Department
Welcome to the Department of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara. CS@UCSB is a young, energetic and dynamic department in the College of Engineering, one of the top public engineering schools in the United States renowned for its cross-disciplinary research. Our department has 30 distinguished faculty members, with diverse and extensive research interests. Over the last ten years our external funding has experienced an incredible six fold increase, and our PhD program (which started in 1988 with the first PhD graduating in 1990), now has over 100 PhD and 50 Masters students. In 2005, our department ranked 23rd among Computer Science departments in the nation with respect to number of PhDs granted. Many of our graduates have gone on to great things, in both academic as well as in industrial settings. In industry, our graduates are represented in all parts of the IT spectrum, from successful startups to research labs at the most established companies. In academia, you will find UCSB PhDs teaching at Cornell University, ETH Zurich, University of Florida, Purdue University, University of Rochester, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ohio State University, CalPoly, San Luis Obispo, and the Naval Postgraduate School.
The last academic year, 2006--07, was particularly exciting. Our graduating PhD class was a record 25 students. Our graduate program was awarded the UCSB Departmental Graduate Mentorship Award for our outstanding efforts in recruiting and retaining our graduate students, i.e., making them happy! We are very proud of this award. Kevin Almeroth won the UCSB Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, and I received the Graduate Mentorship Award. The research conducted by our faculty and students has been outstanding, appearing in premiere forums, and frequently receiving best paper awards. Our research has also made national news: Our security group led by Dick Kemmerer and Giovanni Vigna identified potentially serious security flaws in the electronic voting systems used in California elections, a finding that led to a reevaluation of the entire electronic voting process by the California Secretary of State.
The CS Department undergraduate program has also seen some very exciting developments in the past few years. Our BA program has been completely revamped, incorporating three new emphases that represent the inter-disciplinary nature of Computer Science: Computational Biology, Computational Economics, and Computational Geography. These new BA emphases were designed to attract students interested in a wide range of subjects where CS intersects with other disciplines. We are also thrilled to announce the addition of Phill Conrad to our faculty as a full time lecturer shared with the College of Creative Studies.
Last but not least we are very excited to have received generous private donations from alumni and friends. Karl and Pamela Lopker and the Lopker Family Foundation established the Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti Chair, Mark and Susan Bertelsen established the Eugene Aas Chair, and an anonymous donor established the Leadership Chair. We are very excited to welcome our new faculty hire Christopher Kruegel as the first Eugene Aas Chair holder, and to announce our own Professor Dick Kemmerer as the very first holder of the Leadership Chair. In addition to the three newly endowed CS Department Chairs, several of our alumni have established generous graduate fellowships. These fellowships help us to attract the best graduate students in our field. Thank you!
All in all, the UCSB Department of Computer Science continues to be a extraordinary place, where exciting things keep happening, and one that I hope will enjoy your continued support.
Amr El Abbadi
Chair, Department of Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara
