National Academies Webinar: Preventing Sexual Harassment in Academia and Beyond – August 30

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The National Academies’ Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently released a study on the sexual harassment of women in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine, specifically looking at how it affects the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in these fields. The report examines the factors that predict high rates of sexual harassment and includes recommendations for addressing and preventing sexual harassment. Evidence reviewed in the study shows that organizational climate is the strongest predictor of sexual harassment in an environment and that it can either encourage or discourage sexually harassing behavior. 

Please join GUIRR for a webinar with two members of the authoring committee—Gilda Barabino, dean of the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York, and Vicki Magley, professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut—to discuss why addressing organizational climate is important to preventing sexual harassment and how certain policies and strategies recommended in the report can be applied in academia and industry to prevent sexual harassment. 



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Rice to Host Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work

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Those who attended this year’s CRA Snowbird conference may have heard Moshe Vardi’s provocative panel session on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work, discussing the potential impact of computing technologies on employment and the nature of work over the coming years. Vardi makes a compelling case that the computing research community ought to be concerned with the impact its innovations will have on society, both positive and negative. To that end, Vardi has led an effort to pull together some of the leading thinkers from the computing, economics, and social science communities to consider the issue in Houston in December. The De Lange Conference on Humans, Machines, and the Future of Work will be held December 5-6, 2016, at Rice University. Here’s an announcement from the organizers (CRA is a co-sponsor).

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Robotics Highlight: Kamigami Cockroach Inspired Robotics

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Robots mimicking the form of insects have been making headlines recently. This May, researchers from UC Berkeley who are developing cockroach inspired robots presented their research at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm, Sweden. The paper describes how the researchers developed a springing mechanism that allows the robot to “jump” more than a meter in the air.

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