University at Buffalo Speaker Series Highlights Women in Computing
/In: Diversity, CRA Board of Directors, CRA-W /The University at Buffalo (UB) Department of Computer Science and Engineering is celebrating its 50th anniversary this academic year. It has chosen this occasion to honor successful women in computing with a year-long speaker series. The Distinguished Speaker Series highlights several CRA board members.
Applications Open for NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Awards
/In: Awards /Calling all teachers, counselors, administrators, mentors, or other influencers who support high school women’s passion for computing and technology! Applications for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Aspirations in Computing Educator Award are open through November 28, 2016. Each winner receives $250 in cash and up to $750 for participation in computing-related professional development activities, recognition at a local Affiliate Award event and increased visibility in his or her school district and community, NCWIT resources and promotional items, as well as an engraved award for both the Educator and his or her school. Educators can apply online at http://bit.ly/AiCEdAward no later than 11:59 p.m. EST on November 28, 2016.
Profiles in Computing: Rita Wouhaybi
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /The 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) brought together more than 30 accomplished speakers and 550 female graduate students in computing. Rita H. Wouhaybi who is a research scientist with Intel Labs’ Systems and Software Research at Intel Corporation, was one of the speakers who shared her unique perspective with the attendees.
It’s Not About the Money: Optimizing Academic-Industrial Partnerships
/In: Research, People, Resources, For Researchers, Conference at Snowbird /Today, more than ever, industry leaders are looking to partner with academic computer science programs. With available computer science expertise at a premium, they’re looking for ideas, for new hires, for help on crucial projects. Universities are the mother lode for the personnel and expertise they crave. On July 18, I presented at the CRA Conference at Snowbird session, “Local Corporate Labs, Centers and Development Offices: Optimizing Department/Industry,” which explored the growth of corporate lab culture, and I’d like to share some of insights from that talk.
CRA-Education to Host Workshop at Supercomputing 2016
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Education /The CRA Education Committee (CRA-E) hosts a series of workshops on Engaging Undergraduates in Research at major computer science research conferences. The next workshop titled “Best Practices in Mentoring Undergraduate Research in Supercomputing,” will be held at Supercomputing 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The workshop will run as BoF session on Wednesday, November 16, 5:15-7 pm and is run by Nancy Amato (Texas A&M) and CRA-E Fellow Max Grossman (Rice University).
CRA Endorses K-12 CS Framework
/In: Policy, Education /Back in January the Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA), the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM), and Code.org announced an initiative to develop a K-12 Computer Science Framework for use throughout the country’s education system. The plan was to develop a high level framework, not education standards, that states and school districts could use to create individual CS curriculums for their needs and wants. On Monday, the group, which now includes Cyber Innovation Center and the National Math and Science Initiative, announced that they had completed their work and made the framework public.
What is Data Science in the 21st Century?
/In: Resources, Research Issues, For Researchers /Last July, a distinguished panel of computer scientists – David Culler (UC Berkeley), Rayid Ghani (U of Chicago), Rahel Jhirad (Hearst) and Rob Rutenbar (UIUC) — discussed this question with a group of approximately 100 CRA Conference at Snowbird attendees. There was agreement that data science is an interdisciplinary field, combining techniques from machine learning, natural language processing, data mining, algorithms, information retrieval, etc.
Nominations Open for 2017 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, For Researchers, Education, CRA-E Faculty Mentoring Award /CRA’s newest award program honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
Correction: Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science
/In: Research Issues /Correction to Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science: H.V. Jagadish is a member of CRA’s Committee on Data Science, and was not listed on yesterday’s author list. The full committee includes: Lise Getoor (Chair), David Culler, Eric de Sturler, David Ebert, Mike Franklin, and H.V. Jagadish.
Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science
/In: Featured Announcements, Resources, Research Issues, For Researchers /Our ability to collect, manipulate, analyze, and act on vast amounts of data is having a profound impact on all aspects of society. This transformation has led to the emergence of data science as a new discipline. The explosive growth of interest in this area has been driven by research in social, natural, and physical sciences with access to data at an unprecedented scale and variety, by industry assembling huge amounts of operational and behavioral information to create new services and sources of revenue, and by government, social services and non-profits leveraging data for social good. This emerging discipline relies on a novel mix of mathematical and statistical modeling, computational thinking and methods, data representation and management, and domain expertise. While computing fields already provide many principles, tools and techniques to support data science applications and use cases, the computer science community also has the opportunity to contribute to the new research needed to further drive the development of the field. In addition, the community has the obligation to engage in developing guidelines for the responsible use of data science.
