This article is published in the March 2017 issue.

2017 CRA Computing Leadership Summit

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On Monday, February 27, in Washington, D.C., the Computing Research Association hosted its annual Computing Leadership Summit for the senior leadership of CRA member societies (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Association for Computing Machinery, CS-Can/Info-Can, IEEE Computer Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and USENIX Association) and the CSTB.

Several engaging sessions provided valuable information on current issues important to the organizations.

  • CRA Vice Chair Susanne Hambrusch shared details from the recently released CRA report on undergraduate enrollment: Generation CS: CS Enrollments Surge Since 2006, which reports the results of the CRA Enrollments survey with respect to majors, non-majors, diversity, impact on academic units, and units’ actions in response to the surge. Hambrusch is co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences committee on the Growth of CS Undergraduate Enrollments, which will also publish a report later this year.
  • CCC Chair Beth Mynatt gave an overview of the structure and processes of CCC and highlighted some recent activities including work done by its various task forces. CCC now includes members of the community who are not CCC council members on these working groups.
  • Eric Horvitz from Microsoft Research shared information on the formation and early phases of the multi-stakeholder organization, Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society. The organization will work to advance public understanding of AI and formulate best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field.
  • During the society round table, each organization discussed current projects and new initiatives, and identified opportunities for collaboration and support.

New to the leadership summit this year, sessions were held jointly with the CRA board meeting.

  • Jim Kurose, Assistant Director of the CISE Directorate at NSF, gave an update on current and new initiatives.
  • CRA Director of Government Affairs Peter Harsha discussed the current environment for science policy in DC, including the difficulties the community is likely to face arguing for robust science investments in the unresolved FY17 and FY18 federal budgets.
2017 CRA Computing Leadership Summit