CCC 2020 Highlights

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), like the rest of the world, had to shift our focus and restructure our activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some highlights from the year are described below; please see our website for more details, as well as plans and opportunities for new activities.

In May, CCC—along with its parent organization the Computing Research Association (CRA), and with strong support from the National Science Foundation—launched the CIFellows 2020 program. The goal of this effort is to provide career-enhancing bridge experiences for recent PhD graduates and combat hiring disruptions due to COVID. The 2020 CIFellows class includes 59 researchers — 52% of whom are women– beginning their fellowship at 43 different institutions and spanning a wide breadth of computer science areas from Artificial Intelligence to Architecture. You can find out more about each fellow and their research projects here.

We held five research visioning workshops this year, three of which were virtual:

• • NAE/CCC Workshop on the Role of Robotics in Infectious Disease Crises (fully virtual)
  • Physics & Engineering Issues in Adiabatic/Reversible Classical Computing (fully virtual)
  • CCC / Code 8.7 Workshop on Applying AI in the Fight Against Modern Slavery
  • Assured Autonomy Workshops 2 and 3

Finally, every four years the CRA, through its subcommittees, publishes a series of white papers called Quadrennial Papers that offer assessments of challenges and recommendations in computing research that address national priorities. This year’s set of CCC Quadrennial Papers centered on four themes: Artificial Intelligence, Socio-Technical Computing, Board Computing, and Core Computer Science. You can read these papers here.  

I want to particularly thank all the CCC workshop participants, organizers, white paper authors, and—most importantly—the CCC Council members and staff. It has been a challenging year, but we managed to get important and critical work done and share it with the computing research community. Here’s to a productive, peaceful, and healthy 2021.

Stay safe, everyone.