Tag Archive: CRA

Computing Research Association information.

BLS Projects Strong Growth in IT Professions

By: Jay VegsoIn: /

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the professional-level IT workforce will grow at more than twice the rate of the overall workforce between 2004 and 2014, and account for 1 in 19 new jobs. In addition, many of these jobs should pay well. Every two years, BLS releases workforce projections covering a 10-year period. The definition for the ‘professional IT workforce’ adopted here is that used by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Technology Policy. This adds two occupations to the 10 listed under the “Computer specialists” category (15-0000 through 15-1099) in the BLS tables: Computer and information system managers (11-3021) and Computer hardware engineers (17-2061).

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CRA

Education: Research by Another Name

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By the time you hold this issue of CRN in your hands, the fall semester will be well underway. New students will be walking the hallways, revised course materials will be online and yes, that bane of all academics—committee meetings—will have returned. Hence, it seems appropriate to consider the continuum of research and education as we recommence our academic roles. I call it “the Tom Sawyer effect,” where Tom convinces a peer group that fence painting is a privilege. How many times have you lured students into research by calling it a class project?

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CRA

Research: On Being the Right Size

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In 1928, the British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane wrote a now famous essay entitled On Being the Right Size, where he noted, “The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size … it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus, or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal, there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.” It was a cogent argument about surface area to volume ratios, structures, respiration and energy.

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CRAMusings from the Chair

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Computational and Information Science

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At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, computational science is the foundation upon which this Department of Energy research and development laboratory depends to solve some of the greatest challenges our nation faces in national security, the environment and life sciences. That’s a tall order. But that’s what we do at PNNL. And that work would be impossible without the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate (CISD). CISD provides the tools, and the computing and networking infrastructure, our scientists and engineers rely on to be successful. Whether the tools address climate modeling, handling huge data flows in biology and proteomics or modeling the impact of new energy systems, computation is an integral piece of delivering science-based solutions.

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CRA

The Future of American Innovation: The Gathering Storm

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In response to a Congressional request and stimulated by a set of earlier studies (notably the National Innovation Initiative’s “Innovate America” report), the National Academies recently issued a report entitled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future.” This report was produced in response to growing concern that a weakening of U.S. leadership (and, by extension, North American leadership) in science and technology would jeopardize future prosperity. This concern was based on the fact that a major fraction of economic growth in recent decades has been a direct consequence of prior investment in basic research.

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CRAMusings from the Chair

From the Inside, Out

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The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology’s TechLeaders tackles issue of the under-representation of Women in CS by supporting and training those already there

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CRAExpanding the Pipeline

Computing Education and Careers: Perceptions, Myth, and Reality

In: /

If one believes the popular press, computer science careers are going the way of the passenger pigeon and the woolly mammoth.Of course, we know better. First, we’ve “seen this movie before” as enrollments dipped in the 1980s, before skyrocketing again during the dot-com boom. Some degree of oscillation is inevitable in a field where the core technologies evolve so rapidly.

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CRAMusings from the Chair

Computing: Our Role in 21st Century Universities and the Knowledge Economy

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As computing researchers, we can rightly take pride in having been key enablers of today’s knowledge economy; networks, sensors, data management systems, email, web technologies and collaboration tools have helped create the global village. As Marshall McLuhan described so perspicuously in the 1960s, “Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.”

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CRA

Lazowska and Margolis to Receive CRA Service Awards

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CRA is pleased to announce the winners of its 2005 service awards. The Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Ed Lazowska, the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Jane Margolis, Research Educationist, IDEA, UCLA Graduate School of Education Information Studies, will receive the A. Nico Habermann Award. The awards will be presented at ACM’s Awards Banquet in San Francisco on June 11, 2005.

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CRA

Computing, We Have a Problem…

In: /

The computing community—including the computing research community—suffers from one major problem: the public does not fully understand, and hence does not appreciate, what computing is and why computing and computing research are important. The bottom line is: We have an “image” problem, and it extends to our elected and appointed government officials, prospective students and their parents, some colleagues in other disciplines who use computing in their research, and the general public.

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CRA