Computing Community Consortium Council Meeting
April 14, 2015
Washington, DC
General Updates
 Questions to ponder:
o Are there areas where we should be putting our focus?
o What are some new disruptive areas?
o Any Clean Slate Ideas / New Frontiers to explore?
o Any potential papers on the intersection of IT and major societal problems?
 Declining real wages and declining labor force participation for non-college educated workers
 Large achievement gaps between rich and poor students (e.g. only 20 percent of 8th grade students are
proficient in 8th grade math)
Task Force Updates
 Education Task Force
o Had their second call yesterday
o Will hopefully have a paper by early summer
o Reached out to people not on the council
 Manufacturing Task Force
o Workshop sometime next fall
o Currently working with Berkeley to find those in industry who can step up
 Big Data Task Force
o NSF has Big Data research funding
o At the Big Data Regional Hub workshop last week, the idea to create some policies came up for governance
o What is the benefit for industry?
 Workforce
 Bringing together computing industries and manufacturing industries
 Healthcare Task Force
o Aging in Place Report
 Seems to be in play in multiple places
o Mobility
 Regulations around wheelchairs vs. Modifying / Making on own
o Examples in which technology has been embedded in policy and regulations frameworks (almost always turns
out to be a bad idea)
 HIPAA
o BRAIN
 Report almost done
o Precision Medicine
 Computing in the Physical World Task Force
o Early stages of some conversations
o Need to push more
Data-Chaitan Baru
 NSF Big Data Investment Strategy
o Policy is the big overarching theme
 NSF Public Access Plan Policy Research: Workshop with DHS
o Data Science is a equal amount of Computer Science, Social Science, and Statistics
o Foundational Research
 Programs
 BIGDATA (Foundations + Innovative Apps)
o Requires novel CS
o NIH collaboration
o Are the panelists told anything special?
 Yes, they will be
 CDS&E
 FutureCloud
 Big Data and IoT workshops
o Education and Workforce Development
 NRT
 Grad Students Data Science Workshop
 Workshop on Designing the Data Science Curriculum (CISE, EHR, DMS, SBE, NIH)
o Cyberinfrastructure
 Programs
 DIBBS
 CC*DNI
 Resources: Wrangler, Comet
 Dealing with all the computational storage facilities
 Transition to practice
 Reproducible
o Collaboration and community building
 Big data regional innovation hubs
 Summary of (some) activities: Workshops
o Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs
 Midwest - UIUC
 South – GT/UNC




 West: Colorado
 Northeast: ?
o Big Data and IoT: 3 workshop series (led by North Carolina) on:
 Home/ Factory scope (incl Industrial Internet)
 City scope/smart cities
 Personal scope/Wearables & Health
Summary of (some) of the activities: Meetings
o Planning an XLDB.gov, October 2015
 Supported by the NITRD Big Data Senior Steering Group
 NSF, NIH, NASA, DOE, DHS, others
o Planned Big Data PI Meeting, November 2015
 Try to collocate with the NIH BD2K meeting (Nov 12, 13)
o High-End Computing (HEC) + Big Data
 NITRD HEC and BDSSG (both are interagency groups) working to propose panels, BoFs at
Supercomputing 2015 and VLDB 2015
 Big Data systems have been built to be highly tolerant
Data and NSF
o Big Data Gen II
 From core technologies to synthesis
 Big data Gen II would aim to fulfill the promise of integrating and synthesizing data across disciplines to
address significant scientific and societal problems
o How to support analysis and synthesis as a permanent research activity?
o What comes after CIF21?
 What is the next initiative going to look like?
o Hybrid models
 For Data and Computing
 Campus-level; Regional; National; Public Clouds
 Local universities must have a stake
 Who funds which piece of it?
Do you have a role within NSF?
o Yes, all the directorates are open to work with me
o There has also been a tremendous support from the community as well
o The thing that is hard is how to break out of what you are working on now and think about what is needed
o Precision Medicine can’t happen without CS research
What about data preservation / libraries?
Privacy
 Privacy by Design Series of Workshops
o Privacy by Design #1
o Privacy Enabling Design #2
 May 7/8
 Participants are almost half and half industry and academics
o Engineering Privacy #3
 August 31/September 1
 Privacy Research Roadmap
o NITRD was asked by White House to prepare a research agenda for a National Privacy Research Strategy
o NITRD came to CCC and asked us to prepare a ten year research roadmap for the non-government sectors
(academia, industry)
o Input to the report
 Reponses to NITRD’s Request for Information 9/2014
 NITRD workshop in February 2015
 Responses to CCC request for contributions
o NITRD will take our report and add to it, then it will go to the White House
o Why Privacy?
 Great advances in computing communication technology are bringing many benefits to society
 Need to balance with privacy rights and requirements of users
 There is a compromise, we have to provide some privacy
o The goal:
 Clearly define privacy goals for a given application domain and assess the extent to which a given system
can achieve those goals
 Then we can engineer systems that enable us to enjoy both privacy and the benefits of data and use to the
maximum extent possible
 We need to understand the needs, expectations, and incentives of the humans who use information
systems, and can design systems that are sensitive to them
 Privacy technology research and privacy policy objectives are informed by and aligned with each other
 Systems should be able to place themselves on the spectrum
o Structure of Report
 We are hoping that there are technologies that could work across the boarders, while maintaining broad
solutions
 Section I- Introduction
 Section II- National priority areas and applications domains (including economic models)
 Section III-Broad privacy objectives that cut across application domains
 Examples
o Healthcare (ITIF)
o Transportation (ITIF)
 Section IV- Presents and organizes many specific research areas
o Additional Domains
 Criminal Justice, Reconciling Privacy & Surveillance
 Education
 Modern Internet Services
 Open Government Data
 Research Data
 Internet of Things and Smart Infrastructures
 Financial Sector
o Privacy Objectives/ Desired Capabilities/Tension
 Measurement of privacy-enabling data transparency
 Policy-aware computations and reasoning-enabling accountable information use
 Policy-aware system building blocks-enabling privacy by design
 People are designing now without privacy and are then patching it in
 The social science of privacy-enabling privacy-aware system design and effective regulation
 Legal and policy tools-enabling effective regulation of personal information systems
 You need to go a few extra steps and design security for privacy
 They are not the same
o Legal research needed
 There needs to be some
 It is really up to the funding agencies to make sure the interdisciplinary studies happen
 This conversation has to take place, has to be combined and crossed fertilized
o Research
 Strong recommendation from our report that the funding agencies put a huge emphasis on
interdisciplinary research
o Transition to Practice
 Engagement
 Education
 Bridging the gaps between research results and working
 Deployed products
 Creating funding models and structures that facilitate this transition
o Industry Side
 At Microsoft most developers do not focus on privacy regulations, it comes second
 We need to educate the developers
o Data Economy
 Something that is out there, but very important
 How do you do the computations under this type of data?
 Very challenging
 Is it possible to do the controls on the data verses on the use?
o Any solution here needs to cover any data that you offer up and data that you don’t offer up
General Discussions
o Updated on Uncertainty in Computation
o Ross is writing
o Should be done soon
o Has been a learning experience
o DOE has been asking as have a few others for the report
o Suggestions on how to get reports done
o Need to be careful on how you decide to delegate the writing
o Striking when the iron is hot
o Hold writing days
o Response to the data talk this morning
o Unsure it if is worth it for us to do another workshop in Big Data when NSF is doing so many
o Computing as a utility
o Rethink the nature of computing
o Does data and computing reside on the same platform?
o Two or three fantasy papers-What could be some disruptive ideas that touch on computing?
o Synthesis as a part of the regular research program
o Wikipedia of Coding
 Could be interchangeable and wrapped around nice APIs
 Say what you need for your computational problem and your code gets generated automatically
o Test Beds
 Use the campus as a lab
o Physics and the IoT
 Paper in AIPhttp://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/66/9/10.1063/PT.3.2110
 Main message- Physics understands the physical world and Computer Scientists don’t take the effort to
understand the world
o Vasant will drive idea
 Please send him brief summaries of your ideas for the document on directions that could be worth
exploring further through CCC activities
 Part of the CCC response to the CSTB report that Greg mentioned is elaborated on this article which was
aimed at the "science policy" audience
 http://faculty.ist.psu.edu/vhonavar/Papers/di-rpr2014.pdf
Computing Visions 2025
o Where does computing research need to change?
