The CRA Bulletin frequently shares news, timely information about CRA initiatives, and items of interest to the general community.
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ACM seeks the community’s help in generating nominations for the ACM awards listed below. Please refer to each Award’s Nomination page for guidelines on how to nominate: https://awards.acm.org/award-nominations
Nominations are due December 15, 2022, with the exception of the Doctoral Dissertation Award which is due October 31, 2022.
As part of our efforts to increase communications, we welcome you to this CRA Update: Keeping you in the know column. For involvement in CRA activities, we will begin (on an annual basis) requesting nominations (self-nominations are welcome!) from the computing research community to participate in various CRA activities. We request you share the following form with anyone in your institution who might be interested in getting involved in CRA’s activities this academic year (though June 30th): cra.org/interest-form (Deadline: September 30th, 2022)
On July 18-19, the Computing Research Association (CRA) held its July board meeting immediately before the 2022 CRA Conference at Snowbird. The meeting was led by CRA Board Chair Nancy Amato, with assistance from Executive Director Tracy Camp (who began her new role on July 1). The Board discussed many new initiatives and board members were encouraged to consider volunteering for one of more of the committees/working groups that CRA will have this year.
Ian Foster, former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member and Professor at the University of Chicago and Division Director at Argonne National Laboratory, was just named the 2022 Ken Kennedy award recipient.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) 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.
After a four year hiatus due to COVID, the Computing Research Association (CRA) was thrilled to host the 2022 CRA Conference in person from July 19-21 in Snowbird, Utah. CRA welcomed department chairs and computing research leaders from across the country to network and discuss common issues concerning the future of the field. There were several engaging conference sessions on Computing Departments, Computing Education, Computing in Industry, and Computing for Good.
Chris Ramming, Senior Director for Research and Innovation at VMWare, will be a speaker at the Symposium on the Future of Computing Research held by the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute on September 12-13, 2022. Ramming is a member of both the CRA Board of Directors and the Computing Research Association-Industry (CRA-I) Steering Committee. His talk will discuss how to plan collaborative research between universities and companies and how researchers should tackle twenty-first century problems.
The National Science Foundation recently selected sixty-nine recipients of the 2022 CSGrad4US Fellowship Program. The objective of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US) is to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in the CISE fields: computer science, computer engineering, or information science. CSGrad4US recipients will participate in the CSGrad4US Mentoring Program organized by the Computing Research Association with funding provided by the National Science Foundation through award #2231962.
Fatma Özcan, a Principal Software Engineer in the Systems Research at Google, has been awarded the 2022 Very Large Database (VLDB) Women in Database Research Award.
The CRA Education Committee (CRA-E) recently welcomed two new members to its board: Borja Sotomayor and Steven Swanson. Susanne Hambrusch (Purdue University) has stepped down as the committee Co-Chair, and Kelly Shaw (Williams College) has stepped into the role, serving along with Lori Pollock (Delaware). Susanne will remain a board member and continue her work in a different role. Brandon Myers will be leaving the CRA-E board in August, and CRA-E thanks him for contributions during his service on the committee.
CRA has recently hired Lauren Lashlee as a program associate for the Widening Participation (CRA-WP) committee. In this role, she supports CRA-WP programs that focus on increasing the success and participation of underrepresented groups in computing research.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) is pleased to honor Andrew Bernat with the 2022 Service to CRA Award in recognition of nearly 20 years of service leading the organization as Executive Director.
On Wednesday July 6th, the CRA Government Affairs Office welcomed the 2022 class of Eben Tisdale Science Policy Fellows to the CRA Washington DC office.
On July 1st, Dr. Tracy Camp officially took the helm as CRA Executive Director. Prior to joining CRA, Camp was the Founding Department Head of Computer Science at Colorado School of Mines (now Emeritus Professor). She brings to CRA strong experience as a leader in the computing research community, a history of spearheading diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in computing, and a detailed vision for leading CRA into the future.
Last month, Representative Gwen Moore (D-WI), joined by Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) and House Science, Space, and Technology Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), introduced the H.R. 7710, the Counter Human Trafficking Research and Development Act.
