The Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) Grand Challenges task force is engaging in a new visioning activity to identify the next grand challenges that will shape the future of our field. We’re seeking visionary thinkers and researchers to join us in this exciting exploration.

The community has been inundated with innovation and acceleration over the last decade, resulting in a world in which information, communication, and computational technologies permeate human interactions and enable essential functions of society.  These virtual roundtable discussions will aim to consider the whole of the field of computing in this context and ask what the new fundamentally “computing research” issues might be that could produce a new set of “Grand Challenges” for our field.  In the way in which challenges around Health, Climate, Energy, Sustainability and Agriculture draw those from many disciplines (including computing research) into their grand challenges, what are the fundamentally new computing research questions that could inspire and motivate a similar global, interdisciplinary response?  What computing challenges are truly “Grand Challenges”?

Inspiration for this effort comes from several sources, including the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges for Engineering for the 21st century (2008) as well as previous fundamentally computing research activities such as DARPA’s Strategic Computing Initiative, which envisioned and laid the foundations for the capabilities seen in today’s micro-electronics, robotic systems and language models. CRA has led such efforts at the AI Roadmap (2018) and previously supported discussion of grand challenges in computing and engineering that produced, among other things, a report for Grand Challenges in Trustworthy Computing (2003).  

CCC expects to host 3-to-5 virtual sessions in spring 2024. Participation in each virtual session is limited to approximately 16 individuals in order to ensure the opportunity for all participants to contribute. For more information, please read the full Call for Participation on the CCC website. To apply to join one of these virtual roundtables, please fill out this brief form. Full consideration by March 1st.