CLIFF LODGE, SNOWBIRD RESORT, UTAH
The biennial CRA Conference at Snowbird is the flagship invitation-only conference for the leadership of the North American computing research community.
Invitees: Computer science, computer engineering, and information technology department chairs; assistant, associate, and prospective chairs; directors of graduate or undergraduate education; directors of industry or government research labs/centers; and professional society or government leaders in computing.
The conference site: The Snowbird Resort is located in the Wasatch Mountains about 30 miles from Salt Lake City. A top-rated ski resort in the winter, off-season at Snowbird offers hiking amidst beautiful scenery.
This year at Snowbird: There will be four featured plenary talks on topics ranging from issues in government surveillance using the Internet to creating a diverse Computer Science research community. In addition to the plenary sessions, there will be a workshop for new department chairs on July 20 co-chaired by Susan Davidson (University of Pennsylvania) and Eric Grimson (MIT), a panel on research futures led by Greg Hager (The Johns Hopkins University), and three workshops on policy, research, and education. There will be several hours of free time for networking, mingling, hiking, or just hanging out enjoying the gorgeous environment.
Below is a preliminary program that will continue to be updated on the CRA website as additional information becomes available. Online registration will open on the CRA website in April 2014.
Program
Click on the Speakers name to download their slides (in blue if available).
Sunday, July 20
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Conference Registration |
3:00PM - 7:30PM (C Level - Top of the Escalator) |
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Workshop for New Department Chairs |
3:00PM - 5:45PM |
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Welcome Reception |
6:00PM - 7:00PM | ||
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Dinner |
7:00PM - 9:00PM |
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Computing and the Human Experience Click for bios of Chair and Speakers. The story of computing is the story of humanity. It is a story of ambition, invention, creativity, vision, avarice, and serendipity, powered by a refusal to accept the limits of our bodies and our minds. As an insider to this world, I see that there is a hidden life to computing, as wonderful and beautiful and elegant as the motion of the galaxies and the pulsing of life in a cell. The software we compose forms the invisible writing that whispers the stories of possibility to our hardware. At the same time, computing has woven itself into the interstitial spaces of society and we are each slowly surrendering our lives to it. Humans have created computing, but computing is re-creating us. This yields a curious dichotomy that impacts every aspect of the human experience, and indeed leads us to consider the very question of what it means to be human. In this keynote, I will examine this story of computing as it has unfolded across time, ending with an exploration of where it might lead us and how we might ourselves be more intentional in directing it. We are among those who are making computing manifest, and so I will also focus on the question of our responsibility: there are some things we would like to do that we do not yet know how to do (this is the domain of computing research); there are some things we can do that perhaps we should not (this is the domain of the human experience). |
After Dinner |
Monday, July 21
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Conference Registration Continues |
6:00AM - 6:30PM (C Level - Top of the Escalator) |
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Breakfast Buffet |
7:00AM - 8:30AM | ||||
A Policy Wonk's Plea for More and Better Policy Research and Engagement from Computer Scientists As computing continues to become more central to government, business, and the lives of individuals, the expertise of computer scientists becomes more essential to resolving policy issues. Peter Swire, trained as a lawyer and economist, has twice served as a White House official on technology issues and was a member of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. This keynote will offer Swire's reasons why computer scientists should produce more explicitly policy-oriented research and become more involved personally in the policy process. It will also offer a guide to the perplexed — ways that technologists can successfully navigate the unfamiliar culture and processes of political and policy debates. Chair: Greg Morrisett (Harvard University) |
8:30 - 10:00AM |
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Break |
10:00AM - 10:30AM | ||||
Quantum Computing: Transforming the Digital Age Click for bios of Chair and Speaker In 1981, Richard Feynman proposed a device called a “quantum computer” to take advantage of the laws of quantum physics to achieve computational speed-ups over classical methods. Quantum computing promises to revolutionize how we compute. Over the course of three decades, quantum algorithms have been developed that offer fast solutions to problems in a variety of fields including number theory, optimization, chemistry, physics, and materials science. Quantum devices have also significantly advanced such that components of a scalable quantum computer have been demonstrated in a variety of quantum systems. In this talk, I will attempt to reveal some of the mysteries of this disruptive computational paradigm. I will showcase recent advances in quantum algorithms for real-world applications and in scalable, fault-tolerant devices. |
10:30AM - 12:00PM |
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| Luncheon | NOON -1:30PM |
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Parallel Tracks
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1:30PM - 3:00PM |
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Break |
3:00 - 3:30PM | ||||
| Networking | 3:30PM - 5:00PM Outside |
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Dinner |
6:30PM - 9:00PM | ||||
| Computing Research Futures
