On May 1-2, 2001, ITL, with NSA's Advanced Development Research Activity, co-sponsored its second annual pervasive computing conference. Significant support was provided by the NIST Advanced Technology Program. As an open forum for the IT industry, the conference offered key perspectives on pervasive computing, including the latest in technologies, real applications, and business views. Among the distinguished set of thirty industry leaders and scientists who addressed the conference were: Dr. Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, Solutions and Strategy, for IBM's Software Group, and Dr. James Flanagan, Vice President, Research, Rutgers University.

Presentations centered about the need to understand the nature of change and opportunity associated with this new computing environment. A noteworthy conference benefit to industry will be reflected in its ongoing collaboration with ITL in such critical areas as multimodal industry standards, interfaces, privacy and security. Pervasive computing topics discussed included health care industry applications, business wide applications, intelligent environments, applications in mobile commerce, software and services, networking technology infrastructure, concluding with a technology update on emerging standards for pico-cellular wireless communications and dynamic service discovery.

Several key participants in the conference included Alden Dima and Christopher Dabrowski from ITL’s Software Diagnostics and Conformance Testing Division; Martin Herman, Bill Young, and Vincent Stanford from ITL’s Information Access Division; and Kevin Mills, Robert Van Dyck, and Doug Montgomery from ITL’s Advanced Network Technologies Division. Dima, Herman, and Mills served as conference co-chairs; Young was the technical organizer. Stanford presented a talk on smart spaces; Van Dyck on wireless personal-area networks; Dabrowski on service discover protocols; and Montgomery on service discovery technologies.

Pervasive computing refers to the emerging trend toward numerous, easily accessible computing devices connected to an increasingly ubiquitous network infrastructure composed of a wired core and wireless edges. This trend will likely create new opportunities and challenges for the Information Technology marketplace, placing high-performance computers and sensors in virtually every device, appliance and piece of equipment, in buildings, homes, workplaces, and factories, and even in clothing. Pervasive computing will require innovative approaches to human-computer interaction and information access technologies, as there will be a shift towards interacting with small, distributed, and often invisible devices.

More information about the conference is available at www.nist.gov/pc2001.

CONTACT: Bill Young, ext. 8701