Colleges and universities across the country are experiencing a significant influx of students in their undergraduate computer science (CS) courses. Many of these students are seeking the “traditional,” CS-centric undergraduate degrees that have evolved over decades, along with changes in our field. But many other students are quite different from the students whom we have found in our undergraduate majors. While they are interested in computing, they are more interested in creatively applying sophisticated computational skills and methods to a range of disciplines from biology to linguistics to art. They understand that CS knowledge is critical to helping them succeed in nearly any job, that “every field is becoming an information field.”

The NSF Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) has just announced a new program, NSF 19-507, NSF Quantum Computing & Information Science Faculty Fellows (QCIS-FF).  This program aims to grow academic research capacity in the computing and information science fields to support advances in quantum computing and/or communication over the long term. 

The 2018 NSF Workshop for Aspiring Principal Investigators (PIs) in Computer Systems Research (CSR) will help aspiring PIs gain a better understanding of the CSR program and prepare them for developing competitive CSR proposals in the future.