Computing Community Consortium

Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is a consortium of computer and computational scientists who have come together to foster a vision of computing research for the United States and sister nations and then to help guide visions through to funded programs. It is implemented through a cooperative agreement with the American National Science Foundation (NSF) that resulted from a proposal submitted in 2006 and is administered through the Computing Research Association (CRA).

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) seeks to mobilize the computing research community to answer these questions by identifying major research opportunities for the field. The CCC creates venues for community participation in this process by examining several questions:

- What questions shape our intellectual future?
- What attracts the best and brightest minds of a new generation?
- What are the next big computing ideas, the ones that will define the future of computing, galvanize the very best students, and catalyze research investment and public support?

The CCC is broadly inclusive of the computing research community. Any computing researcher who wishes is encouraged to be involved.

The Computing Research Association is the parent organization of the CCC and provides both fiscal and policy oversight to ensure that the CCC activity goes forward with maximum value for the computing research community. The mission of CRA 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. This mission encompasses the mission of CCC - to foster exciting new research visions in the computing community, which attract support.

CRA has created the CCC in cooperation with NSF through a 3-year cooperative agreement.

CCC History

[Need paragraph]

CCC Council Structure The CCC structure includes a Council. The Council comprises a Chair and 15 members on staggered 3-year terms.

The Council was chosen through an open process led by Randy Bryant, Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Ed Lazowska currently chairs the Council, and Susan Graham from UC Berkeley serves as Vice Chair.

Role of the Council
The CCC Council´s role is to stimulate and facilitate visioning. The Council is responsible not for doing the visioning, but for putting processes into place that stimulate and facilitate visioning by the computing research community. This effort encompasses:

Mobilization (Shaping the voice of the community). There are times when the field needs to come together to ask difficult questions, such as determine priorities for major initiatives when resources are not sufficient to support all the good ideas. The council helps to shape that process in ways in which there is no tyranny of the majority or the minority.

Brokerage (Strengthening the marketplace of ideas). Research funding takes place in a marketplace of ideas, a meritocracy in which the strongest ideas prevail. But there can be market failures -- cases in which bold ideas cannot gain necessary traction because there is no existing constituency. All bold ideas come from the distributed community of the field, not from the "top." The CCC provides a vehicle for helping to shape such high-risk, high return ideas so they at least get a hearing.

Advocacy (Promoting research support). Other fields (physics, astronomy, life sciences) have increased their funding by speaking with one voice regarding needs.

Performance (Proactive position on the field´s value). As computing science becomes more important, it becomes more political. Expectations of performance are high -- the public wants value for money. The CCC keeps an eye on the politics of performance.

How CCC facilitates Visioning

- The CCC sponsored a set of 5 plenary talks at the 2007 Federated Computing Research Conference – talks by Christos Papadimitriou, Bob Colwell, Randy Bryant, Scott Shenker and Ed Lazowska, that described specific research visions for the field.
- The CCC provides support for "visioning workshops" organized by members of the computing research community. Sponsorship can be obtained through a lightweight proposal process; the first awards have already been made.
- CCC coordinates closely with funding agencies to help to transition visionary ideas into funded programs.
- CCC has created a website and booklet describing a wide range of research visions for the field. CCC sponsors a blog where the entire research community can participate in real time.

The relationship of CCC to CRA and to NSF

CRA and CCC both are concerned with the health of the computing research community: CRA in a broad-based way, and CCC with a narrower focus on research visions. NSF funds the CCC through CRA, providing CRA and the computing research community with the means to expand efforts this particular area.

The relationship between CCC and CRA is close: Andy Bernat serves as the Executive Director of both organizations, the Chair of the CRA Board is an ex officio member of the CCC Council, and several members of the CCC Council (including the Chair) are current or former CRA Board members. NSF funds the CCC through a "cooperative agreement," meaning that CCC consults closely with NSF on all of council activities. Dick Karp from UC Berkeley, Chair of the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, is a member of the CCC Council, as are several other members of the CISE AC. Jeannette Wing, NSF Associate Director for CISE, and a number of other CISE personnel participate in CCC activities in various ways. NSF the only current funding agency for CCC. With NSF’s strong encouragement CCC is developing additional relationships. The CCC Council includes individuals with strong ties to DARPA and the Department of Energy. CCC is developing ties with NIH and other agencies, as well as with industry (there are several industry members of the Council) and with international partners.

CCC does not decide upon funding. This is the privilege and responsibility of each funding agency (within the federal budget process). The goal of CCC is to make the best research visions potential winners in this process.

Process for supporting Visioning activities
The visioning process starts with a Request for Proposals in order to ensure that the process is open and available to every computing researcher. Prospective proposers are encouraged to contact the Council with any questions. Proposals will be reviewed at least quarterly; but particularly striking ideas may be supported at any time. The proposals are reviewed by the Council and proposers receive feedback from one or more Council members based upon these reviews. As appropriate, external reviews may be solicited. This process is often iterative, with the Council working with the proposers to craft an enhance proposal ready for implementation.