LUCI friend, UCLA Prof. Deborah Estrin, chairs The National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. They just released a new report titled, “Computing Research for Sustainability”. From the press release:

“The report stresses that computer science research in sustainability must be an interdisciplinary effort, with experts in the various fields of sustainability being equal partners in research. To further that end, undergraduate and graduate education in computer sciences should provide experience across disciplinary boundaries. Programs should include tracks that offer course work in areas such as life-cycle analysis, agriculture, ecology, natural resource management, economics, and urban planning.” [citation]

Then in the report itself:

“This report emphasizes opportunities for research, in addition to the data and privacy challenges mentioned earlier, on human-centered systems both at the individual level and beyond (at the organizational and societal levels). Examples of such research areas include visualization and user-interaction design for comprehensibility, transparency, legitimation, deliberation, and participation; devices and dashboards for individuals and institutions; expanding the understanding of human behaviors, empowering people to measure, argue for, and change what is happening; and education.” [page 79 of the report]

It sounds like Informatics to me!

An interesting LUCI trivia point is that this report directly references a LUCI Tech Report, “Print This Paper, Kill A Tree: Environmental Sustainability as a Research Topic for Human-Computer Interaction” by it’s number LUCI-2009-004. I would guess that this is the highest profile publication to ever do that. Woot!

Update:  It turns out that Bill Tomlinson was a panelist during the information gathering stage for this report at the  Workshop on Innovation in Computing and Information Technology for Sustainability held at the National Academies in 2010.  He was also a reviewer of the document.