Computing Community Consortium
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is an organization whose goal is to catalyze and empower the U.S. computing research community to pursue audacious, high-impact research.
Established in 2006 through a cooperative agreement between the Computing Research Association (CRA) - representing over 220 North American academic departments, industrial research labs, and professional societies with computing research interests - and the U.S. National Science Foundation, the CCC provides:
a voice for the national computing research community. The CCC facilitates the development of a bold, multi-themed vision for computing research, and communicates that vision to a wide range of major stakeholders.
The CCC is governed by an 18-member Council. Ed Lazowska (University of Washington) serves as Chair. Susan Graham (U.C. Berkeley) serves as Vice Chair. Ann Drobnis serves as Director.
The CCC is housed at CRA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., USA.
History
In March 2006, NSF issued a solicitation indicating its desire to establish a Computing Community Consortium. In October of that year, CRA responded to the solicitation, submitting a proposal that was backed by explicit letters of support from 132 Ph.D.-granting academic programs, 16 leading corporations, 7 major national laboratories and research centers, and five professional societies in the field. Pursuant to positive external peer review, the CCC was established in late 2006 through a cooperative agreement between NSF and CRA.
An interim CCC Council was appointed by the proposal team in December 2006. Following an open recruitment process, Ed Lazowska (University of Washington) was selected as Chair of the CCC Council in March 2007. The membership of the inaugural CCC Council was selected through a transparent process and announced in June 2007. The first public activity of the CCC was a set of five plenary talks at the Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC 2007) that month.
Early on, CCC Council member Susan Graham (U.C. Berkeley) assumed the role of Vice Chair. Andrew Bernat, CRA’s Executive Director, served the CCC in the role of staff Director until Erwin Gianchandani was recruited as full-time staff Director in April 2010.
Today, the CCC Council has 18 members on 3-year staggered terms, representing the diverse nature of the computing research field, plus two officers (Lazowska, Graham) and two ex-officio members (Bernat, Gianchandani).
Current Structure
The CCC operates as a standing committee of CRA under CRA's bylaws: its membership only slightly overlaps the CRA's Board of Directors; it has significant autonomy; and it has a great deal of synergistic mutual benefit with CRA. The CCC Council meets three times every calendar year, including at least one meeting in Washington, D.C., and has biweekly conference calls between these meetings. The CCC leadership has biweekly conference calls with the leadership of NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).
The CCC is broadly inclusive, and any computing researcher who wishes to become involved is encouraged to do so. For example, each fall, the CCC issues a call for nominations for Council members effective the following January.
