Message from the Department Head

Welcome to mechanical engineering at The University

of Alabama. Our graduates work in almost every technology-based industry:
automotive, electric power, space and aerospace, steel and materials, bioengineering,
chemical and petro-chemical, robotics and manufacturing, pulp and paper, and textiles.

Our goal for undergraduate students is to give them a high-quality engineering

education that includes hands-on experience. Each of our faculty members is ready and
willing to work in their research specialty with capable students on individual projects.
Our faculty have two major areas of research: thermal systems and mechanical
systems. Both areas strongly support the growing automotive and manufacturing
economy in the state and the region. In the last 10 years, more than 50 of our
undergraduates have co-authored papers with faculty and over 30 have helped write
proposals for funded research. As can be seen, we genuinely care about our students
and their future.

There are numerous opportunities for our students to participate in student

organizations. The American Society of Mechanical Engineering and the Society of
Automotive Engineers’ student sections have been among the most active in the
country during the past few years.

We strive to ensure that all our undergraduate students have a strong education with
teaming and leadership skills, involvement in student activities, and the practical
background of co-op and internship experience. We believe that emphasizing these
areas will make our students well qualified to take leadership roles in the future.
We also have a strong graduate program in mechanical engineering, including a
Scholars Program for students pursuing a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five
years. Our master’s and doctoral students give numerous technical presentations in
courses and on their research. All graduate students are also expected to publish their
research in relevant peer reviewed engineering journals.

Whether you are a current or former student, a potential student, or a visitor, please feel
free to contact or visit us. Again, welcome to the Capstone.

Nader Jalili, Ph.D.

Professor and Department Head
Computer Science is a relatively young discipline of research. Still, the first roots of
computers — as machines that enhance our own thinking — go back more than a
century. Alan Turing set the mathematical foundations of computing with the concept of
Turing Machines. Turing was not only a brilliant theoretician, but also looked at very
practical applications, such as for cryptanalysis (you might have watched the movie The
Imitation Game); Turing is also considered a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence, an area
that has gained much attention recently, not only within the research community, but
also in the daily news. Think about self-driving cars, AI-driven medical diagnostics and
personal health, face identification, or natural language understanding. John von
Neumann was a brilliant mathematician, who developed the concepts of cellular
automata, the universal constructor, and was a pioneer in digital computer architecture.
We are still talking about the von Neumann architecture as the forefather of modern
chips, which are now at the heart of our modern-time computers: think of smart phones,
tablets, or smart watches. It should also be noted that many women have contributed to
the discipline of computing and algorithmic machines such as Ada Lovelace, Grace
Hopper, Frances E. Allan, and many, many more (see, for example, for more
details: Women in computing - Wikipedia)
So, even looking back at the origins of computers, Computer Science always had the
aspiration to go way beyond “coding”. It has always been more than just writing
programs to make machines perform algorithms. Computer Scientists are problem
solvers. Computer Scientists create communities. We help to build the
infrastructures for social networks; we also work on solutions to protect our personal
data; make data communication secure across a wide variety of “communication
networks”; we build solutions to visualize information; we work on tools that help to
make decisions by asking smarter questions, and bring more and more data into our
decision making.
With computers — as smart tools to help us think — we have to rely less on
guessing. We can support our decisions by data. This is becoming more and more
important in our increasingly digital economies. Hence, Data Science is a new area of
research where we use computational tools to gather data, filter them, separate noise
from useful information, and create knowledge — from which we can make better
decisions and build smarter, enabling tools for our daily lives and to support our
professional endeavours.
Join us, and become an ambassador of Computer Science. Learn more about
Computer Science as a student; we love to share our passion with you. Learn how to
not only use computational tools, but how to work in teams, share ideas, present,
communicate — in short, join creative teams that make a positive difference.
Work with us if you are an entrepreneur or partner with us to enhance our digital
economy, or let us help you solve challenges in your industry.
Following our Faculty of Science’s motto “Curiosity Drives Discovery”, we as Computer
Scientists create computational “Discovery Tools” and “Think Tools”.
Welcome to our world.
 
Christian Jacob 
Professor & Head 
Department of Computer Science
 
P.S. To learn more about our wide range of research activities, check out our Research
Areas page
Department Head Message

The history of computer science at the University

of Connecticut begins over half a century ago with the introduction of our first computing
courses in the 1960’s. The first defense of a Ph.D. in Computer Science was held in 1967. The
Computer Science curriculum was established in 1970, and the program was accredited in 1972
among the very first undergraduate programs in the field of Computer Science. As we enter our
next epoch, Computer Science & Engineering encompasses broad areas of intellectual discourse
in informatics spanning a plethora of educational and research activities including algorithms and
complexity, bio and biomedical informatics, big data, computational science, cybersecurity,
cyber-physical systems and machine learning that underlie much of the modern society
endeavors.

The department is ever-growing; our undergraduate enrollment has doubled in the last four years
and the number of doctoral students exceeds one hundred. Our faculty includes more than thirty
full-time members. Since the start of the millennium, the department has experienced significant
qualitative evolution, complementing our rigorous educational curricula with comprehensive
research programs in several crucial areas of societal importance.

Our department has excellent and diverse faculty with research and education expertise in the
traditional and emerging fields of computer science and engineering. We continue to attract
talented young faculty, with thirteen of our faculty winning the prestigious National Science
Foundation Career Awards since the turn of the century.

Given that computers are playing a major role in every area of science and engineering as well as
the society at large, our presence remains strong in the society as we fulfill our mission of
research, education, industrial and public outreach, and service to the profession. I invite you to
browse our website at www.cse.uconn.edu where you will find detailed information on our
academic programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, research and teaching profiles of
our faculty, and student societies. I am confident that you will find a topic that sparks your
interest. As you get to know us better do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to answer
your questions.

