This full-day workshop will give new computing department chairs some of the skills needed to lead their organizations and work with deans, provosts, and particularly their own faculty – the stuff they never told you in graduate school.

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This session will end at 4:45 pm.

The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) commits to bolster CISE-funded research that reaches diverse and talented communities across our country, in particular organizations located within EPSCoR jurisdictions. NSF recognizes the incredible potential and contributions of these institutions to the U.S. science and engineering ecosystem and encourages the science and engineering community’s active involvement in furthering discoveries that benefit all Americans. CISE firmly believes in the immense untapped potential within EPSCoR jurisdictions and actively seeks proposals to enhance the participation of EPSCoR institutions in NSF-funded research. These contributions are pivotal in ensuring that research and innovation are not confined to geographical boundaries but are inclusive and collaborative across the nation.

In this session, we will present and discuss some of the NSF/CISE initiatives for expanding geographic and institutional diversity in EPSCoR states. We would also like to hear from the constituent institutions about their needs and challenges for creating and expanding CISE-related research infrastructures and ecosystems in their jurisdictions and how NSF can be responsive in addressing those needs.

Agenda:

1:00-1:15 pm: Welcome and introductions

1:15-2:00 pm: Spotlight on NSF programs in CISE (EPSCoR and MSI focused)

2:00-2:45 pm: Listening session

2:45-3:00 pm: Break

3:00-4:30 pm: Roundtables with NSF staff

This session will end at 4:30 pm.

CRA-Industry (CRA-I) invites all conference participants affiliated with or working in industry, including those with dual appointments, to join us for a special industry ‘Meet-and-Greet’ prior to the main conference kickoff. The aim is to spotlight the expanding influence of industry within CRA, offer a preview of the engaging industry track sessions scheduled throughout the conference, and facilitate networking opportunities for industry professionals prior to the conference’s commencement. Additionally, the committee is hoping to glean insights into attendees’ expectations and aspirations for the event. This gathering promises to set the stage for a productive and engaging conference.

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This session will end at 6:00 pm.

Ensure you make the most of your unit’s CRA membership by joining Executive Director and CEO Tracy Camp for an engaging overview of CRA and its committees, programs, awards, and events. Gain insight into the opportunities you and your team have to engage with CRA at every career stage – from undergraduate to leader. CRA elected officers will also be available to answer questions and hear your comments about what CRA can do to improve your membership ROI.

This session will end at 5:30 pm.

Welcome to Snowbird followed by a panel addressing academic freedom/broadening participation in computing in the current local and national landscape.

Session Chair: Maria Gini (University of Minnesota), Rachel Pottinger (University of British Columbia), and Divesh Srivastava (AT&T)

Speakers: Kamau Bobb (Georgia Tech), Carla Brodley (Northeastern University), Jeff Forbes (National Science Foundation)

Hear the latest on CRA and its subcommittees’ activities and collective impact in service to our mission. Join us in congratulating members of the computing research community who have won a CRA award.

Speaker: Tracy Camp (CRA)

Session chair: Katie Siek (Indiana University)

Speaker: Haben Girma

Academia: Best Practices of Hiring Teaching Track Faculty Members 

Location: Primrose

Moderator: Geoffrey Herman (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Panelists: Nancy Amato (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Victoria Dean (Olin College), and Michael Hilton (Carnegie Mellon University)

The current hiring landscape for teaching faculty is a perfect storm, where two issues – (1) increasing demand but a lack of trained candidates and (2) highly diverse job expectations – combine to create a job search that can be overwhelming for teaching faculty candidates and disappointing for departments of computing. This panel discussion will bring to light the challenges of hiring teaching faculty from a variety of perspectives and discuss principles underlying some best practices for the hiring process, as described in CRA-E’s “Best Practices for Hiring Teaching Faculty in Research Computing Departments” white paper.

