Published: May 2011,  Issue: Vol. 23/No.3, Download as PDF

Archive of articles published in the May 2011, Vol. 23/No.3 issue.

A CIFellow’s Perspective: “Becoming a Better Researcher”


During his presentation at the CIFellows Research Meeting & Career Mentoring Workshop in December1, Microsoft’s Peter Lee shared his motivations for creating the program. Beyond giving recent PhDs an opportunity to remain in academia during a time when obtaining an academic job is more difficult than usual, he saw the program as a way to “create a cadre of highly independent computing researchers.”

Teaching the Parallel Future: Finding Promise in a Sea of Cores


The recent National Academies report, “The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level?” lays out several broad landscape changes computing researchers must address to sustain growth in system performance. Indeed, we hear about little else in the parade of articles, op-eds, and conference sessions these days. Opinions vary from “We solved this 30 years ago” to “It will all blow over” to “The sky is falling.” For the computing community at large, this is clearly a significant challenge.

Undergraduate CS Degree Production Rises; Doctoral Production Steady


The CRA Taulbee Survey is conducted annually by the Computing Research Association to document trends in student enrollment, degree production, employment of graduates, and faculty salaries in Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science (CS), computer engineering (CE) and information (I)2 in the United States and Canada. This article and the accompanying figures and tables present the results of the 40th annual CRA Taulbee Survey.

Wing and Lickel Recognized for Service


The CRA Board of Directors has selected Jeannette M. Wing, President’s Professor of Computer Science and Head, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, to receive its 2011 Distinguished Service Award. The award will be presented to Professor Wing at the ACM Awards Banquet in San Jose on June 4.