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Today, May 20, 2021, marks the tenth Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access/inclusion and people with different disabilities. In honor of GAAD, we’re sharing resources to learn more about accessibility in higher education.
CRA, in consultation with NSF, has appointed five new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council with terms starting on July 1.
Sven Koenig, University of Southern California
Chandra Krintz, University of California, Santa Barbara
William Regli, University of Maryland
Mona Singh, Princeton University
Ufuk Topcu, University of Texas at Austin
The recipient of the 2021- 2022 ACM Athena Lecturer Award is Ayanna Howard, Dean of The Ohio State University College of Engineering.
Her citation reads as follows:
For fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and artificial intelligence along with forging new paths to broaden participation in computing through entrepreneurial and mentoring efforts.
To view the press release, please visit: https://awards.acm.org/about/2021-athena
Last year the IEEE announced the creation of the IEEE Frances E Allen medal, recognizing the contributions of Frances “Fran” E. Allen as an American computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers.
Nominations for this award are open now and are due by June 15. Please honor Fran Allen and outstanding members of our research community by submitting a nomination.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is hosting a webinar on the Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program solicitation (NSF 21-571) on May 4, 2021 starting at 2:00 pm Eastern Time.
CRA has recently hired Elyse Okwu as a program associate for the Widening Participation (CRA-WP) committee. In this role, she leads and supports CRA-WP programs that focus on increasing the success and participation of underrepresented groups in computing research.
Prior to joining CRA-WP, Elyse worked as a research associate at Arizona State University to examine factors of persistence for women in STEM doctoral programs nationwide. At the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, she worked with INVESTING NOW to expose young women to engineering. Elyse is passionate about working with underserved populations to ensure that access and equity are attainable in their quest for education in STEM.
In response to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate’s recently announced CSGrad4US Fellowship program, the Computing Research Association’s Education (CRA-E) and Widening Participation (CRA-WP) committees are working to develop a CSGrad4US Mentoring Program for recipients of the CSGrad4US Fellowship.
We are pleased to announce the second addendum to the Computing Research Association (CRA) and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience quadrennial paper on variants of concern (VOC).
The CIFellows 2021 application site is now open.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate has announced the new CSGrad4US Graduate Fellowship program that aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in the CISE fields. The new fellowship, which will provide 3-year fellowship opportunities for new Ph.D. students in the computing disciplines, was released in response to the increased demand for people with a Ph.D. in computer science (CS), the continued decrease of domestic students pursuing research and completing a Ph.D., and the overall small number of bachelor’s degree recipients in CS pursuing graduate school.
We will be hosting a one-hour CIFellow 2021 Informational Webinar on Thursday, April 15th at 2:30PM ET. There will be an introduction by NSF, a presentation of the program, concluding with a Q&A session. Please register here for the webinar.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) and Computing Community Consortium (CCC) are pleased to announce a new Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) cohort for 2021. This program recognizes the continued disruption to hiring in academic institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As before, this program aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be […]
In June 2020, a community of Black people in computing from around the world published an open letter, initiated by the authors, and a call for action[b] to the global computing community. The letter began with, “The recent killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police has sparked a movement that began at the birth of our nation. Though George Floyd may have been the most recent instance, we should not forget the lives of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Philando Castille, Tanisha Anderson, Atatiana Jefferson, Eric Garner, Charleena Lyles, Eula Love, Michael Brown, Khalif Browder, Botham Jean, Tamir Rice, Latasha Harlins, Amadou Diallo, Mary Turner, Emmett Till, and too many other Black people who have been murdered …”
As a continuation of our 2020 series, we are delighted to release two more papers titled: “Taking Stock of the Present and Future of Smart Technologies for Older Adults and Caregivers” and “Imagine All the People: Citizen Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Computational Research.”
CRA members have elected three new members to its Board of Directors: Diana Franklin, Katie Siek and Eve Schooler. James Allan, Stephanie Forrest, Ayanna Howard, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Rachel Pottinger, and Chris Ramming were re-elected to the CRA board. All of their terms run from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024. Vivek Sarkar will remain on the board as the co-chair of the CRA Industry Committee. CRA would like to thank everyone who agreed to run this year.
After careful consideration of the current and projected situation surrounding the pandemic, CRA has unfortunately decided to cancel the in-person CRA Conference at Snowbird scheduled to take place this August. At this time, there are simply too many uncertainties to move forward.