Industry: Best Practices in Industry Affiliate Programs

Location: Ballroom 3

Organizers: Vivek Sarkar (Georgia Tech)

Panelists: Alex Aiken (Stanford University), Beth Mynatt (Northeastern University), Shriram Revankar (Dolby Laboratories), Jaime Teevan (Microsoft)

Research: Growth with Impact: Mission-focused Research, Evolving Sponsor Models, and Innovative Funding Approaches in Academia

Location: Ballroom 2

Speakers: Chaitanya Baru (NSF), Nadya Bliss (Arizona State University), Alastair Thomson (ARPA-H) Matt Turek (DARPA)

The U.S. innovation ecosystem is the envy of the world, and university-led computing research is central to its functioning. While speed of adoption is imperative to keep up with societal challenges, that must be balanced with ethical and security concerns. This balancing requires new models for building public/private partnerships on science and technology research, development and transition. For computing departments, this offers tremendous opportunity to both impact grand challenges in national security, economics, sustainability, and other areas, while broadening potential research funding sources. This panel will feature leaders from the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Health, and academia to discuss new approaches to mission-focused research.

Society: Current Challenges in DEI: Knowledge Sharing and Networking

Location: Superior

Organizer: Rachel Pottinger (University of British Columbia)

Ensuring DEI in computing is a challenge. On top of the historic and ongoing difficulties that remain, many CRA members who are interested in DEI are finding that the political climate makes working on DEI difficult. This session does not have all of the answers, but is designed to be space for interested individuals to come and talk about current issues in DEI. The session will be run around small groups for brainstorming, followed by sharing with the larger group. Anyone with topics that they would like to see discussed should fill out the form at https://forms.gle/69WHx2S6Y2KEfzXW7 or put them in the box labeled “Challenges in DEI discussion prompts” at the registration desk.

New at the 2024 CRA Conference is the Future CRA Leaders Program – a cohort of researchers who have demonstrated the potential to be future CRA leaders in the field. They are attending the conference to connect with CRA leaders in attendance, gain insights, foster collaborations, and share their innovative work.

Join us for an electrifying session of Lightning Talks presented by the Future CRA Leaders! These dynamic two-minute presentations – accompanied by a single slide – will feature cutting-edge research, inspiring developments, and innovative ideas. Be there to support and connect with these talented researchers in our community.

Beginner/moderate guided hikes (advance registration required) begin at 3:15 PM

Self-guided hike: route suggestions

Session Chairs: Rachel Pottinger (University of British Columbia) and Diana Franklin (University of Chicago)

Speaker: Peter Harsha (CRA)

As you enjoy your dinner, Peter Harsha will present a talk on “Making a Federal Case for Computing.”

Following Peter’s talk, you are invited to play cards with your tablemates. You can choose to play betting games (blackjack or poker), traditional card games (Hearts or Spades), or just socialize! Decks of cards and poker chips will be available at the tables labeled “Card Games”. We’ll also provide cards and rulesheets of several popular options.  Not interested? Then grab a seat at a “Socialize” table instead!

Session Chair: Maria Gini (University of Minnesota)

Speaker: Deirdre Mulligan, Principal Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer and the Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office (NAIIO) at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Deirdre K. Mulligan will discuss Biden-Harris Administration actions on artificial intelligence, including the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. She will also discuss the Federal Government-wide AI talent surge to accelerate the placement of key AI and AI-enabling talent in high-priority areas and to advance agencies’ data and technology strategies, as well as efforts to build institutional and cultural support in the tech ecosystem.

Session Chair: Divesh Srivastava (AT&T)

Speakers: Fernando Pereira (Google)

We survey the development of generative AI from Markov models and phrase-based machine translation to their current state and future prospects. We explore potential and pitfalls through simple worked examples that illustrate informal conceptual hypotheses and recent theoretical results. But above all, we argue that nothing in generative AI makes sense except in the light of the human cultural output that models are trained on. Mukund Sundararajan at Google DeepMind is co-author of this work.

Academia: The Future of Graduate Education

Location: Primrose

Organizers: Gillian Hayes (University of California, Irvine)

Panelists: Kinnis Gosha (Morehouse College), Emily Miller (Association of American Universities), Steve Swanson (University of California, San Diego), Alexander Wolf (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Graduate education in the US and Canada is at a critical turning point with changing demographics, rising costs, and increasing expectations all putting pressure on different points in the system. This panel will address challenges and opportunities in graduate education with opportunities for audience discussion covering the following topics:

• Well-being, mental health, and professional conduct
• Interdisciplinary scholarship and programs
• Financial support
• Employment, training, and labor relations
• AI, online, and other innovative learning approaches
• Ensuring inclusive excellence, including international and minoritized domestic students

Industry: Building Mutually Reinforcing Partnerships with Industry

Location: Ballroom 3

Speakers: Ann Gates (University of Texas at El Paso) and Enrico Pontelli (New Mexico State University)

Partnerships between industry and academia are crucial in many ways. They lead to building a competitive workforce, addressing collaborative use-inspired research problems, and engaging diverse students and communities. The Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) has a long history of establishing partnerships with industry efforts that are mutually reinforcing. This session features several successful partnerships. In addition, it presents concrete examples that elucidate the importance of defining communication mechanisms, engaging partners, structuring accountability, and building trust. Participants will leave with actionable items.

