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In a move designed to help meet the
fast-growing workforce needs of the high-technology industry while
broadening students' career opportunities, ICS
has created a new master of science program.
Beginning next fall, graduate students will be allowed to work toward
their master's degree in one of six areas of study, including computer
system design and software, to prepare them for a variety of
career opportunities throughout Orange County and the nation.
Explosive growth in virtually all areas of the information and
computing industry (from algorithms development to data mining) has
created a significant and growing demand for qualified applicants, a demand
that is currently woefully unmet, ICS Chair Michael Pazzani said.
"The need is real, and it is urgent. By establishing our master of
science program, we can take significant steps toward meeting the
demand for well-educated employees both locally and throughout the
nation, while broadening the career potential for our students,"
Pazzani said.
Pazzani noted that his department is ideally suited to respond to the
local and national need for qualified high-tech graduates that the new
master's program will provide: ICS's doctorate program already offers
advanced courses in the areas experiencing shortages.
Also, Pazzani predicted that the new program will bolster ICS's
student recruitment efforts both nationally and internationally. The
department already has nationally respected programs in several areas,
including embedded systems, data mining, software, networks,
high-performance computing and social aspects of computing, he noted.
Indeed, with 29 faculty, nearly 800 undergraduate and 125 graduate
students and 3,500 alumni, UCI's Department of Information and
Computer Science program is the largest computing program in the
entire UC system. The department is ranked among the top 30
nationally by both the National Research Council and the Computing
Research Association.
The proposal to create the master of science program was approved
unanimously by the UCI Graduate Council. Pazzani said the new program
was created amidst a growing chorus of concern among ICS undergraduate
students, high-tech companies and students at other universities that
Orange County lacks a quality master of science program. Each year,
the department receives more than 500 inquiries from students about
obtaining a master's degree, according to Pazzani.
"The timing is ideal to begin this new master of science program. The
increasing need for employees throughout the industry, coupled with
the high level of interest from students, practically ensures its
success," Pazzani said. He said he expects the master of science
program to be very selective, attracting students with strong
backgrounds in computing.
The six fields of emphasis offered through the
program are: algorithms and data structures; artificial intelligence;
computer systems design; computer systems and networks; computing,
organizations, policy and society; and software.
For information on applying, contact the Information and Computer
Science Graduate Office, (714) 824-2277, or visit the
ICS graduate studies web site.
Michael Franz received a Best Paper Award at
WebNet 97, World Conference of
the WWW, Internet, and Intranet, in Toronto, sponsored by the Association
for the Advancement of Computing in Education. Of the more than 500 papers
submitted, 257 were accepted for the conference but only 4 papers received
an award.
More than 100 academic and industry researchers came
together on January 9th at UCI
for the second annual
ICS Research Symposium
Companies in attendance included Microsoft, FileNET, Raytheon, Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, Boeing, Beckman Instruments, Ericsson Cyberlab and
Unisys.
The day-long symposium featured a variety of speakers,
from UCI faculty, industry researchers,
and the National Science Foundation.
Topics ranged from multimedia high-speed networks, the Internet,
data mining, and
and the growth of cryptography as a way to protect information in
communications systems.
Space exploration was the topic of the keynote address by Dr. Richard
Doyle from the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He discussed
how the future of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's
interplanetary exploration depends on building smaller and less
expensive exploration vehicles (like the Mars Pathfinder rover)
with increasing reliance on recent research advances in
algorithms and techniques for robust autonomous systems.
In a recent US News
ranking of US public universities,
UCI was ranked 9th overall, behind University of Virginia,
UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, and UCLA (the top 4).
Ranking criteria included academic reputation, student
selectivity, faculty resources, retention rate, and
financial resources.
The UC Irvine Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program awards
were recently announced and include
a number of ICS undergraduates working on variety of
computer science research topics with various faculty. Students
and their research topics include:
- An Ngo for Remote Debugger
- Ranjit Iyer for Unicast Routing for ad-hoc Networks Via Set Graphs
- Chin-Yu Chen for FEC for VoD over ATM
- Annie Chen,
Janell So,
Ming-Hwei Sun,
Jill Tolentino, and
Fay Tollentino for Developing a UML CASE Tool in Java
- Albert Rudisill for Agent Groups
- Calvin Shen for Petri Net Behavior Modeling for Mobile Agents
Rockwell International is donating $1.5 million to UCI for
the creation of
a digital arts multimedia learning and
research center, the first of its kind within the UC system.
The center will be located within the UCI School of
the Arts and will encourage students from different
disciplines (such as engineering, the arts, and
computer science) to collaborate on a variety of artistic
projects using various state-of-the-art multimedia
technologies. A feature of the center will
be a multimedia gallery for display of both
student and professional works. This center is seen
as yet another step in the development of UCI's
leadership role in the fledgling field of digital
arts. The School of the Arts introduced a minor
in digital arts in Fall 1997 which quickly filled
to capacity with students from a variety of majors on campus.
- In a followup to an item in
the Fall '97 issue of ICS News
it was announced that UCI received
more NSF CAREER awards in 1997 (6 in total) than any
other university in the
state of California. Of particular relevance is the
fact that 4 of these awards went to faculty in this
department.
-
Professor Lubomir Bic
and
Professor Michael Dillencourt were awarded a multi-year
research grant by the National Science Foundation for
research in distributed computing.
-
Professor David Rosenblum was awarded a multi-year research
grant by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
under its New World Vistas program for research
in component-based software.
-
Dr. Amir Moghadam has been
appointed Director of Student Affairs for ICS.
Amir has been quick off the mark in getting the
first edition of the new
Student Affairs Newsletter published this Winter quarter.
-
Professor Alfred Bork recently gave a series of invited talks on
computer-assisted education and related topics at
universities and research institutions in India,
Switzerland, Sweden, the Phillipines, and Washington DC.
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