The Computer Science Department

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The Computer Science Department
Jeannette M. Wing

• Presidents Professor of Computer Science
• Head, Computer Science Department
• Fall 2006

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Computing at Carnegie Mellon
CMU
School ofComputer Science
BS
ComputerScience Department (CSD)
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SCS Numbers at a Glance

• 215 faculty
• 213 courses on the books
• 540 bachelors students
• including a handful of HCI double majors
• 235 masters students across 11 programs
• 400 doctoral students across 9 programs

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CSD Who We Are
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A Single Guiding Principle

• To provide the best research and teaching
  environment possible for our faculty, students,
  and staff.
• All else follows from this principle

• Being leaders in research
• Getting the best faculty- Getting the best
  students for the faculty- Getting funding for
  our research- Promoting our faculty, students,
  and staff

• Being leaders in education
• Getting the best undergrads to come
• Keeping curricula and courses fresh
• Keeping our faculty and undergrads engaged

• Providing the best possible computing
  infrastructure for our needs

- Enhancing external visibility
- Making faculty, students, and staff happy
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A Glimpse at the 41-Year History of CSD

• 1965 CSD founded by Herb Simon, Allen Newell,
  and Al Perlis, who is first Department Head
  (1965-71).
• 1965 First Ph.D. from CSD awarded
• 1971-78 78-79 79-83 83-85 85-92 Joe Traub is
  Head Bill Wulf, Acting Head Nico Habermann,
  Head John McDermott, Acting Head Nico
  Habermann, Head.
• 1986 CSD is floating department in CMU, Nico
  Habermann is Head.
• 1988 SCS is created, Nico Habermann is Dean and
  Head.
• 1992 First Math/CS undergraduate degree awarded.
• 1992-1999 Jim Morris is Head now Dean of West
  Coast Campus.
• 1994 Start of CS undergraduate program
• 1998 First B.S. in Computer Science awarded
• 1999-2004 Randy Bryant is Head now Dean of SCS.
• 2004- Jeannette Wing is Head.

Since 1965, we have awarded 493 Ph.D. degrees in
Computer Science.
Since 1998, we have awarded 1301 B.S. degrees in
Computer Science.
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How Many Are We?

• Faculty
• 87 faculty
• 55 tenure-track, 6 research, 12 systems, 14
  teaching
• 7 post-docs, 16 visitors, 12 courtesy, 22
  adjunct, 2 emeriti, 2 distinguished career
• Students
• 177 Ph.D. students
• 7 Fifth Year Masters students
• 535 undergraduates
• Staff (cs-support and cs-technical)
• 29 administrative support
• 36 technical support

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What Distinguishes Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon

• Vision
• Research quality and style
• Leadership in education
• Success at diversity
• Supportive culture
• Organizational structure

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Our Broad Vision of Our Field
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CSD Identity

• We are the home to research and education in
  core areas of Computer Science
• Common traditional areas
• artificial intelligence, natural language
  processing, speech, vision
• algorithms, complexity
• computer architecture, databases, distributed
  systems, graphics, O/S, networking, parallel
  computing, programming languages, software
  engineering
• Emerging pervasive computing,
• Uncommon traditional areas
• computational neuroscience, formal methods,
  human-computer interaction, principles of
  programming, robotics, semantics
• Emerging trustworthy computing,
• We are the home for seeding research in new and
  emerging areas, e.g., CS other discipline
• Computational biology
• Computational game theory
• Computing and society
• Complexity management
• Nanocomputing

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CSD Core CS New, Emerging Areas
CSD
Theory algorithms, complexity, semantics Systems
(hardware software) processor architecture,
O/S, distributed systems, networking, databases,
performance modeling, graphics, programming
languages, formal methods AI planning, learning,
search, cognition, computational neuroscience

• New, emerging areas in Theory
• game theory

• New, emerging areas in Systems
• pervasive computing
• trustworthy computing
• post-Moores Law computers

• New, emerging areas in AI
• computer games

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What We Do
Systems building/experimental
and How We Do It

