The CRA Bulletin frequently shares news, timely information about CRA initiatives, and items of interest to the general community.
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CRA’s mission is to enhance innovation by joining with industry, government and academia to strengthen research and advanced education in computing. CRA executes this mission by leading the computing research community, informing policymakers and the public, and facilitating the development of strong, diverse talent in the field.
Former CRA Board Member Lance Fortnow will take over as dean of the College of Science at Illinois Institute of Technology on August 15. Fortnow is currently professor and chair of the School of Computer Science of the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a former member of the CCC Council.
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.
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.
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 […]
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
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://cra.org/data/generation-cs). Unfortunately, we were unable to compile the data in time to feature the results in the May issue.
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.