Computing research continues to be at the forefront of innovation, impacting society in ways never before imagined. In this session, speakers will further explore, looking at these new impacts and what the future might hold. Chair: Greg Hager, CCC Chair (Johns Hopkins University) Click for bios of Chair and Speakers. Big Data, Data Science, and other Buzzwords that Really Matter Data is all the rage across industry and across campuses. While it may be temping to dismiss the buzz as just another spin of the hype cycle, there are substantial shifts and realignments underway that are fundamentally changing how Computer Science is taught, researched, and perceived as a discipline. In this talk I will attempt to survey this new landscape based on my experiences organizing a large, industry-engaged academic Computer Science research project (the AMPLab) and in helping to establish a new campus-wide and multi-campus Data Science initiative. Socially Assistive Technologies: Creating Machines That Care How can computing help to close the vast “care gap” created by the growing elderly population, the obesity epidemic, the rapid increase in social disorders in children, and millions of people with special needs requiring one-on-one customized, affordable, long-term care? Socially assistive technologies, including socially assistive robotics, constitute a new challenging interdisciplinary research area that focuses on creating “machines that care” through social rather than physical assistance, by providing coaching and motivation, supporting autonomy and learning, and encouraging recovery, wellness, independence, and aging in place. Town Hall Meeting on Topics of Great Relevance Developing a Consistent Timeline for Graduate Student Acceptance Notifications Over the past 3 decades, CS graduate programs are rushing to notify accepted grad students earlier and earlier. Students used to apply by mid-January and be notified in late February; they'd have to decide by April 15. But we all seem to believe — and maybe it's true — that accepting a student a week before the other schools do will increase our yield. So our notifications creep earlier and earlier, and now our application deadlines have crept earlier as well. This is not a good thing for our field; undergrads have to apply before they've done much of their senior-year research work, before we have fall-semester grades for them, before they even know they want to go to graduate school. If this keeps up, they'll apply for graduate school before they finish 1st grade. As a field, perhaps we should establish a convention about the earliest acceptable date for notifying graduate applicants into PhD programs. (We already have the convention that grad students may not be forced to decide before April 15.) The Growing Enrollments in Computing Courses In terms of enrollment growth, our field has faced booming enrollments twice in the past: in the mid-1980s, and in the late 1990s. Universities were unable to respond with "business as usual." The current boom shows signs of dramatically exceeding these previous ones. What strategies can you envision to respond to the demand for introductory computer science, for the major, and for upper division and graduate courses by non-majors? "What is different this time around?" Do we think this is just a third boom/bust cycle, or do we believe that this time is different, and if, what strategies are needed and what can we do to convince others (in particular university administration) that the situation is really different this time around. We need to share ideas. |
After Dinner |
Tuesday, July 22
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Conference Registration Continues |
6:00AM - 6:30PM (C Level - Top of the Escalator) |
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Breakfast Buffet |
7:00AM - 8:30AM | ||||
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Broadening the Computing Research Community Chair: Susan Davidson (University of Pennsylvania) Speaker: Maria Klawe (Harvey Mudd College) Click for bios of Chair and Speaker Computing is one of the least diverse disciplines in science and engineering in terms of participation by women, African-Americans and Hispanics, and the only discipline where participation by women has significantly decreased over the last three decades. While our discipline does well in encouraging members of underrepresented groups to go on to graduate programs, we have been less successful in attracting members of these groups into undergraduate programs. This talk discusses successful strategies for significantly increasing the number of women and students of color majoring in computer science. |
8:30AM - 10:00AM |
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Break |
10:00AM - 10:30AM | ||||
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Parallel Tracks
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10:30AM - Noon |
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| Luncheon | NOON - 1:30PM |
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Parallel Tracks
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1:30PM - 3:00PM |
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Making a Federal Case for Computing That politics and partisanship plays a role in shaping Federal policy — that policy decisions aren’t always made on the basis of a rational scientific argument - is not news, even where science policy is concerned. But the extent to which those forces have driven recent science policy debate in Congress is somewhat startling, even to experienced hands like CRA’s own Peter Harsha. How will support for Federal investments in fundamental research fare in this more polarized political climate? How does CRA make a Federal case for computing research when much of Congress seems averse to spending? In this session, Harsha will attempt to make some sense of this new landscape for science policy and discuss what CRA and CRA’s partners in the science advocacy community are doing to navigate in it. Chair: Andrew Bernat (CRA) |
3:30PM - 5:00PM |
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Managing Up - Working With Your Dean Department chairs are often given lots of advice about how to manage, but most of the time the emphasis is on "managing down," i.e., interacting effectively with the faculty and staff in one's department. However, success-for you as well as for your department-also depends on your ability to "manage up," to work cooperatively with your dean. Current and recent deans will work with small groups of department chairs to provide their perspectives on the issues that chairs face, and on the types of chair-dean interactions that are most successful. Example topics include:
- What's the best way to request resources, such as faculty positions for your department, from the dean? Department chairs will have plenty of opportunity to raise questions. Chair: Bobby Schnabel (Indiana University)
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5:30PM - 6:30PM |
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| Dinner | 6:30PM - 7:30PM |
Conference Sponsors
Organizing Committee
Co-Chairs: Greg Morrisett (Harvard University) Academic; Brent Hailpern (IBM Research) Labs/Centers
Members: Sarita Adve (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), David Bader (Georgia Institute of Technology), Chitta Baral (Arizona State University), Susan Davidson (University of Pennsylvania), Janet Davis (Grinnell College), Julia Hirschberg (Columbia University), Eric Horvitz (Microsoft Research), HV Jagadish (University of Michigan), Chris Johnson (University of Utah), and Bill Weihl (Facebook).
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