Cloud computing has emerged as critical infrastructure for most enterprises worldwide and has become essential for computing research. It has introduced a revolutionary model in which computing resources can be used to store, manage, process, and share data thereby enabling novel workloads and efficiencies of scale. This is in contrast to the traditional model of enterprises relying entirely on acquiring and maintaining in-house local servers and personal computers.
The Computing Research Association‘s newest committee, Computing Research Association-Industry (CRA-Industry), held its first workshop organized by Vivek Sarkar (Georgia Tech) and Fatma Özcan (Google) on Best Practices on Using the Cloud for Computing Research in March 2022. This workshop was built on a very successful September 2021 virtual roundtable discussion. It continued the momentum, and identified best practices on using the cloud for computing research in three different focus areas: research, education, and collaboration.
The Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP) is proud to announce the recipients of the 2022 Skip Ellis Early Career Award and Anita Borg Early Career Award.
Hi! My name is Dalton Hellwege, and I am so excited and honored to be this year’s Tisdale Fellow at CRA. I am in my third and final year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), majoring in Statistics and Analytics with a minor in Studio Art. At UNC, I am on the Carolina Boxing Team and try to get involved when COVID permits.
Applications are now open for the upcoming Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) Plan Workshop, hosted by BPCnet.org in Denver, CO from August 3-5, 2022. Each department may send up to three representatives to attend.
I would like to focus this month’s newsletter on an important program we are very excited about, the new NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US) program and its upcoming June 30, 2022 application deadline. The aim of this program is to grow the number and diversity of US citizen and permanent resident graduate students pursuing research careers in all areas of computer science, computer engineering, or information science.
The NITRD 30th Anniversary Symposium was held in Washington D.C. at the National Spy Museum. The event provided an opportunity for the computing research community to come together and celebrate the impact that federal funding has had on computing technologies, innovations and the world at large.
Are you interested in mentoring prospective graduate students through the application and reentry process? The coach application is now available on the CSGrad4US Mentoring Program webpage. Applications received by July 1st will be given preference.
The National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) released a new report, Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. The report outlines recommendations for the computing research community to ensure ethical and societal impacts are thought through and a part of the conversation from the start.
CRA members have elected three new members to its Board of Directors: Maria Gini, Gillian Hayes and Ben Zorn. Lorrie Cranor, Divesh Srivastava and Jaime Teevan were re-elected to the CRA Board. All of their terms run from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2025. There are also changes to the appointed members to the board, who are not elected. Yolanda Gil has been appointed the new AAAI representative, replacing Charles Isbell. Beginning July 1, Dan Lopresti will replace Liz Bradley as the CCC Chair and representative on the CRA Board.
Last year the Computing Research Association (CRA) launched an Opportunity Board to enable recent new PhD graduates and members of the community that are looking for postdocs to connect. This is a continuation of the Opportunity Board used to match potential postdocs and mentors during the CIFellows 2021 process. The board allows for the posting of postdoc opportunities by potential mentors and posts by those looking for a postdoc opportunity. We encourage members of the community to use this as a resource.
A short video from CRA’s Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP) is featured in the 2022 STEM for All Video Showcase May 10-17. CRA-WP’s video is entitled “Broadening Participation in Computing Research with CRA-WP” and highlights programs funded through National Science Foundation award #1840724. CRA-WP is a Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance that focuses on community building, career mentoring, information sharing, and effecting systemic change for undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, faculty, and industry and government researchers.
Last Friday, the National Science Board (NSB) elected former CRA Board Chair Daniel Reed, from the University of Utah, as its next chair.
The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) 30th Anniversary Symposium is fast approaching. The in-person event will be held May 25th, 2022 in Washington, D.C. to honor NITRD’s contributions and investments in networking and information technology research and development.
CRA-E is asking members of the community who mentor or plan to mentor undergraduate researchers, to complete this brief survey (2 required questions). Feedback will allow us to better adapt the program to different needs and audiences. For your feedback to have maximum impact, please complete the survey by June 10, 2022.
Recently, the Department of Commerce announced the appointment of 27 experts to the new National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC). Among them were several individuals affiliated with CRA.
