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CRA Bulletin
The CRA Bulletin frequently shares news, timely information about CRA initiatives, and items of interest to the general community.
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CRA Board Member Highlight: Jaime Teevan
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.
Former Board Member Sarita Adve Named Recipient of the ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award
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
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 […]
Applications Open for 2019 Graduate Cohort Workshops
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
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
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.
CRA Taulbee Survey Announcement
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
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
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.
iAAMCS Releases Guidelines for Successfully Mentoring Black/African-American Computing Sciences Doctoral Students
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
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
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
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.
My Parallel Careers in Industry and Academia
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
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.
Why Women (and Everyone Else) Should Code
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
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
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
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
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
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 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.
2018 Computer Science Tenure-Track Faculty Hiring Outcomes
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!
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
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
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.
Meet the 2018 BECA Winners – Yejin Choi and Reetuparna Das
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
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
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.