Research: Research Integrity in Computing

Location: Ballroom 2

Organizers: Nancy Amato (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Alex Aiken (Stanford University)

Panelists: Lorrie Cranor (Carnegie Mellon University), Michael Littman (NSF), Gene Spafford (Purdue University), Divesh Srivastava (AT&T Labs)

Society: The Security Risks of Generative AI: From Identification and Mitigation to Responsible Use

Location: Superior

Organizers: Somesh Jha (University of Wisconsin), Mihai Christodorescu (Google)

Panelists: John Mitchell (Stanford University), Rebecca Wright (Barnard College), Matt Turek (DARPA)

Academia: Organization Strategies for Growing and Supporting Computing and Information Science Disciplines

Location: Primrose

Speakers: Eunice Santos (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Kavita Bala (Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science), Dennis Livesay (Michigan Technological University), and Keith Marzullo (University of Maryland)

In early May, the CRA Deans Group held a workshop to take the pulse of the community on the drive to set up colleges of computing, data science, AI and the like. In this session, we recap the points that were made. What are the problems being addressed when new colleges and similar academic units are considered, what are benefits and risks of creating such units, what are the arguments made for and against them, and what are the issues they face as they grow?

Industry: Dual Appointments: Straddling Academia and Industry

Location: Ballroom 3

Organizers: Ron Brachman (Cornell Tech) and Eve Schooler (University of Oxford)

Speakers: Magda Balazinska (University of Washington), Martial Hebert (Carnegie Mellon University), Julia Hirschberg (Columbia University/Amazon Scholar), Amit Jain (Boise State University), Gerard Medioni (Amazon)

This session will delve into the transformative shift occurring in the landscape of academia-industry cooperation within computing research. Notably, faculty members are increasingly embracing dual appointments with industry, often leading to a shift in time allocation from traditional 20/80 industry/university splits to more balanced or industry-heavy models like 50/50 or 80/20. This shift is driven by a variety of factors, including the desire to tap into real-world data, access deployed products, collaborate with like-minded researchers, and enhance compensation. Our discussion will showcase the outcomes of a comprehensive community-wide survey on this subject, targeting expert panelists with specific questions derived from the survey and subsequent report. The conversation will emphasize the profound implications of contractual commitments, extended durations, and flexible engagements, presenting challenges related to intellectual property, conflicts of interest, and teaching, advising, and service commitments. Finally, during the Q&A session, the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions about their current concerns and make comments about their own solutions from the standpoint of their own industries and institutions. Panelists from various sectors and involvement levels, including those at the dean level, will provide valuable insights and perspectives.

Research: Visioning New Grand Challenges for Computing

Location: Ballroom 2

Organizers: Mary Lou Maher (CRA), Raj Rajaraman (Northeastern University), Bill Regli (University of Maryland), and the CCC Grand Challenges Task Force

As computing and AI become ubiquitous and essential across all of society, can the community envision new types of Grand Challenges that can enable the broad advances needed to address the most significant problems of our time. Many disciplines have used challenges to create incredible instruments of discovery (LIGO, LHC, JWST) or outline broad agendas (NAE Grand Challenges 2013). Indeed, the computing community, and CRA, has considered the idea of challenges before but we are at a moment where we might consider the nature of today’s “Computing Challenges” as well as the processes by which we define them. In this interactive session, attendees will engage with panelists and one another in an effort to think about computing challenges in a new way and, hopefully, identify some areas in which there might be truly grand computing challenges that inspire and draw the broad community into our efforts.

