Blog – Page 20

CRA-I Computing Research in Industry Roundtable

January 24, 2023/in CRA-I Event

Computing Research Association – Industry (CRA-I) held a roundtable in November organized by Jaime Teevan (Microsoft) and Ben Zorn (Microsoft) on Computing Research in Industry, which was based on the very successful and well attended session of the same name at the CRA Conference at Snowbird 2022. The roundtable was moderated by Fatma Özcan (Google) and the speakers were Lisa Amini (IBM Research Cambridge), Ben Carterette (Spotify), Jaime Teevan (Microsoft), and Manuela Veloso (J.P. Morgan Chase AI Research).

One of the interesting questions that Özcan asked is how each company thinks of problems and how they are selected. As in, are they top down or bottom up?

Teevan described Microsoft Research as supporting bottom-up research, driven by the creativity and innovation of each of its researchers and labs. Questions such as “what does the world want to know, what does the literature suggest, and what is interesting?” The impact driven research that Microsoft also does, as Teevan explained, tends to be more top down and driven to directly address the challenges.

Amini said at IBM individual researchers are always also bringing forward ideas, hopefully ideas that could drive an entire new field, new line of research, and/ or big efforts. Sometimes they are smaller. It can be something that needs to incubate for a while. As research matures, Amini said they often work with the product groups to transfer the new technology and collaboratively refine.

Carterette mentioned that Spotify gets their priorities top down. “Leadership informs teams what the priorities are for the company, but then within those priorities we’re free to find what we want to work on and where we want to have impact,” he said, adding that research teams work closely with product teams for the entire lifecycle of a research question.

Veloso and her team initiate their own projects that are motivated by the company’s goals. Once they discover something, they can help the company refine their business practices and directions.

It is clear that all researchers enjoy applying their creativity to new problems and these companies whether top down or bottom up allow them to do just that. Learn more and see the full recording from the roundtable here.

CRA-Industry Call for Council Nominations

January 19, 2023/in CRA-I Announcements

The Computing Research Association – Industry (CRA-I) is charged with increasing interaction between industry partners and other organizations involved in computing research for the benefit of all. Established in 2020 as a committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA), CRA-I is a growing community of computer science research leaders from industry who are interested in collaborating with others from industry, academia, and government to improve societal outcomes.

To fulfill its mission, CRA-I needs visionary leaders — people with great ideas, sound judgment, and the willingness to work collaboratively to see things through to completion. To that end, CRA-I is starting a Council of eventually 21 leaders from industry and academia representing the breadth and diversity of the computing discipline today.

Given the support you have provided us in the past, please consider submitting a self-nomination for the Council and help us by nominating outstanding colleagues.

Currently, CRA-I carries out its work through an active and engaged seven member Steering Committee (SC), co-chaired by Vivek Sarkar (Georgia Tech) and Ben Zorn (Microsoft Research). CRA-I is fully supported by a Senior Program Associate at CRA, Helen Wright.

Our expectation is that Council members will serve for a three year term.

Here are some activities that we hope CRA-I Council members will participate in:

Develop and lead new activities that you are passionate about that CRA-I should pursue, for the benefit of the computing research industry community
Identify areas where CRA-I should focus its efforts
Shepherd and participate in roundtable discussions and/or workshops
Write whitepapers and reports
Coordinate CRA-I activities with the rest of CRA
Think about ways CRA-I should grow as a committee
Participate in monthly virtual meetings
Handle other requests from and for the community (e.g., responding to agency RFIs), as needed

Please send nominations, together with the information below, to industryinfo@cra.org by 11:59 PM EST on February 14th, 2023.

Please include:

Name, affiliation, and email address of the nominee.
Technical areas of interest.
Previous significant service to your professional community and other relevant experience (no more than *five* items).
Nominee’s resume (link to a webpage is fine).
A few sentences about why this candidate would be a great addition to the CRA-I Council.
The names and contact information (email and phone) for 2-3 people who would be knowledgeable about the nominee’s potential for such a service role.

If you have any questions, please direct them to the CRA-I Senior Program Associate Helen Wright (hwright@cra.org).

AAAI Spring 2023 Symposium “HRI in Academia and Industry: Bridging the Gap”

January 13, 2023/in Community Updates

Consider submitting a paper to attend the “HRI in Academia and Industry: Bridging the Gap” Symposium in San Francisco, California on March 27-29, 2023. The goal of the symposium is to bring together HRI researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry to find common ground, understand the different constraints at play, and figure out how to effectively work together. It is part of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2023 Spring Symposium Series.

The use of robots that operate in spaces where humans are present is growing at a dramatic rate. We are seeing more and more robots in our warehouses, on our streets, and even in our homes. All of these robots will interact with humans in some way. In order to be successful, their interactions with humans will have to be carefully designed. The field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has been growing at the intersection of robotics, AI, psychology, and a number of other fields, for over a decade. However, until quite recently, it has been a largely academic area, with university researchers proposing, implementing, and reporting on experiments at a limited scale. With the current increase of commercially-available robots, HRI is starting to make its way into the industry in a meaningful way.

Themes that will be highlighted include:

Constraints and Needs of HRI in Industry
Relevance and Innovation of Academic HRI
Interaction between Academic and Industrial HRI: Publications, Conferences, Tools/Technology Resources, and Experiments
HRI Education and Training: What does Academia and Industry Need?

Important Dates