• Algorithms
• Artificial intelligence
• Combinatorics
• Complexity theory
• Computational biology
• Computational geometry
• Computational neuroscience
• Computer architecture
• Computer music
• Cryptography
• Databases
• Distributed systems
• E-commerce
• Entertainment technology
• Formal methods
• Graphics
• Grid computing
• Human computation
• Human-computer interaction

• Machine learning
• Mobile computing
• Multimedia systems
• Nanotechnology
• Natural language processing
• Networking
• Parallel computing
• Performance modeling
• Pervasive computing
• Programming languages
• Real-time systems
• Security and privacy
• Semantics
• Sensor networks
• Software engineering
• Speech and vision
• Scientific computing
• Storage systems
• Robotics

Foundational/theoretical
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What We Do
and Who Does It

• Algorithms
• Blelloch, A. Blum, M. Blum, L. Blum, Gupta,
  Harchol-Balter, Maggs, Miller, Sleator
• Artificial intelligence
• Carbonell, Fahlman, Sandholm, Veloso
• Combinatorics
• Miller
• Complexity theory
• L. Blum, ODonnell, Rudich
• Computational biology
• Bar-Joseph, Carbonell, Durand, Erdmann, Langmead,
  Schwartz
• Computational geometry
• Miller
• Computational neuroscience
• T.S. Lee, Lewicki, Mitchell, Touretzky
• Computer architecture
• Goldstein, Mowry
• Computer music
• Dannenberg
• Cryptography

• Machine learning
• Bar-Joseph, A. Blum, Guestrin, Lafferty,
  Mitchell, Moore
• Mobile computing
• Satya
• Multimedia systems
• Christel, Hauptmann, Dannenberg, Ng, Reddy,
  Wactlar
• Nanotechnology
• Goldstein
• Natural language processing
• Carbonell, Fink
• Networking
• Andersen, Harchol-Balter, Maggs, Seshan,
  Steenkiste, Zhang
• Parallel computing
• OHallaron
• Performance modeling
• Gibson, Harchol-Balter
• Pervasive computing
• Satya, Schmerl, Siewiorek, Steenkiste
• Programming languages

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Our Research Style

• Collaborative and Interdisciplinary
• We build things.
• We think big.

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We Cross Research Styles in CSD

• Foundational, theoretical
• Formulate underlying principles
• Create mathematical basis
• The principle and its applicability is the end
  product
• Systems building, experimental
• Construct medium to large scale systems
• Evaluate and measure
• The artifact is the end product
• Artificial intelligence
• Attempt to mimic human thought process
• Display of intelligence is the end product

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Collaboration How We Encourage It

• Mixing office space among student/faculty and
  among disciplines
• 25 of students have joint advisors
• Advising by faculty from other parts of
  university
• Rest of SCS
• Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biology,
• Hiring
• Whom might this person work with?
• Attitudes
• Willingness to share credit with others
• Respect for ideas of others

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Interdisciplinary Work

• Value
• Push frontiers by seeking new problems and
  finding new approaches to old problems
• Traditional strength for all of Carnegie Mellon
• History of expanding boundaries of computer
  science through interdisciplinary collaboration
• robotics, psychology, language technology, data
  mining,
• Environment where people with different
  backgrounds work together

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Our Leadership in Education

• PhD Program
• Undergraduate Program
• 5th Year Masters Program

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Ph.D. Program

• Excellent students
• Research from Day One
• Rigorous but flexible course structure
• Speakers Club, formal writing requirement, TA
  evaluation
• Immigration Course, Emigration Course
• Black Friday

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Undergraduate Program

• Excellent students
• Challenging and unique curriculum
• Devoted faculty
• University advising awards (Roberts and Stehlik)
• University teaching award (Rudich)
• Active, energetic, and enthusiastic faculty and
  students

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5Th Year Masters Program

• Elite program for our own top undergrads only
• Students get to try out research
• A message to our undergraduates
• Think about getting involved in research now!

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Our Leadership in Diversity

• 33 of our BS degrees in CS go to women.
• Twice national average
• Women_at_SCS has broken traditional barriers and
  transformed the computing culture
• Active, energetic, enthusiastic
• Men and women, grads and undergrads are all
  welcome!