Society: Disability and Accessibility in the Age of Generative AI

Location: Superior

Organizers: Richard Ladner (University of Washington) and Raja Kushalnagar (Gallaudet University)

Speakers: Kate Glazko (University of Washington)

Panelists: Cecilia Aragon (University of Washington), Dhruv Jain (University of Michigan), Cynthia Bennett (Google)

This session will address the ways that computing researchers who have disabilities in both academia and industry can be supported to benefit computing fields. Additionally, it will address how generative AI impacts the disability community.

Academia: Visions for the Future of Computing Education

Location: Primrose

Organizer/Moderator: Ran Libeskind-Hadas (Claremont McKenna College)

Panelists: Adrienne Decker (University at Buffalo), Diana Franklin (University of Chicago), Leo Porter (University of California San Diego), Alfred Spector (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Mark Weiss (Florida International University)

How should our curricula adapt to rapid changes in our field? This session will explore several visions for the future of computing education including both macroscopic views on revising computer science major programs as well as reports on case studies on LLMs in introductory courses, quantum computing curricula, and horizontal integration of computing in a natural sciences program.

Industry: GenAI for Research and Discovery

Location: Ballroom 3

Organizers: Elizabeth Bruce (Microsoft) and Ben Zorn (Microsoft)

Speakers: Ann Gates (University of Texas at El Paso), Michael Littman (Brown University and NSF), Jing Liu (University of Michigan), Asu Ozdaglar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Ronak Shah (NVIDIA)

Generative AI opens up new opportunities to accelerate and enhance how we do research in all fields.The way we do research will change as well as how we educate and train the next-generation of researchers. In this session, we will examine specific examples of how GenAI transforms scientific research as well as how companies and universities are adopting GenAI tools as part of their research toolkit. Considering the great potential, we will discuss critical issues related to the widespread use of GenAI and how we can ensure responsible use and development. Computing researchers need to grasp these opportunities and provide guidance and leadership in scientific research areas beyond computing.

Research: Government Impacts on (AI) Research and Development

Location: Ballroom 2

Speakers: David Danks (University of California, San Diego) and Manish Parashar (University of Utah)

Over the past few years, there have been a number of different government actions to help advance trustworthy AI, such as the Executive Order last fall. In this session, we will outline some of the recent governance efforts that are impacting academic and industry researchers. Substantial time will be reserved for Q&A and focused discussions about the risks and opportunities facing many different groups of computing researchers.

Education/Research: Broadening Access to AI Resources through the NAIRR Pilot

Location: Superior

Organizer:  Katie Antypas (National Science Foundation)

Panelists: Jeff Forbes (National Science Foundation) and Julia Stoyanovich (New York University)

The National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) is a concept for a national infrastructure that connects U.S. based researchers and educators to computational, data, software, model and user support resources necessary to power AI innovation and advance the AI ecosystem in responsible matter.  NSF and collaborating agencies launched a pilot for the NAIRR launched in January 2024 as a proof-of-concept for the eventual full-scale NAIRR.  The NAIRR pilot is focusing on supporting research and education across broad and diverse communities, while also serving as a vehicle for gaining insights that will refine the design of a full NAIRR.  This talk will highlight opportunities for the community to get involved in the pilot by 1) applying to use NAIRR pilot resources 2) contributing to the NAIRR pilot infrastructure through demonstration projects and 3) helping to reach and train new communities on how to access and use NAIRR pilot resources.

Attendance by invitation only. 

Session Chair: Divesh Srivastava (AT&T)

Speaker: Bill Dally (NVIDIA)

The current resurgence of artificial intelligence, including generative AI like ChatGPT and SORA, is due to advances in deep learning. Systems based on deep learning now exceed human capability in speech recognition, object classification, and playing games like Go. Deep learning has been enabled by powerful, efficient computing hardware. The algorithms used have been around since the 1980s, but it has only been in the last decade – when powerful GPUs became available to train networks – that the technology has become practical.   Advances in DL are now gated by hardware performance.   The operations needed to train a SOTA model have increased 10Mx in the last decade and is currently growing by 16x per year. In the last decade, GPU performance for deep learning has increased more than 1000x.  Much of this gain was due to improvements in data representation starting with FP32 in the Kepler generation of GPUs and scaling to NV FP4 in the Blackwell generation.  This talk will review this history and discuss further improvements in number representation including logarithmic representation, optimal clipping, and per-vector quantization.