Announcing the VMware Systems Research Award for Early Career Faculty
/In: Funding, Awards, For Researchers /We are pleased to announce a new award in support of the computer science research community. The objective of this award is to call attention to a valuable and promising body of emerging computer science systems research and provide support for continued advances by an emerging research leader. This will be an annual award in the amount of USD 100,000, granted to the recipient’s university in support of her/his research.
Eligible nominees are faculty worldwide within 5 years of their first tenure-track appointment. Nominations must be submitted by a university department chair and each submission should include a one-page letter of nomination, a proposed citation and three references with contact information. Each department chair is limited to a single nomination which must be submitted via email at sysaward@vmware.com. The deadline for the nominations submission is November 15, 2016.
Graduate Student Opportunity: Applications Open for Grad Cohort 2017
/In: For Students, CRA-W /The upcoming CRA-Women Graduate Student Cohort (Grad Cohort) will be held April 7-8, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Grad Cohort is a two-day workshop for female students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields. The application closes November 30.
Grad Cohort is generously funded by sponsors from industry, academia, the National Science Foundation, and the computing community. The workshop aims to increase the ranks of senior women in computing-related studies and research by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women through their graduate studies.
Computing Researchers Travel to D.C. to Make the Case for Computing
/In: CRA, Featured Announcements, Policy, For Researchers /On September 14, 21 computing researchers from across the country visited Washington, D.C. to make the case before Congress for federally funded computing research. The volunteers, traveling from as near as Maryland and Pennsylvania, and as far away as Utah and California, participated in nearly 50 House and Senate meetings. Their message to Congress was very simple: Federally supported computing research is vital to the nation’s future. Using their own research and individual stories as support, and reinforced with additional information from CRA, they made the “Federal case” for computing to members of Congress and their staff. Just as important as the message they presented, they also made valuable connections with the officials who represent them in D.C. Those members now know more about the expertise and interesting (and important) computing work that occurs in their districts and states, and our participants have a better sense of just who represents them in Congress. And they’ve hopefully started a lasting dialogue on both sides.
Nominees Sought for CRA Board of Directors
/In: Featured Announcements, CRA Board of Directors /The Computing Research Association seeks your help in suggesting nominations for its board of directors. We want individuals who have the time, energy, initiative, and resources to work on CRA issues on behalf of the entire CRA community. We have a working board, and all members are expected to work on community issues.
The board provides the membership for various standing committees, including the Government Affairs, Snowbird Conference, Taulbee Survey, Finance, and Elections committees. In addition, issues affecting computing research arise unexpectedly, and board members must take the initiative and lead CRA’s responses. Many CRA committees and initiatives involve year-round attention, regular conference calls, communications with lab directors and department chairs, proposal writing, and sometimes travel at the expense of the individual board member.
Nearly 40 CEOs of American Companies Call for Support of Federal Research
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press /In an advertisement that ran in the New York Times on September 26, and in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, 39 CEOs and top executives of American companies argued that federally supported scientific research is, “an investment in our prosperity, security, and well-being.”
The ad points out that without federally supported research, we would not have such things as smart phones, the internet, or microprocessors, to name but a few of the examples cited. Some of the companies whose leaders signed the advertisement are members of the Task Force on American Innovation, a coalition which CRA is a member. The Task Force is a coalition of science organizations, American colleges and universities, and high-tech companies, which supports federally-funded scientific research and promote its benefits to America’s economy, security, and quality of life. The advertisement has the full list of signatories, some of which are well known to our community, such as Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, and Meg Whitman, President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprises.
The ad was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Government Shutdown Averted; Federal Budget on Autopilot Until Dec. 9
/In: Featured Announcements, Policy, For Researchers /First, the good news: the government won’t have to shut down on Saturday, as Congressional leaders have agreed to a continuing resolution (CR) through December 9. As our regular readers will remember, the Fiscal Year 2016 budget year runs from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016 and if Congress has not passed a budget or a CR by this Saturday October 1, federal agencies must stop operations. The last government shutdown happened back in 2013, but we’ve been dealing with the potential of one every year since. The agreed to CR puts funding for federal agencies generally, and science research accounts specifically, on autopilot at Fiscal Year 2016 levels.
