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.)
Programmable Open Mobile
Internet (POMI)
stanford university
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
the stanford
project aims to
create an open
internet for mobile
computing and
communications
networks.
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.
Molecular Programming Project
california institute of technology
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.
Understanding, Coping With, and
Benefiting From Intractability
Princeton university
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.