The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a short piece on public-service applications of computer science that are coming out of a class called Computing for Good (C4G) that TCS star Santosh Vempala co-taught at Georgia Tech last spring.
This is an idea that is emerging in several ACO-related disciplines. Manuela Veloso has been running a similar program at CMU called V-Unit, Karen Smilowitz and Michael Johnson held a session at INFORMS 2007 on community-based operations research, and in 2006 student statisticians started a network of volunteer consultancies called Statistics in the Community.
It’s great to see a tradition of “pro bono” work developing in theoretical fields. It’s not just a way for lawyers to assuage their consciences anymore.
Healthy Algorithms 