Nominations Open for CRA Distinguished Service and A. Nico Habermann Awards
/In: Featured Announcements, Awards, For Researchers, A. Nico Habermann, Distinguished Service /The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2017 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award.
Distinguished Service Award
CRA presents an award, usually annually, to a person who has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community. This award recognizes service in the areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications or conferences, and leadership that has a major impact on computing research.
A. Nico Habermann Award
CRA presents an award, usually annually, to a person who has made outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community. This award recognizes work in areas of government affairs, educational programs, professional societies, public awareness, and leadership that has a major impact on advancing these groups in the computing research community. Recognized contributions can be focused directly at the research level or at its immediate precursors, namely students at the undergraduate or graduate levels.
Profiles in Computing: Caroline Trippel
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /From an early age, current Ph.D. student and 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) attendee Caroline Trippel had a positive image of women in computing. Her mother earned an undergraduate degree in math, a Master’s degree in computer science, and currently works as an embedded systems software engineer.
CRA-Women Virtual Undergrad Town Hall: Enabling Science Breakthroughs Using Computer Science
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, CRA-W /Please share this opportunity with your students. During CRA-W’s Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall Event, students from around the world will learn about cutting edge research in the field of computing, and have the opportunity to ask questions to distinguished computer scientists. The next event will be held October 13 at 7PM EST. Speaker: Deb Agarwal, Senior […]
Computing, Cognition, and the Future of Knowing: How Humans and Machines are Forging a New Age of Understanding
/In: For Researchers, Lab and Center Profiles /IBM Research is a Lab and Center member of CRA. This article is the first in a series of our industry member profiles.
It’s not surprising that the public’s imagination has been ignited by artificial intelligence since the term was first coined in 1955. In the ensuing 60 years, we have been alternately captivated by its promise, wary of its potential for abuse, and frustrated by its sometimes slow development.
But like so many advanced technologies that were conceived before their time, artificial intelligence has come to be widely misunderstood—co-opted by Hollywood, mischaracterized by the media, and portrayed as everything from savior to scourge of humanity. Those of us engaged in serious information science and in its application in the real world of business and society understand the enormous potential of intelligent systems.
The future of this technology—which we believe will be cognitive, not “artificial”—has very different characteristics from those generally attributed to AI, spawning different types of technological, scientific, and societal challenges and opportunities, with different requirements for governance, policy, and management.
Researchers Eye Gaming As Tool for Boosting Computer Science Skills, Diversity in Middle Schools
/In: Diversity, Education /Computer science and education researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Florida, both CRA member institutions, are launching an initiative that will use a custom-designed video game to boost both computational thinking in middle school science classrooms and foster both gender and racial diversity in computing.
Trump Provides Science Policy Views
/In: Featured Announcements, Policy /Back in July, we got a good sense of how Hillary Clinton would approach science and technology policy in her presidency when her campaign released her Technology and Innovation agenda, which we covered here. At the time, there wasn’t much information about how a President Trump would approach similar issues. Today, the folks behind ScienceDebate.org have released the answers provided by Clinton and Trump, along with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, to 20 questions about science policy issues facing the country. While Clinton’s answers are consistent with those she outlined in her Tech and Innovation agenda, the answers Trump provided give us a first real glimpse at the candidate’s views on things like innovation policy and the importance of the federal investment in fundamental research. I thought I’d highlight two question responses in particular, but invite you to read the whole 20 questions.
CRA Executive Director Speaks at White House Summit on Computer Science for All
/In: Featured Announcements, Education /Today, CRA Executive Director, Andrew Bernat was a speaker at the White House Summit on Computer Science for All. The audience heard from students and leaders of CS education efforts as part of the CS for All initiative. The initiative aims to ensure CS education is available to all K-12 students across the U.S.
Bernat expressed his excitement about the incredible success of the initiative and explained CRA’s commitment to strengthening the computing research community by supporting the development of strong, diverse talent. He announced that so far more than 75 university and college computing departments from across the country have agreed on behalf of their departments to take action to support the goals of the CS for All Initiative through a variety of concrete actions. And he is confident many more will sign up. CRA member institutions’ support will include faculty expertise and effort, the development of innovative computing education products, and teacher development.