We believe interaction is a critical feature of this conference. Given we held a virtual version last year, we have decided not to organize a hybrid or entirely virtual meeting this year, as this is typically an off year for Snowbird. CRA is currently planning to hold a full in-person Conference at Snowbird on July 19-21, 2022.
Using CRA Data Buddies Survey data, this analysis presents changes in undergraduate students’ highest degree intentions over the course of a year. Students who participated in an REU during that year showed an interest in pursuing a higher-level academic degree than those who did not participate in an REU.
In Fall 2020, the Computing Research Association released a series of planned white papers produced through its subcommittees (including the Computing Community Consortium), exploring areas and issues around computing research with the potential to address national priorities over the next four years. Called Quadrennial Papers, the white papers attempt to portray a broad picture of computing research detailing potential research directions, challenges, and recommendations for policymakers and the computing research community.
One of those white papers Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience outlined a strategy to reduce the impact of global pandemics stressing early detection, predicting the public’s reaction and developing effective policies.
Several months later, the pandemic is still ongoing but we are facing a new and different set of challenges that are both surprising and yet also somehow predictable. The authors of the paper have produced a March 22nd, 2021 Addendum to address current issues.
See the March 22nd, 2021 Pandemic Informatics: Preparation, Robustness, and Resilience Addendum here for more details.
On Monday, March 15, CRA’s Burçin Tamer was a panelist at the SIGCSE 2021 session, “How Student Surveys Drive Change: Using the Data Buddies Department Report from the Computing Research Association.” Tamer and panelists discussed how departments can use their students’ responses to the Data Buddies survey to make meaningful changes in their department.
At SIGCSE 2021, CRA’s Betsy Bizot will be a panelist for the session, “Exploring the Data on Dual Pandemics: How Racism and COVID-19 Have Impacted the Computing Community“. Bizot will discuss the results from two CRA surveys about the COVID-19 disruption from summer 2020 and a few tidbits from this year’s CRA Taulbee Survey ahead of full publication in May. The session will be held from 1:00 PM – 2:45 PM EDT on Wednesday, March 17.
The CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) is excited to launch a new blog called the CERP Bulletin to share news, research and evaluation findings, promote resources and community platforms, and provide helpful context to CERP’s mission. The CERP Bulletin will include CERP research activity, infographics, evaluation reports, and interesting CERP-related articles.
We encourage you to stay updated on CERP through the Bulletin by signing up for our mailing list, which you can do here.
This post is brought to you by the CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP). CERP provides social science research and comparative evaluation for the computing community. Volunteer for Data Buddies by signing-up here.
Mary Jane Irwin was selected to receive the 2021 A. Nico Habermann Award in recognition of her more than 30 years of diversity efforts, both in academia and in professional organizations. James Kurose was selected to receive the 2021 Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his exemplary service to the computing research community. Through a career spanning more that 35 years, he has distinguished himself as national leader in numerous impactful service roles in the computing research community.
The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce two recipients of the 2021 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award: Tijana Milenkovic from University of Notre Dame and Saad Biaz from Auburn University. 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.
On February 22-23, CRA held its annual Computing Research Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies and winter board meeting.
An increasing number of NSF CISE solicitations, including the CISE Core Programs (for which SMALL Projects do not have a submission deadline), are eligible for cloud access via the CloudBank portal to the AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM clouds.
The goal of the 2021 CMD-IT Academic Careers Workshop is to mentor assistant- and associate-level faculty, senior doctoral students, and postdocs in computing about academic careers.
CRA Board Member Timothy M. Pinkston has organized and will moderate the panel, “Valuing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Our Computing Community” from 1:30 to 3 PM (EST) on March 3rd at this year’s co-located HPCA’21, PPoPP’21, CGO’21 and CC’21 conferences (virtual due to COVID-19).
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 106 new members and 23 foreign members. Several computing researchers are among those elected this year, including those with CRA connections. Among them are Margaret Martonosi and Kunle Olukotun.
The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) will host a one-day workshop on CAREER Proposal Writing on April 5, 2021.
CRA is pleased to announce the 2021 Election Committee’s slate of nominees for the CRA Board. CRA also encourages nominations by petition, which are due by February 22.
