Center for Computational Thinking

Microsoft Press Release: Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon Establish Center for Computational Thinking: "The Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking... represents a long-term collaboration between Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department and will support research in emerging areas of computer science, particularly those that can influence the thinking of other disciplines.

“Increasingly, scientists and researchers rely on computer science to enable them to sift through massive amounts of data and find breakthroughs that could provide new insights into the human body, the earth we live on and even the universe,” said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. “We are eager to explore this exciting new area of research with Carnegie Mellon.”

"The Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking will support research in core computer science areas using an approach called problem-oriented explorations, pioneered by Carnegie Mellon’s ALADDIN Center. Researchers from a variety of fields will address specific, real-world problems; initial topics include privacy, e-commerce, multicore computing and embedded medical devices. In addition, the center will develop and disseminate courses and curricula suitable for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as K–12 classes.

“Computer technology has rapidly transformed education, commerce and entertainment, but — more profoundly — computational thinking is transforming how new science is discovered in fields as varied as biology, astronomy, statistics and economics,” said Wing.

Source: Microsoft Press Release on Center for Computational Thinking

Computer Scientists hold keys to future research in every field

Computing center connects CMU and Microsoft: "Jeannette Wing got angry with a friend recently when he advised his child to major in physics in college instead of computer science.

Physics is exciting, he suggested, while computer science is mostly 'clerical' computer programming.

Nothing could be further from the truth, said the impassioned Dr. Wing, head of Carnegie Mellon University's world-class computer science department.

The chance to correct that misimpression is one reason she is happy that Microsoft announced yesterday that it is giving Carnegie Mellon $1.5 million over the next three years to establish the Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking."

IBM to demonstrate high-speed chip

IBM researchers demonstrate world's fastest optical chipset: "At the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference, IBM scientists will reveal a prototype optical transceiver chipset capable of reaching speeds at least eight times faster than optical components available today.
The breakthrough could transform how data is accessed, shared and used across the Web for corporate and consumer networks. The transceiver is fast enough to reduce the download time for a typical high definition feature-length film to a single second compared to 30 minutes or more.

The ability to move information at blazing speeds of 160 Gigabits -- or 160 billion bits of information in a single second -- provides a glimpse of a new era of high-speed connectivity that will transform communications, computing and entertainment. Optical networking offers the potential to dramatically improve data transfer rates by speeding the flow of data using light pulses, instead of sending electrons over wires.
A sign of enabling technologies to come...

23 March 2007 - New Scientist

Autonomous driving systems aim to drive dirty: "Autonomous model cars will race against one another in a contest designed to test different software approaches.

The contest is being organised by researchers at the University of Essex in the UK, who are creating an affordable and standardised autonomous vehicle kit to encourage others to get involved.

The kit will include a high-end commercial model car, a laptop, a GPS receiver, a USB controller and a camera. The aim is to encourage different research teams to develop autonomous racers using the same equipment, which will then race against one another at the 2008 World Congress on Computational Intelligence in Hong Kong."

Technology is among fastest growing fields

The US Department of Labor / Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a list of the Fastest growing jobs. Healthcare and technology professions dominate the list.

Technology occupations listed by degree level:

Bachelor's degree: Network systems and data communications analysts, applications and systems software engineers, network and computer systems administrators.

Bachelor's plus experience: CIS managers

Doctoral degree: Computer and information scientists, research

10 fast-growing jobs

Technology jobs poised for strong growth: "If you're looking for a job that's here to stay, here's a counterintuitive piece of advice: Look into tech. It's one of several sectors on our list that is slated to see the sharpest job growth between now and 2014.

You may have heard the bad news about outsourcing, but not every tech job lends itself to the practice. And the most creative and difficult technical work is likely to remain here. Most importantly, retiring baby boomers will deplete the ranks of experienced tech workers, leaving openings for up-and-comers."