Building, Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity Initiative Seeking Affiliate Schools
/In: Diversity, For Researchers /The BRAID (Building, Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity) initiative is a joint project led by the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) and Harvey Mudd College. The BRAID project addresses the lack of diversity in computer science departments and specifically looks at the underrepresentation of women and racial/ethnic minorities.
Would your school like to participate? BRAID is now accepting applications for new BRAID affiliate schools, and proposals are due by 5 pm on December 30, 2016.
2016 CRA Taulbee Survey Schedule
/In: CRA, Taulbee, Taulbee Announcements /The 2016 CRA Taulbee Survey will be starting soon. As we did last year, the survey will be split into two parts, salary and main (everything else). This allows us to set an earlier deadline for the salary section in order to produce a preliminary salary report in December, while giving departments more time to collect and enter the information in the rest of the survey.
The schedule will be as follows:
By September 9: All doctoral departments will be contacted to update Taulbee user information. The academic unit head will receive an email and so will the Taulbee primary contact, if separate.
September 13: PDF will be available for data gathering.
September 27: Both sections of the Taulbee will open for input.
November 18: Due date for salary section.
December 19: Preliminary salary report available.
January 18, 2017: Due date for the main Taulbee section.
April 2017: Full Taulbee report to CRA members and participating departments.
May 2017: Published in CRN.
If you have any questions, contact Betsy Bizot at bizot@cra.org.
CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awardees: Where are they now?
/In: Outstanding Undergrad Researchers /The CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award recognizes undergraduates who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing. Here’s an update on last year’s awardees. Information on the 2017 competition is available here.
Profiles in Computing: Volcano Kyungyoon Kim
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Students, Profiles in Computing /For Volcano Kyungyoon Kim, current Ph.D. student and 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) attendee, choosing to study computer science was an easy decision. She knew since elementary school that she would have a career in computing. Volcano comes from a computer science family – her father is a computer science professor, her mother also has a degree in computer science, and now her younger brother is currently pursuing a master’s degree in computer science. “Every single one of them is in computer science. So I never really thought of anything else. My parents think that it’s the most exciting and valuable field of study and it will lead to a great career in the future.”
While this influenced her enough to begin studying computer science in college, during her first two years she wasn’t totally convinced that it was a perfect fit for her. It wasn’t until Volcano discovered the flexibility of the field and its interdisciplinary nature that she was completely hooked. “There was a moment later on when I thought this is really perfect for me. It is not only about computer science, it is about applying it to all the other areas. If you have an interest in art, having a computer science background can boost your art skills or it can even open up a new art genre such as 3D painting in a virtual reality. Computer science is like a magic powder that you can add to other fields. ”
ACM Athena Lecturer Award Accepting Nominations
/In: Awards, For Researchers /The ACM Athena Lecturer Award celebrates female researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. Each year ACM honors a preeminent female computer scientist as the Athena Lecturer. The recipient gives an invited talk at a major ACM conference of her choice. A video of the talk is made available on the ACM website. The award carries a cash prize of $25,000. Financial support for the Athena Lecturer Award is provided by Google.
Nominations Open for Two NSF Awards: Alan Waterman, Vannevar Bush
/In: Awards, For Researchers /The National Science Foundation is currently accepting nominations for two prestigious awards. Consider nominating an individual from your department today! The Alan Waterman Award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF. The Vannevar Bush Award honors truly exceptional lifelong leaders in science and technology who have made substantial contributions to the welfare of the Nation through public service activities in science, technology, and public policy.
New Videos Encourage Undergraduates to Pursue Advanced Education in Computing
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Education /The Computing Research Association (CRA) and its education committee (CRA-E) are excited to announce the creation of five short videos entitled “Choosing a PhD in Computer Science.” These videos were designed in conjunction with award-winning producer Patrick Sammon (co-producer of “Codebreaker”) to explain the benefits of pursuing a PhD in CS. The videos showcase young researchers with PhDs who are now working in industry as they talk about what compelled them to pursue a doctorate and how they are using their advanced training in their work. While many undergraduates understand that a PhD is needed for a position in academia, these videos demonstrate how a PhD can be useful in industry as well.
