ACM CRA MIT
NSF ONR

ACMWorkshop on
Strategic Directions in Computing Research

Peter Wegner, Chair; Jon Doyle, Associate Chair

MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
June 14-15, 1996

http://www.acm.org/surveys/sdcr

Contents

Working Groups and Reports * Participant Statements

Purpose * Meeting structure * Schedule
Keynote speakers * Invited panel * Participants
Organizers * Sponsors

Purpose

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), founded in 1947, marked its 50th anniversary year by two conferences:

As a part of its 50th anniversary celebration, ACM organized a workshop on Strategic Directions in Computing Research, held June 14-15, 1996 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hosted by the Laboratory for Computer Science. The workshop organized several working groups to examine the current status and future directions of computing research as well as strategic issues and relations to other disciplines. Its findings were made public through working group reports and personal position statements published in ACM Computing Surveys, and through at least one panel at ACM'97.

Meeting structure

The two-day workshop included three keynote talks and a panel on strategic directions, but its main activity consisted of working group meetings, with the afternoon of the first day and much of the second day devoted to working group meetings. The approximately 325 invited participants were chosen to span the discipline, focusing on both traditional and emerging areas, as represented by the working groups.

Keynote Speakers

Invited Panel on Strategic Directions

Working Groups

 The working groups were formed in part by invitation and in part by review of submitted position statements. Not all important areas of computing research were represented by working groups, in spite of efforts to ensure coverage of these areas. Since the scope of working groups overlapped, participation in more than one working group was encouraged.

The smallest working group had 5 participants; the largest 38. Each participant prepared a position statement in a specific research area. The working group chairs were responsible for preparing working group reports for the area as a whole. The working group reports listed below all appear in Computing Surveys Volume 28, Number 4, available online at http://www.acm.org/pubs/contents/journals/surveys/1996-28/#4.

Personal Statements

All participants in the workshop were asked to prepare personal statements setting out personal views of directions in their area. These statements formed the background material for the working group meetings. After the workshop these statements were reviewed, and selected statements were revised for publication in a special online section of Computing Surveys volume 28, issue 4. These articles may be accessed through the ACM Digital Library via the URL http://www.acm.org/pubs/contents/journals/surveys/1996-28/#4es.

Organizers

Strategic Directions in Computing Research was organized by Peter Wegner (pw@cs.brown.edu), Chair, and Jon Doyle (doyle@mit.edu), Associate Chair.

Sponsors

Strategic Directions in Computing Research was funded by the Association for Computing Machinery with support from the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, and is cosponsored by the Computing Research Association. The meeting was hosted by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.

Workshop Schedule

The structure of the workshop was as follows:

Thursday June 13th (evening)
7.00-9.00 Registration
7.00-10.00 Working Group Chairs reception and planning meeting
Friday June 14th
8.00-9.00 Registration and coffee
9.00-9.15 Welcome
9.15-10.15 Keynote speaker: Bill Wulf
10.45-12.15 Panel on Strategic Directions: Rick Weingarten, Chair
1.30-2.30 Keynote speaker: Juris Hartmanis
3.00-3.30 Working group organization
3.30-5.30 Working group meetings I
6.00-8.00 Reception
Saturday June 15th
9.00-10.00 Keynote speaker: Dennis Tsichritzis
10.30-12.30 Working group meetings II
1.30-3.30 Working group reports
4.00-5.00 Working group meetings III

Last modified: Mon Apr 14 11:33:19 EDT 1997
Jon Doyle <doyle@mit.edu>