"Software engineer" ranked best job in America

Software engineer ranked Best job in America!: "Jobs in technology are ranking high on a listing of the 'Best jobs in America'--compiled by Money Magazine and Salary.com--that's been quickly circulating around the blogosphere today.

Software engineers ranked number one in the listing, which is based on stress levels, flexibility in hours and working environment, creativity, and how easy it is to enter and advance in the field,"

Amazing -- note the criteria for the ranking include stress levels, flexibility, and CREATIVITY... Not what most people imagine when they hear "Software Engineer"

The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in '07

Ruby on Rails: "Ruby on Rails (also known as RoR and Rails) is a Web application framework written in Ruby, an object-oriented programming language known for its clean syntax."

Tech Innovations Fuel Low-Cost Laptop

PC World Story: "How do you make a laptop that can tolerate sandstorms and monsoons, run on a car battery, and cost just $150? That was the challenge facing One Laptop per Child, a nonprofit group founded by MIT Media Lab veterans to get youngsters in developing nations online.

OLPC's XO notebook PC attains its ultralow price through a combination of innovative technology (such as its dual-mode LCD) and old-fashioned streamlining (it doesn't have a hard drive, and it uses a Linux-based operating system)."

An interesting challenge for CS students -- develop software for OLPC!

Making Computer Systems Reveal Biological Secrets

Making Computer Systems Reveal Biological Secrets: "Two of the hottest areas of scientific discussion these days are computational science, the intersection between computer science and other sciences, and systems biology, the effort to decipher the code of the human genome.

Andrew Phillips gets to work in both.

Phillips, a scientist who works for Microsoft Research Cambridge, is working with stochastic pi-calculus, a programming language particularly applicable to biological systems.

“There’s been a lot of research in computer science on programming-language theory,” Phillips says, “and a lot of that can be applied to biological modeling.”

The stakes are large. The products of that modeling could provide insights into how biological systems work, and those insights could help in understanding and curing diseases."

Mathematicians Team Up with Supercomputer to Crack 248-Dimensional Object

Scientific American: "A monstrous computer-based calculation has rekindled researchers' hopes of solving a longstanding problem in mathematics. In a style of collaboration more commonly associated with sequencing genomes, a team of 18 mathematicians and computer scientists has mapped an extremely complex object known as the E8 group.

The calculation is only a stepping stone, but an important one, researchers say, in a larger project to uncover subtle ways in which different equations or geometric shapes can be seen as facets of the same underlying thing—an insight that has led to some of the century's biggest discoveries in particle physics and may play a role in future theories. The result also highlights the growing trend of using computers to crack tough math problems."

"This is the latest case in which mathematicians have relied on computers to solve thorny problems. In 2005 the Annals of Mathematics published a computer-aided proof of Kepler's conjecture (about the most efficient way to stack spheres) after reviewers spent four years checking the code fed into the computer but finally gave up without completing the task."

Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts

Information Week Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts: "Computers can enter into contracts on behalf of people. The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) says that a 'contract may be formed by the interaction of electronic agents of the parties, even if no individual was aware of or reviewed the electronic agents' actions or the resulting terms and agreements.'"

Quite an interesting result -- not the first example of computational agents being accorded a status on par with human agents.

Where are the programmers?

EETimes.com: "'We are at a low point of interest in computer science,' said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, who pointed to a sharp decline since 2001 in college undergraduates choosing com- puter science as a major. 'Jobs will go begging in the next few years because we don't have the people willing to take on the field.'"

Sociology at Microsoft

Technology Review: "Marc Smith, the senior research sociologist at Microsoft Research, believes that now is a good time to practice his trade. Thanks to the Internet, there is unprecedented access to sociological data. And thanks to computers, sociologists are better able to sift through that data, find trends, and test models."

Walking robot steps up the pace

BBC NEWS "A humanoid robot is teaching itself to walk and eventually run around a California research lab.

Dexter took its first tentative steps only a few days after it first discovered how to stand upright.

Dexter's designers say their robot differs from commercially available predecessors because it can learn from its mistakes."