<< Back to January 2004 CRN Table of Contents

[Published originally in the January 2004 edition of Computing Research News, Vol. 16/No. 1, p. 5.]

CRA Hosts Second Grand Research Challenges Conference

More than 50 attendees participated in CRA’s “Conference on Grand Research Challenges in Information Security and Assurance" at the Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia, November 16-19, 2003.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, this was the second in a series of invitation-only conferences hosted by CRA to address grand research challenges in computer science and engineering. The conference was organized by a committee of fourteen distinguished researchers, co-chaired by Gene Spafford (Purdue University) and Rich DeMillo (Georgia Institute of Technology).

The attendees were selected by the organizing committee based on responses to a Call for Submissions for research topics related to security and assurance. The committee sought to convene a diverse group from a variety of fields and at all career stages. Participants came from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Following the conference, with support from ACM, a panel of conference participants presented the four grand challenges selected at a press briefing held at the National Press Club. This was followed by a briefing session in the House Rayburn Building, hosted by the House Science Committee,

Details are available on the Web at http://archive.cra.org/grand.challenges. A report of the conference will be published by CRA in spring 2004. The report of the first conference (on Information Systems) held in June 2002 is available at: http://archive.cra.org/reports/gc.systems.pdf (hard copies may be requested by contacting info@cra.org).