fields, such as information science, operations research, applied mathematics, and statistics, to help manage the balance between environmental, economic, and societal needs for a sustainable future, says Carla Gomes, associate professor of computer science at Cornell University.
“The focus of computational sustainability is on developing computational and mathematical models, methods, and tools for decision making and policy making concerning the management and allocation of resources for sustainable development,” Gomes says.
Gomes is also the director of Cornell’s Institute for Computational Sustainability, which has launched a variety of interdisciplinary projects, such as wildlife conservation through nature reserve selection and corridor design, exploring the impact of renewable energy sources and climate change, policies for fishery management and fish preservation, and equilibrium models for bio-fuel policies.
The institute has fostered the establishment of a research community around this new field by organizing the First International Conference on Computational Sustainability, held in June 2009. It brought together 220 scientists, policymakers, and students in more than 15 disciplines from around the world. (For more about the Cornell conference, see “Computer Science Meets Environmental Science” on p. 23 of the Sept. 2009 issue of Communications.)
The Stanford Expedition aims to create an open Internet for ubiquitous mobile computing and communication networks, thereby increasing users’ choices in the way their data and information is computed, communicated, and stored.
Nick McKeown, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford, says POMI is tackling what he calls the three main barriers to ubiquitous open networks and access. First, “private data is increasingly held by portals that capture our data and restrict the applications we can run against it; in response we
are developing the PRPL ( PRivate-PubLic) data system,” says McKeown. Second, “there is abundant wireless capacity around us, but most is closed because of closed contracts; in response, we are developing OpenRoads as an experimental platform to allow network service to be separated from the underlying infrastructure.” Lastly, “the current wireline and wireless network is ossified, and innovation in the infrastructure moves at a glacial pace. In response, we are deploying Open-Flow networks on college campuses to facilitate more rapid innovation.”
As mobile standards and infrastructure evolve, POMI is an opportunity to develop an open architecture that will create an environment well suited for innovation, competition, and user experience.
The biomolecular programs of life, from the low-level operating system controlling cell metabolism to the high-level code for development— the process by which a single cell becomes an entire organism—serve as the key inspiration for this Caltech Expedition.
“The team aims to create analogous molecular programs using nonliving chemistry in which computing and decision making will carried out by chemical processes themselves,” says Erik Winfree, associate professor of computer science, computation and neural systems, and bioengineering at Caltech. The Expeditions work can help create a new subdiscipline of computer science, says Winfree, “that
will enable a yet-to-be imagined array of applications from chemical circuitry for interacting with biological molecules to molecular robotics and nanoscale computing.”
The Expedition’s first year has witnessed significant advances in all these areas, says Winfree. “As an example, we have developed a compiler for translating abstract formal chemical reaction equations into systems of DNA molecules that react with equivalent dynamics, and we have begun experimental investigations of small circuits generated this way,” he notes.
Sanjeev Arora, professor of computer science at Princeton, says the Center for Computational Intractability, which was created out of this Expeditions grant, “seeks to bridge fundamental gaps in our understanding about the power and limits of efficient algorithms, which has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of algorithmic processes in a host of disciplines, and cast new light on fields such as quantum computing, secure cryptography, and pseudoran-domness.”
A key area of interest for the Princeton researchers is the amorphous boundary between problems considered tractable and those considered intractable; an example of this is reliance on cryptographic programs considered intractable, but which may be tractable and are possibly vulnerable to attacks.
In its first year, the Princeton team has carried out monthly day-long meetings focusing on finding new approaches to open problems of intractability, and via workshops, “which have been wildly popular,” and visiting positions, has sought to actively engage other researchers, says Arora. It has also performed outreach activities such as popular talks and a one-month mini-course on computational complexity for high school students in the New Jersey Governor’s School program.
Gregory Goth is an oakville, Ct-based writer who specializes in science and technology.
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