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In the first installment of the CRA Update: Keeping you in the know column, we began synthesizing feedback received during the opening plenary (“CRA: Looking Forward”) of the 2022 CRA Conference at Snowbird. We finish summarizing the feedback received in this month’s column.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) is planning an Accessible Technology for All workshop co-hosted by CRA-Industry (CRA-I), Computing Community Consortium (CCC), and CRA-Widening Participation (CRA-WP) on February 22-23, 2023 in Washington, DC. This workshop is one of the activities CRA is currently pursuing under the umbrella of Socially Responsible Computing, one of the topics identified in the recent CRA Strategic Planning Effort.
CRA-WP will host two Graduate Cohort Workshops in 2023! The Grad Cohort Workshop for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills (GC-IDEALS) is designed specifically for graduate school populations underrepresented in computing research. The Grad Cohort Workshop for Women is designed for women students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields.
Grad Cohort participants will have an opportunity to build mentoring relationships and develop peer networks intended to form the basis for ongoing activities during their graduate career and beyond.
The IEEE Computer Society’s Tech Forum on Digital Platforms and Societal Harms brings together policymakers and technologists to explore the intersection of current technical efforts with public policies, and the resulting impacts on society.
In an opinion piece published in The Hill, Dan Reed, former CRA Board Chair and current National Science Board Chair, and Darío Gil, a member of the National Science Board and senior vice president and Director of IBM Research, say that Congress must follow through on fully funding NSF or risk dooming the CHIPS and Science Act.
CRA would like to welcome two new members to its Board of Directors: Raquel Hill (Spelman College) and Eunice E. Santos (University of Illinois).
The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored.
The Biden Administration released a set of principles aimed at creating a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights to, “help guide the design, development, and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and other automated systems so that they protect the rights of the American public.”
In an effort to improve the recruiting process for academic and industrial/government positions, the CRA launched the CV Database initiative in Fall 2018. The CV Database (https://cra.org/cv-database/ ) allows candidates to upload their resumes, research and teaching statements, job objectives and other preferences, and a link to a presentation video. Recruiters with access are able to search this information and contact candidates. Recruiter access is available to CRA academic members. It is also available to industry or government members that have sponsored CRA-WP’s Grad Cohort at the silver level and above.
The CV Database is now open for the 2022-23 recruiting season! It can be accessed through https://cra.org/cv-database/. The CRA has opened access earlier than in previous years to accommodate those job seekers wanting to get on the market at the beginning of the academic year. Recruiter access is also available. Recruiters who do not have previous access can request access through the Recruiter Access Form.
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.
