Ed LazowskaBill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Washington

August 2011

Computer Science – Facts and Fantasies

Today

UW Computer Science & EngineeringEducation for the 21st centuryWhy computer science?Why a research-intensive university?What your students will experience in UW

Computer Science & Engineering

UW Computer Science & Engineering

Ranked among the top 10 programs in the nation MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon,

Illinois, Washington, Cornell, Princeton, Georgia Tech, Princeton, Caltech, Wisconsin …

Two undergraduate programs Computer Science (College of Arts & Sciences) Computer Engineering (College of Engineering)

160 Bachelors students per year We also grant ~85 Masters and ~20 Ph.D.

degrees annually

Admission “Regular Admission” for UW students who have

fulfilled a set of prerequisites (math, physical sciences, computer science, etc.)

Offered twice each year – for autumn and spring quarters

“Accelerated Admission” for students who do extremely well in our introductory courses

Offered every quarter “Direct Admission” for top high school students

Offered in the spring, for autumn quarter, coordinated with the UW Admissions Office and the UW Honors Program

Extraordinary studentsA deep commitment to providing a top-tier

undergraduate education Winner of 5 UW Distinguished Teaching

Awards Winner of the inaugural UW Brotman Award for

Instructional Excellence

Housed in the spectacular Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering

Message #1 There are various reasons to go out of state for

college Getting the best computer science or

computer engineering education in the nation is not one of them

Once upon a time, the “content” of the goods we produced was largely physical

Education for the 21st century

Then we transitioned to goods whose “content” was a balance of physical and intellectual

In the “innovation economy,” the content of goods is almost entirely intellectual rather than physical

What kind of education is needed to produce goods whose content is almost entirely intellectual rather than physical?

Correlated with education: Employment Earnings Health Volunteerism Voting

1

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Percent ofemployment

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NAICS codes

Percent ofpayroll in

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scientistsemployed /

10,000workers

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science &engineeringBachelorsdegrees /10,000workers

Recentscience &

engineeringPh.D.

degrees /10,000workers

Percent ofemployment

in high-technology

NAICS codes

Percent ofpayroll in

high-technology

NAICS codes

Bachelorsdegrees

granted (allinstitutions,public andprivate) /

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Washington State is all geared up to fight the last war!

Message #2 The vanguard of our economy is the production of

goods whose content is almost entirely intellectual It takes a Bachelors+ education to produce these

goods If you steer a capable student towards a 2-year

program as his or her end-goal, you are doing that student a disservice

Not every student needs college prep. But every student needs life prep. Increasingly, math and science are life prep.

“Honors, AP, and IB English, math, and science”

Why Computer Science?

It’s creative, it’s challenging, it’s excitingIt’s increasingly fundamental to many

other fields And thus it’s great preparation for these fields

There are tons of jobs Although this is not a reason to choose a

major!

http://www.cs.washington.edu/WhyCSE/

Power to Change the World People enter computer science

for all sorts of aspirational reasons

Pathways in Computer Science A computer science education is

the gateway to all sorts of careers in addition to the software industry

A day in the life The software industry is pretty

cool

The Impact

“From smartphones to eBook readers to game consoles to personal computers; from corporate datacenters to cloud services to scientific supercomputers; from digital photography and photo editing, to MP3 music players, to streaming media, to GPS navigation; from robot vacuum cleaners in the home, to adaptive cruise control in cars and the real-time control systems in hybrid vehicles, to robot vehicles on and above the battlefield; from the Internet and the World Wide Web to email, search engines, eCommerce, and social networks; from medical imaging, to computer-assisted surgery, to the large-scale data analysis that is enabling evidence-based healthcare and the new biology; from spreadsheets and word processing to revolutions in inventory control, supply chain, and logistics; from the automatic bar-coding of hand-addressed first class mail, to remarkably effective natural language translation, to rapidly improvingspeech recognition – our world today relies to an astonishing degree on systems, tools, and services that belong to a vast and still growing domain known as Networking and Information Technology (NIT).”

“As a field of inquiry, NIT has a rich intellectual agenda – as rich as that of any other field of science or engineering.”

“In addition, NIT is arguably unique among all fields of science and engineering in the breadth of its impact.”

“The development and application of NIT-related systems, services, tools and methodologies have boosted U.S. labor productivity more than any other set of forces in recent decades. Advances in NIT, deployed pervasively throughout the U.S. economy, have helped U.S. workers become the world’s most productive and have enabled the U.S. to remain one of the world’s most competitive economies.”

The Future Role

“Recent technological and societal trends place the further advancement and application of NIT squarely at the center of our Nation’s ability to achieve essentially all of our priorities and to address essentially all of our challenges:

• Advances in NIT are a key driver of economic competitiveness. They create new markets and increase productivity.

• Advances in NIT are crucial to achieving our major national and global priorities in energy and transportation, education and life-long learning, healthcare, and national and homeland security. NIT will be an indispensable element in buildings that manage their own energy usage; attention-gripping, personalized methods that reinforce classroom lessons; continuous unobtrusive assistance for people with physical and mental disabilities; and strong resilience to cyber warfare.

• Advances in NIT accelerate the pace of discovery in nearly all other fields. The latest NIT tools are helping scientists and engineers to illuminate the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, elucidate the nature of combustion, and predict the size of the ozone hole, to cite just a few examples.

• Advances in NIT are essential to achieving the goals of open government. Those advances will allow better access to government records, better and more accessible government services, and the ability both to learn from and communicate with the American public more effectively.”

Workforce and Education

“All indicators – all historical data, and all projections – argue that NIT is the dominant factor in America’s science and technology employment.”

Science and Technology Job Growth, 2008-2018(Bureau of Labor Statistics)

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“The gap between the demand for NIT talent and the supply of that talent is and will remain large.”

Annualized Job Openings vs. Annual Degrees Granted

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Degrees granted, 2006 (NSFdata)

Games

Online mediaBroad e-tailing, Cloud Online travel

Networking infrastructure

RFID Focused e-tailingBioinformatics

High-performance computing

Search, etc.

Washington has innovators in most major information technology industry sectors

Clustered storage

Online real estate

Software

HEC Board Regional Needs Analysis Report (2011)

June 2011 job openings

Message #3 Computer science is an incredible field And there are tons of jobs However, a Bachelors-level education is not

about vocational training – it’s about preparation for life-long learning, and preparation for citizenship

Why a research-intensive university?

What can we uniquely do? Get students into the lab Make them our partners in discovery Prepare them for life-long learning at the

forefront of knowledge and society

......

Christophe BiscigliaGig Harbor HS

Tessa MacDuff Christophe BiscigliaIssaquah HS Gig Harbor HS(Google corporate trip to Burning Man)

UW CSE Bachelors Student Destinations(most recent 2 years, ~90% response rate)

Message #4 There’s no field in which it’s more important ot

prepare students for lifelong learning Bright, well-prepared, well-motivated students

from all across this state get a mind-blowingly great education at UW

What your students will experience in UW Computer Science & Engineering

“Capstone Design Courses” Robot soccer => robot blimps => robot cars “Software system design” Computer animation Ubiquitous computing “Google-scale computing” Many, many more

http://www.cs.washington.edu/info/videos/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soTD9dPLyc4

http://www.cs.washington.edu/info/videos/asx/CSE477_08sp_2083k_850x480.asx

Message #5 We are in “the opportunity business”