State of Computer Science in Illinois: Challenges and Opportunities

1. The State of CS in the US as seen from Illinois

2. The Bad News • Fewer students start CS studies • crash of the .com boom in the early 2000’s • fear of offshoring • self-confidence crisis and image/fashion problem

4. source Computer Research Association (www.cra.org)

5. The not so Bad News • Top departments did not see significant declines • IT employment is at record high • Top companies complain that they are not able to fill jobs • Salaries for graduating CS students are higher than for other engineering disciplines • Offshoring has had only limited impact and is not likely to hurt US IT economy (ACM globalization report -www.acm.org/globalizationreport/) • but adjustments in skills are needed

6. Big Variations are not New

7. IT employment grows faster than total employment

8. …and is Predicted to Continue so

9. The PhD Production is More Stable

10. PhD Production is Growing Enrollments tend to grow when economy is less good Enrollments less sensitive to US economy

11. Fraction of Foreign CS/CE Students is Stable (May decline as China and India improve their education)

12. CS is becoming less Popular among Women Fraction of female students in CS and CE in Science and Engineering Reasons are not clear

13. Federal Funding of CS Research • Funding per faculty in academia has declined • Research labeled as basic is becoming more applied x1000 source NSF

14. What is CS, Anyhow? Constraints on Information systems Foundations Applications Mathematics of computation Physical Sciences (scientific computing, Science informatics) Physical Sciences Biological Sciences (computational bio, Bioinformatics) Social Sciences Computer & Information Science & Engineering Economics Computer architecture, Systems & Networking, DB & Information systems, AI (machine learning, vision, robotics…) Graphics & HCI Software Engineering… Social Sciences (social informatics, social networking) Law Art & Leisure (digital art, gaming) … Business Core Disciplines

15. Where is CS? • A broad view of CS includes research & education done by different departments and programs in the US: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Science… • Interdisciplinary research and education with other departments is increasingly important

16. Organizational Models • CS (CSE), EE (ECE), IS as standalone units • CS usually in College of Science (U Washington, UT Austin); sometimes in College of Engineering (Stanford, UIUC) • Boundary between CS (CSE) and EE (ECE) varies • CS+ECE in one department in College of Engineering • MIT, Berkeley, Michigan • CS as part of College of Informatics • Cornell, CMU, Georgia Tech, UCI • Growing model

17. Globalization • Economies are integrated; companies become international; research and knowledge creation are global endeavors; how should this impact CS Research and Education? • Need to educate a global workforce (international curriculum, student exchanges…) • Need to strengthen international research collaborations

18. THE END

19. BACKUP

20. What is CS, Anyhow? • The study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems (Computer Science) • The study of how people create, access and share information and the design of systems that augment these activities with automation (Informatics)

21. Who is Funding R&D in the US

22. And Who is Spending the Money

24. Faculty Growth Top 36 CS Departments

25. What Research is Done in CS?

26. Physical constraints become less important, as compared to social, legal and economic constraints • May need CS students that study psychology & sociology, rather than physics • Increasing work done at the interaction of CS and application areas • Need strong support for interdisciplinary research and education (e.g., bioinformatics, media…)

27. More Trends • Experimental sciences (and administration & business) generate massive amounts of information; the core problem becomes generating knowledge from data • Data management and knowledge discovery become more important • Massive amounts of information also open new opportunities for CS, e.g. in NLP. • Computing systems become complex, distributed and dynamic; they interact with the physical world and mediate the interactions of large communities • The study of the design of complex systems becomes important; systems are studied with the physical world and humans in the loop (sensor networks; social computing) • Society is increasingly dependent on unreliable and insecure software systems • Trustworthy computing becomes essential; new approaches to software verification, validation and testing, and new system integration methodologies are likely to have a major impact