Under the three-year, $6 million agreement, CRA will create the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) to identify major research opportunities and establish “grand challenges” for the field. The CCC will create venues for community participation for developing visions and creating new research activities.

One of the first tasks of the CCC will be to assume the role of community proxy organization for the NSF’s Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) Project, providing broad scientific oversight to its potential construction and operation. In addition, the CCC will provide scientific oversight for future NSF large-scale computing research initiatives.

A council of 9 to 15 members and a council chair will lead the CCC. All council members will be leaders of the computing research community and will represent the diversity of that community.

“We’re pleased that NSF has charged our organization with establishing the CCC,” said Dan Reed, chair of the Computing Research Association and director of the Renaissance Computing Institute in North Carolina. “Computing research continues to fuel the innovations that drive economic productivity. We see the CCC as a mechanism that will enable continued innovation by enhancing our community’s ability to envision and pursue long-term, audacious computing research goals.”

Reed said the main challenges for the CCC will be to catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives.

**About CRA** The CRA was established 30 years ago and has members at more than 250 research entities in academia, industry and government. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.

For more info about CRA: http://www.cra.org

The bill, approved by the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Science, State, Justice and Commerce, would provide an 8 percent increase in research funding at the National Science Foundation – an increase of $439 million over last year’s level – and an additional $104 million increase to the core laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Both increases are key parts of the ACI proposed by the President in his State of the Union address last January.

“Chairman Wolf and his committee have created a historic opportunity to secure the Nation’s leadership in research in information technology and other physical sciences,” said Daniel A. Reed, Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina and Chair of the Computing Research Association. “By acting to fulfill the promise of ACI, the subcommittee has made a down payment on America’s future competitiveness.”

“We applaud this decisive action and are pleased that the legislation responds to our advice about making a serious statement about fostering innovation in America,” said Eugene Spafford, Director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance at Purdue University and Chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM). “The computing research field is a crucial example of how federal investment in fundamental research drives economic growth. These increases would reverse a lengthy trend of flat or declining budgets in computing research that threaten to put future innovation at risk.”

“The computing research community thanks Chairman Wolf, Ranking Member Allan Mollohan (D-WV), and the other members of the subcommittee for their extraordinary leadership in support of federal investment in fundamental research,” Reed said.

About CRA
The Computing Research Association is an association of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies. CRA’s mission is to strengthen research and advanced education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in our society. web: http://cra.org

About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery http://www.acm.org, is an educational and scientific society uniting the world’s computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

About USACM
The ACM U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) serves as the focal point for ACM’s interaction with U.S. government organizations, the computing community, and the U.S. public in all matters of U.S. public policy related to information technology. Supported by ACM’s Washington, D.C., Office of Public Policy, USACM responds to requests for information and technical expertise from U.S. government agencies and departments, seeks to influence relevant U.S. government policies on behalf of the computing community and the public, and provides information to ACM on relevant U.S. government activities. web: http://www.acm.org/usacm

Participants at the workshop will explore how high-end computing can address the current and future needs of biomedical researchers, the problems that computer scientists must solve to meet those needs, and the challenges involved in motivating biomedical researchers to take full advantage of computing resources.

Biomedical keynote addresses will be presented by Jill Mesirov, director of computational biology and bioinformatics at MIT’s Broad Institute, and Lee Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Dan Reed, director of the Renaissance Computing Institute in Chapel Hill, NC and CRA Board Chair, will present a keynote on computer science issues. Other presenters will include Chris Johnson, of the University of Utah’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, and Jim Gray of Microsoft Research.

More information
To register, see www.blsmeetings.net/H1009. For questions and more information, contact Pamela Handon at phandon@blseamon.com.