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Female Students

• 33 of our BS degrees in CS go to women
• Twice the national average
• Women_at_SCS has broken traditional barriers and
  transformed the computing culture
• Active, energetic, enthusiastic
• Men and women, grads and undergrads are all
  welcome!

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Our Supportive Culture

• Reasonable Person Principle
• Collective Responsibility
• Presume Success

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Reasonable Person Principle

• Assume that others around you are competent and
  reasonable
• Smart
• Ethical
• Concerned for welfare of others and of
  organization
• You are obligated to be reasonable as well
• Implies a high level of mutual trust and
  supportbeyond the base assumption

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Our UnusualOrganizational Structure

• Expanding Universe Model
• Lack of Rigid Administrative Boundaries

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What To Think About in Choosing an Advisor

• Research interests/emphasis
• Motivation, e.g., understand human intelligence,
  build more reliable software, bridge the IT gap,
  organize the worlds information (Google)
• Problem (nail), e.g., determine function from
  protein structure, score goal by robosoccer team,
  detect computer viruses, render human motion
• Solution (hammer), e.g., algorithms, machine
  learning, model checking, type theory
• Research style
• Math, science, engineering, implementation
• 1-1, group, team, cross-discipline, cross-style
• Personality

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Resources

• People
• Jeannette Wing, Department Head
• Sharon Burks, Associate Department Head and
  Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs
• Frank Pfenning, Director of Ph.D. Program in
  Computer Science
• Klaus Sutner, Associate Dean for Undergraduate
  Program
• Randy Bryant, Dean of School of Computer Science
• Documents and weblinks
• CSD Faculty Research Guide
• http//www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/research/faculty_researc
  h/
• The Ph.D. Program
• http//www-2.cs.cmu.edu/csd/phd/phd.html
• B.S. in Computer Science
• http//www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/education/bscs/

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Four Sample Research Projects
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Example One CAPTCHA
Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell
Computers and Humans Apart Automatically
A CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and
grade tests thatmost humans can pass but a
computer program cant.
Yahoo, Hotmail, PayPal, etc. all use CAPTCHAs
Secret Weapon Using hard AI problems, e.g.,
image understanding, to solve a theory problem,
e.g., authentication.
Collaboration Students Luis von Ahn, Nicholas
Hopper and John LangfordFaculty Manuel
Blum External Udi Manber (Yahoo, now at Amazon)
Interdisciplinary Theory, AI, Security, Systems
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Example Two Model Checking
Finite State Machine model
Temporal logic specification
No Deadlock
Model Checker

• Collaboration
• Faculty Ed Clarke (and Al Emerson) Model
  Checking Randy Bryant Binary Decision
  Diagrams
• CMU Ph.D. Student Ken McMillan Putting the
  two together
• 1998 ACM Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award

Interdisciplinary Logic, Automata Theory,
Verification, Concurrency, Data Structures,
Hardware, Formal Methods, Systems
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Example Three Quake
Surface map of 1994 Northridge, California
earthquake
3D animation of aftershock
The Triangle Program, part of the Archimedes
toolkit, is two-dimensional triangular mesh
generator for finite element simulations.

• Collaboration
• Faculty CSD Gary Miller, David OHallaron,
  Thomas Gross Civil Eng Jason Bielak, Omar
  Ghattas
• CSD Ph.D. Student Jonathan Shewchuk
  1997 co-winner ACM Dissertation Award
• 1998 SCS Allen Newell Award for Research
  Excellence

Interdisciplinary Algorithms, Data Structures,
Parallel Computing, Scientific Computing,
Compilers, Systems, Finite Element Analysis
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Example Four Robosoccer ? Segways

• Collaboration
• Faculty CSD Manuela Veloso, RI Brett
  Browning
• 2 postdocs, 13 grad students, 10 undergrads, 15
  past contributers (now faculty or grad students
  elsewhere)
• RoboCup 1997-2004 champions, American Open 2003
  champions
• 1997 and 1998 SCS Allen Newell Award for
  Research Excellence

Interdisciplinary Planning, execution, learning,
vision, robotics, systems, multi-agent
coordination, human-computer interaction