Why CS Departments Should Embrace Computing Education Research
/In: Featured Announcements, For Researchers, Education, Conference at Snowbird /How can a CS Department benefit from hiring tenure-track faculty in the field of Computing Education Research (CER)? What are some of the major research questions in CER? How can CER enhance existing research in a CS department? A panel at the CRA Conference at Snowbird Meeting in July 2016 addressed these and other questions. The panelists included Diana Franklin (University of Chicago), Mark Guzdial (Georgia Tech), Scott Klemmer (UC San Diego), Andy Ko (University of Washington) and Ben Shapiro (University of Colorado-Boulder) in a session moderated by Ran Libeskind-Hadas (Harvey Mudd College).
Nominations Open for 2017 CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, Outstanding Undergrad Researchers, Education /The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a terrific way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
Profiles in Computing: Kim Hazelwood
/In: Featured Announcements, Diversity, For Researchers, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /The 2016 Graduate Cohort Workshop (Grad Cohort) brought together more than 30 accomplished speakers and 550 female graduate students in computing. Kim Hazelwood, who leads a performance and datacenter capacity engineering and analysis team within Facebook’s infrastructure division, was one of the speakers who shared her unique perspective with the attendees. Kim has always had an interest in technology and a love for math. Like many undergraduate students, Kim didn’t take any computer science classes in high school. However, she took a leap and declared computer engineering as her major heading into her undergraduate degree at Clemson University. “First time was a charm on actually picking the right area for me,” she explained.
Change in NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Solicitation
/In: Funding, For Students, NSF, Education /The NSF-wide Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.
CRA Women Early and Mid Career Mentoring Workshops
/In: Featured Announcements, Mentoring, For Researchers, CRA-W /CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) will host early and mid career mentoring workshops on November 19-20 in Washington, D.C. The goal of these workshops is to provide an environment for mentoring, practical information, advice, and support among researchers and educators in computing. The application is free, there is a $250 registration fee for the workshop (for those accepted), and CRA-W will reimburse participants for expenses (hotel and airfare) after the workshop. In order to receive reimbursement applicants must be affiliated with a U.S. institution or be employed in the U.S. These workshops are open to individuals in their early career in research and labs, and mid career in education, research, and labs.
LAtINiTY: Empowering Latin American Women in Technology
/In: Diversity /The Latinas in Computing (LiC) community was established with the help of The Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology (ABI) at the 2006 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). Recognizing the status of Latinas as a double minority in North America, this community defines and implements strategies to improve the participation of the current and next generations of Latinas in technology. These dual strategies complement the work done by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) that focused on the recruitment and retention of minority students in computing-based fields in North America, and the work done by the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) to grow the research pipeline of women in computing. National Science Foundation (NSF) data shows Hispanic or Latino enrollment increased from 7.2% in 2002 to 9.9% in 2012, but the hiring of underrepresented minorities seems to be “stuck in neutral.”
Student Opportunites: Grace Hopper Celebration Research Scholars
/In: Diversity, For Students, CRA-W /CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) recently announced a new program for undergraduates, the CRA-W Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Research Scholars Program. The GHC Research Scholars program brings undergraduate women to the annual Grace Hopper Celebration. The purpose of this program is to provide attendees with an unique experience, providing them a mentor, networking opportunities, and advising.
Profiles in Computing: Drew Williams
/In: Featured Announcements, For Students, CRA-W, Profiles in Computing /An early love of science fiction is what initially lured Drew to a career in STEM. Her fascination with outer space and the future, recurrent themes in science fiction, inspired her to study astronomy and become a physics major. Although she didn’t take any high school computer science courses, she always enjoyed tinkering with computer programs on her own. She decided in college to take a coding class and “really loved it.” Drew soon changed her major to computer science because she wanted to be part of the movement that brings to life the technologies we dream about in science fiction.
Rice to Host Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work
/In: Featured Announcements, People, Misc., For Researchers /Those who attended this year’s CRA Snowbird conference may have heard Moshe Vardi’s provocative panel session on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, discussing the potential impact of computing technologies on employment and the nature of work over the coming years. Vardi makes a compelling case that the computing research community ought to be concerned with the impact its innovations will have on society, both positive and negative. To that end, Vardi has led an effort to pull together some of the leading thinkers from the computing, economics, and social science communities to consider the issue in Houston in December. The De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work will be held December 5-6, 2016, at Rice University. Here’s an announcement from the organizers (CRA is a co-sponsor).