o Series of three workshops
 Interacting with Computing all Around Us
 The New Making Renaissance: Programmable Matter and Things
 2025 Roundtable
o Number of the themes came around personalized “x”
o 2025 Roundtable
 We are now in a world where people, computing, and physical world are all coming together
 Comprised of privacy, sharing economy, intellectual property, human augmentation
 What does this mean for CISE?
o What does it mean to have human in the loop computing?
o We plan to have some industry folks out this summer after the CCC meeting
o Could also do something next fall as a symposium that brings together 100 or so people
o What questions should we ask industry this summer?
 How to expand the frontier?
 How to make sense of synthesis?
 Can they contribute financially?
 (Industry wants a synthetic view, not analytic)
Questions for Jim Kurose
o How is CISE going to tackle Sociotechnical Systems?
o What does that mean for test bed and systems?
o What is the review process going to be for those interdisciplinary proposals?
o As we see more CS+X, how will we handle those proposals?
o In regards to the Food, Energy, Nexus Program. Anything the Council can do to help that program?
o Are there ways for us to enhance the interaction of the different agencies in regards to this program?
Discussion with NSF CISE AD- Jim Kurose
o Computing Community
o Main Initiatives
 Big Data
 NRI
 BRAIN
o Where is computer science headed?
 Nano, molecular, optical, quantum
 Smart vehicles & buildings, cyber-physical systems, swarms, mobile clouds
 Assistive technology, affective computing, social informatics, mind/machine, brain
 Science, engineering, humanities, health, security, transports, commerce, education
o CISE Overview and Updated
o Goal
 Try to make the pie bigger and the partnership smaller
 NSF budget is pretty flat
o Support goes
 Two thirds goes to computing information science
 Modest, sustained growth across all CISE divisions
o Big Data requests was about 5% when it first started
o Will get hockey stick growth in terms of faculty hiring
o “Rescuing biomedical research from its flaws”
 Article in PNAS
o Setting the right expectations
o Funding the CORE
o FY2016 proposed budget
 New Programs
 INFEWS
 Understanding the BRAIN
 NRT
 Risk and Resilience
 NSF Includes
 Urban Science
o Collaboration between Engineering and CISE
o Looking Forward
o Data science, management
 Open access document, summarizes data (NSF announcement 15-52)
 Going forward we should talk about what that really means
o Cyber Infrastructure
 Diversity
 NSF-supported CI investments responsive to increasing diversity
o ACI programs reflect increasing CI diversity
o Continuing CI Community Engagement
 Accelerating Science into the Future during a Period of transition
o Research investments
 Restoring the foundation
 Vital role of research in preserving the American dream
o “Partnerships” many dimensions
 Partnerships build capacity, leverage resources, increase the speed of translation from discovery to
innovation
 NSF/SRC: SaTC STARRS
 NSF/Intel Partnerships
 Innovation Transition DCL for Expeditions, Frontier projects
o Transparency and Accountability
o Education
 Increasing program sizes imply increasing Tenure Track faculty sizes
 Broadening interest in computing among incoming students
 Success of K-12 activities
Discussion with Jim
o How is CISE going to tackle Sociotechnical Systems?
o “Wow, all I have are my own thoughts. The issue of human in the loop. We are going to be engineering systems.
The leadership of SBE is very interested in working with us. I just know there is a huge amount of interest. We
are not at the level of being able to answer your question.”
Wrap-up
o Please send blog post ideas to Ann and Greg
o If you would like to write a blog post, please do!
o If you know someone from industry that would be a good fit for the Visions 2025 Industry Roundtable, please let us
know!
o We need 30-40 people
o Why do Industry Visions 2025?
o Looking for low hanging fruit
 Opportunities that we could exploit
o Opportunity to start the conversation
o Visions 2025 Industry Working Group
o Limor
o Ben