Tag Archive: NSF
Information from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Applications are now open for the upcoming Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) Plan Workshop, hosted by BPCnet.org in Atlanta, GA from May 30th- June 1st, 2023. We highly encourage departments to send 2-3 participants.
The National Science Foundation announced a series of grants as a part of their new Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) program. The quick onset, mass devastation, and unpredictability of new strands and waves of contagion with COVID-19 taught us just how unprepared we were to face a global pandemic. Nearly $26 million in new awards will be used to support “high-risk, high-payoff convergent research that aims to identify, model, predict, track and mitigate the effects of future pandemics.”
Transformative advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology require large amounts of accurate, comprehensive data. There is a widening disparity between the types and amounts of datasets that organizations have access to. This not only hinders research, but widens the knowledge gap between entities. A commonly talked about solution is developing an open source knowledge structure that will be available to everyone and house a wide diversity of data to help address pressing issues such as economic growth, climate change, misinformation, pandemic prevention etc. Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) released an “Open Knowledge Network Roadmap Report” as a guide towards realizing this type of infrastructure.
Efforts to increase participation from minoritized communities has been going on in earnest for over a decade. Unfortunately, we have yet to expand the group of faculty and staff engaged in these activities and have only made a marginal difference in who is studying computing. This article discusses BPC Plans as an attempt to supplement and scale-up the computing community’s efforts to address the issue of lack of diversity in computing.
A short video from CRA’s Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP) is featured in the 2022 STEM for All Video Showcase May 10-17. CRA-WP’s video is entitled “Broadening Participation in Computing Research with CRA-WP” and highlights programs funded through National Science Foundation award #1840724. CRA-WP is a Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance that focuses on community building, career mentoring, information sharing, and effecting systemic change for undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, faculty, and industry and government researchers.
Over the last two months, competing visions of the future of the National Science Foundation have been making their way through the House and Senate. And much like the famous opening line of Tale of Two Cities, their paths could not be more dissimilar. On the House side, the National Science Foundation for the Future Act has made deliberative and bipartisan progress through the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Meanwhile, on the Senate side, the Endless Frontier Act has been introduced; pulled, reworked, and reintroduced; heavily amended during a marathon Senate Commerce Committee hearing; and is now before the full Senate undergoing another round of amendments. Very different paths.
PIs with active medium and large CISE Core programs awards are invited to submit supplemental funding requests to engage more members of the CISE research community in significant BPC efforts as part of their project’s BPC plan. Supplemental funding requests should be submitted by the BPC deadline (June 14).
NSF CISE has announced the new CSGrad4US Graduate Fellowship program that aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in the CISE fields. The program is for those who have graduated with a bachelor’s degree in a CISE field between July 1, 2016, and June 31, 2019 and are interested in earning a PhD. The new fellowship program will provide 3-year fellowship opportunities for new Ph.D. students in the computing disciplines.
In response to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate’s recently announced CSGrad4US Fellowship program, the Computing Research Association’s Education (CRA-E) and Widening Participation (CRA-WP) committees, with CRA support, are exploring the development of a CSGrad4US Mentoring Program to support recipients of the CSGrad4US Fellowship. The goals of the mentoring program would be (1) to guide returning students through the application process towards a successful CS Ph.D. admission and school selection and (2) to mentor them through the transition to Ph.D. graduate study during the first year. The CSGrad4US Mentoring Program would include both a group mentoring component addressing general aspects of the graduate application process and an individual coaching component.
Interested in serving as a mentor or coach?
More information and a sign-up opportunity will be posted on CRA, CRA-E and CRA-WP websites in the spring. Click here to subscribe to updates.
This article is a press release from the National Science Foundation about the newly announced Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institutes.
Colleges and universities across the country are experiencing a significant influx of students in their undergraduate computer science (CS) courses. Many of these students are seeking the “traditional,” CS-centric undergraduate degrees that have evolved over decades, along with changes in our field. But many other students are quite different from the students whom we have found in our undergraduate majors. While they are interested in computing, they are more interested in creatively applying sophisticated computational skills and methods to a range of disciplines from biology to linguistics to art. They understand that CS knowledge is critical to helping them succeed in nearly any job, that “every field is becoming an information field.”
