CRA Industry Committee

Our mission: CRA-Industry convenes industry partners on computing research topics of mutual interest and connects our partners with CRA’s academic and government constituents for mutual benefit and improved societal outcomes.

The CRA-Industry standing committee was created in the Fall of 2020 with the goal of reaching out to industry partners involved in computing research and giving them new opportunities to convene and connect on topics of mutual interest. As a part of the CRA, CRA-Industry also facilitates the interaction between industry partners and other organizations deeply involved in computing research, including academic institutions and government agencies.

The CRA-Industry committee recognizes the diversity of companies that participate in the computing research ecosystem and seeks to enable those companies, big and small, to get the greatest benefit from sharing their experiences with each other. Furthermore, CRA-Industry recognizes that many companies not traditionally contributing or benefitting from computing research are now actively engaging with the computing research community. We seek to help such companies engage, contribute, and participate in the computing research community for the benefit of all.

While CRA-Industry is a new committee, we envision activities including hosting virtual round tables, in-person workshops, seeding industry partnerships in collaborations across academia and government, and authoring white papers on topics of interest to our partners. We also coordinate closely with other CRA committees, such as CRA-WP and the CCC, which have a long history of engaging with industry partners on matters of shared interest.

Click here to subscribe to email updates from CRA-Industry.

Workshops

Best Practices on using the Cloud for Computing Research Workshop

To discuss best practices on using the cloud for computing research and the resulting synergistic opportunities across industry, academia, and government.
March 21-22nd, 2021
Hybrid (Washington, DC and Virtual)
See the Workshop website here

Roundtables

The CRA-Industry Committee started a series of 75-minute virtual roundtable meetings in July 2021 focused on issues of interest to our computing research industry partners. These meetings will be used to seed additional CRA-Industry activities, publicize the CRA-Industry committee, and attract potential companies to participate. Sign up here for more information.

Virtual Roundtable on Corporate Responsibility and Computing Research
July 14, 2021

Today, more companies are deliberately extending their social responsibility initiatives at the behest of investors, customers, and employees. How should industry be viewing and factoring societal equity into its research agendas? This virtual roundtable explored the concept, principles, and best practices of socially responsible computing research. Ideally, participants will gain a sense of considerations that might apply to their strategic research planning by developing a broad framework for the concept of research equity that goes beyond recent examples in machine learning.

Virtual Roundtable on Best Practices on using the Cloud for Computing Research
September 15, 2021
See a blog post recap of this roundtable here.

A major focus in computing research across industry, academia, and government is to advance the frontiers of computing by experimenting with leading-edge compute platforms. This was initially at odds with early instances of cloud/warehouse computing that focused on deploying commodity rather than state-of-the-art systems. However, cloud computing platforms have advanced significantly during the last two decades to the point where there are now many notable examples of their use in research. Further, the cloud’s “pay as you go” model has proved attractive for research related to machine learning and data analytics that benefit from elastic provisioning of resources. It is noteworthy that NSF has extended its CloudBank portal with a CloudBank Catalog with links to commercial cloud services that can be paid from NSF grants. Hence, increased use of the cloud for computing research could offer new revenue opportunities to cloud providers, in addition to joint research across industry and academia. There will also likely be a crossover from the use of cloud computing for research to its use in teaching, thereby making future generations of computing professionals more accustomed to cloud platforms.

The purpose of this virtual roundtable was to discuss best practices on using the cloud for computing research and the resulting synergistic opportunities across industry, academia, and government.

Virtual Roundtable on Research and Decision Horizons in the Semiconductor Technology Ecosystem
Date: TBD

The purpose of this virtual roundtable is to identify principles and opportunities for cross-stack research collaboration in computing, with particular attention to synergies between process technology, design, systems, and applications. Analogous to the national academies “tire track” diagram, which shows the interplay between academic research, industry, and government with several “long distance” paths between disciplines, we hope to come to a better understanding of how to identify and foster opportunities for “long distance” leaps between layers of the computing stack. The virtual roundtable will review the history of NVRAM as a motivating example, and consider industry decision timeframes as a key issue in identifying and realizing research collaboration opportunities.

Reports

Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Report on Modernizing Data Control: Making Personal Digital Data Mutually Beneficial for Citizens and Industry
- In Fall 2020, the CCC released a series of Quadrennial Papers that explored areas and issues around computing research with potential to address national priorities. One of those areas was on the increasing amount of data being collected on individuals every day via the Internet and IoT systems.
  - The resulting report, on Modernizing Data Control: Making Personal Digital Data Mutually Beneficial for Citizens and Industry, dives into the big questions related to this phenomenon, such as who owns the data, the implications for using, controlling, and quantifying the data, and, most importantly, how to best protect citizens’ privacy.
Computing Research Association Industry / Academia Committee Working Group Report
- In late 2019, a CRA ad hoc committee on Industry/Academia Interactions was created to study the relationships between academia and industry. These trends include increasing industry demands for technical talent from academia, as well as changes in the academic environment with increased industry interactions. A survey sent to 221 computing department chairs in January 2020 which resulted in 105 responses, indicating strong interest in this topic.
  - The resulting CRA Industry/Academia Committee Report, shows that significant industry engagement is underway between computing departments and industry, with an increasing trend.
Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Report on the Evolving Academia/Industry Relations in Computing Research
- In 2018, the CCC Industry Working Group released a new industry report called the Evolving Academia/Industry Relations in Computing Research, which was organized by Ben Zorn from Microsoft Research. It included several important trends in computing research which had recently emerged.
  - The resulting report, Evolving Academia/Industry Relations in Computing Research, was the first step in engaging the broader computing research community, raising awareness of the opportunities, complexities and challenges.
Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Report on The Future of Computing Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations
- In 2015, the CCC convened a round-table of industry and academic participants to better understand the landscape of industry-academic interaction, and to discuss possible actions that might be taken to enhance those interactions. This discussion was preceded by a survey sent to academics and industry representatives in Spring of 2015. This survey was designed to provide some current information about the perceptions of the value of academic/industry interaction as well as trends and barriers.
  - The resulting report, The Future of Computing Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations, touches on topics that were discussion during the round-table as well as in the survey.

Slides

Responses to the Community

Response to an Implementation Plan for a National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource

In July 2021, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation put out a Request for Information (RFI) to inform the work of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force (“Task Force”). The Task Force has been directed by Congress to develop an implementation roadmap for a shared research infrastructure that would provide Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers and students across scientific disciplines with access to computational resources, high-quality data, educational tools, and user support.

CRN Articles

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) convened a round-table of industry and academic participants in July 2015 to better understand the landscape of industry-academic interaction, and to discuss possible actions that might be taken to enhance those interactions. This discussion was preceded by a survey sent to academics and industry representatives in Spring of 2015. This survey was designed to provide some current information about the perceptions of the value of academic/industry interaction as well as trends and barriers.
- See the August 2016 CRN article highlighting the report here- The Future of Computing Research: Industry-Academic Collaborations

Event Recordings