 
Sincerely,

Sanguthevar Rajasekaran

Department Head
Message from the Department Head
Greetings from Purdue Computer Science
At Purdue University, we never stop in our persistent pursuit of the next giant leap. Through
world-changing research and education in a culture of inclusion and hard work, we are
developing practical solutions to the toughest challenges, building a better world, together. With
a degree from Purdue Computer Science and a desire for innovation and creativity, you can solve
complex and challenging problems in any field.

In the profession
of computer science, demand for our majors continues to grow - once again we have
broken our own record for the number of applications for freshman admissions: we had
more than 5,500 applications received for Fall 2019 in both our Computer Science
Majorand Data Science Major. The quality of incoming students is at an all-time high
and our graduates continue to be in great demand. This year the freshman women
students represent 27% of the undergraduate population and women are 21% among
all undergraduate classes. Purdue Computer Science continues to have women student
populations above those reported in the 2018 Taulbee Survey.
We began this academic year with 1900 undergraduate students and 396 graduate
students, all engaged in one of our 9 undergraduate tracks or 11 research areas
respectively. I am excited to continue and build upon our department’s reputation as a
leading computer science research and education powerhouse in our persistent pursuit
of innovation.

Our commitment and work within the department has generated numerous firsts beyond
our record-breaking enrollments, including: the best-prepared students ever; becoming
the most selective major on campus (CS); becoming the largest major on campus (CS),
launching and growing the data science major (Glassdoor: best job in America);
developing our TA training programs; and finally the our preparatory Bridge Program for
incoming CS students.
As we begin the academic year of 2019-2020, our faculty has grown to 63 members.
The competition for recruiting new computer science faculty is higher than ever. Purdue
University and the College of Science continue to support our growth. We are
committed as a department to continue to serve our growing student body at the highest
possible level.
On behalf of Purdue Computer Science, I want to thank Professor Dongyan Xu for his
leadership as the previous department head. His commitment to our success is shown
by the adherence to our mission of advancing the profession of computer science and
applying computational principles to technical and societal problems. He is a relentless
advocate for computer science research and a strong leader within our profession.
I am immensely proud to lead the department through our next stage of growth. 

Sincerely,
Sunil Prabhakar
Professor and Department Head
Message from the Department Head

Greetings and welcome to Computer

Science at Johns Hopkins University!

The 2020-2021 Academic year promises to be the most dynamic period in the
Department’s history. Our community is learning new techniques and building new
infrastructure for research and teaching as the majority of our efforts have moved to
online classrooms and virtual collaboration. 

We embark on this school year at the end of the most tumultuous and tragic period in
recent history. In the six months leading up to this academic year, we have suffered a
global pandemic that caused us to evacuate campus and curtail education and
research. We have witnessed a series of appalling racial events that have spurred a
international Black Lives Matter movement. We have seen the US government place
visa restrictions on international students and scholars that have prevented many of
our friends and colleagues from entering the US. 

I am deeply proud of the crisis response of the University and the Department. JHU
has provided the authoritative public health data that has helped the world track and
contain the spread of COVID-19. Computer science faculty have also risen to the
challenge. We combat the spread of the misinformation on social media that has
confused our response to disease, protest, and unrest. We build robots that automate
interactions with patients in the hospital to prevent infection. We sequence and
analyze the COVID-19 genome to determine the source and diversity of infections in
the region. 

Computer science is fundamental to human prosperity, equity, and

wellness. Automation is revolutionizing transport and manufacturing and data science
is transforming health care. Technology also has negative consequences. Social media
has become increasingly disruptive in global politics and cybercrime cost the world
economy $600 billion last year. In this environment, computer scientists must
embrace the issues of social justice, accountability, and ethics that arise from human-
machine interactions. Our research advances the role ofcomputing in the lives of
people. I encourage you to explore our website to learn more. Beyond our broad
research portfolio, we are translating research into practice, forging new relationships
with corporate partners, and building companies from startups.  

The interest in computing has grown in proportion with its importance and we are
teaching and mentoring more students than ever before. This includes our 600
undergraduate majors. Despite this growth, we are committed to an undergraduate
experience that includes access to faculty and research experience. Aligned with
a University report on the undergraduate education, we are redesigning the
undergraduate major to provide more flexibility and choice, offering co-curricular
education through internships, study abroad, and research, and building mentoring
networks that support students during and beyond their time at Hopkins. 

The recent past has compelled us to change many of our processes. In doing so, we
have the opportunity to improve and reinvent in pursuit of prosperity, diversity, and
fairness in a technological world. 

Randal Burns, Professor & Head 

Message from the
Department Head
Since the Minneapolis Police Department’s killing of George Floyd, the state
of Minnesota, and specifically the city of Minneapolis, has become the
epicenter of a national uprising against police violence and in support of the
rights of the Black community. I stand in solidarity with those communities,
and truly hope that the tragic events currently unfolding will ultimately lead to a
just, inclusive, and equitable future. 

As a department, we strive to build a safe, inclusive, and equitable

environment for all of our students, staff, and faculty. The current events and
appropriate demands for justice are a reminder of the urgency of this goal,
and our ongoing need for improvement. While we cannot physically be on
campus together to support each other and discuss current events, we in
CS&E welcome feedback on how we can do our part to provide a more
supportive, inclusive, and welcoming environment for all.

Please reach out to us for support and help as well as with questions,
concerns, criticisms, and suggestions: