UC Irvine Donald Bren School of ICS
School Overview &
Research Strengths
Hal Stern
Ted and Janice Smith Family Foundation Dean
sternh@uci.edu
2.23.15
ICS Overview

Only computing-focused school in the UC system
 Founded in 1968 as a department; became a School in 2002
 Three departments: Computer Science, Informatics, Statistics
 One of five such schools among AAU Universities
(others are GaTech, CMU, Cornell, Indiana)

Our mission:
Provide computer science and information technology leadership for the 21st
century through
 Research and development of emerging technologies
 Collaborations to address societal issues
 Innovative and broad computing curricula
Bren School Rankings

Computer Science graduate program ranked 29th nationally by
US News & World Report (2014)
 14th among public universities
 Almost identical to last ranking in 2010

NEW (Fall 2014) …
US News & World Report added “Global University” rankings.
UC Irvine is 23rd in the world for computer science!
 The U.S. ranking above is purely based on reputation
 The global ranking is primarily based on productivity

New European ranking effort (excellencemapping.net)
 UC Irvine computer science faculty ranked 16th in U.S. for
likelihood of producing highly cited work

Academic Analytics (2012 data):
 CS Department - top 25 of 230+ departments
 Informatics Department - top 5 of 40+ departments
 Statistics Department – top 3 of 80+ departments
Undergraduate Majors

Computer Science

Informatics

Software Engineering (established 2012)

Computer Game Science (established 2010)

Business Information Management (joint with The Paul Merage School of Business)

Computer Science & Engineering (joint with The Henry Samueli School of Engineering)

Data Science (proposal under campus review)
1500
UGEnroll
1000
500
0
Applications
Undergraduate Enrollment
2500
2000
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Applications
ICS Data and Trends
Freshman Enrollment
600
500
400
300
Fresh_Enroll
200
100
0
Graduate Studies
M.S. AND PH.D. DEGREE PROGRAMS IN:

Computer Science

Informatics (new for Fall 2015 … formerly ICS with concentration in Informatics)

Statistics

Networked Systems

Software Engineering (established 2012)
400
300
Grad_Enroll
PhD
200
MS
100
0
Student Credit Hours
Graduate Enrollment
600
96-97
97-98
98-99
99-00
00-01
01-02
02-03
03-04
04-05
05-06
06-07
07-08
08-09
09-10
10-11
11-12
12-13
13-14
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Students
ICS Data and Trends
Total Student Credit Hours
90000
80000
500
70000
60000
50000
40000
Tot_SCH
30000
20000
10000
0
400
300
Grad_Enroll
PhD
200
MS
100
0
Student Credit Hours
Graduate Enrollment
600
96-97
97-98
98-99
99-00
00-01
01-02
02-03
03-04
04-05
05-06
06-07
07-08
08-09
09-10
10-11
11-12
12-13
13-14
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Students
ICS Data and Trends
Total Student Credit Hours
90000
80000
500
70000
60000
50000
40000
Tot_SCH
30000
20000
10000
0
ICS Diversity
Undergrad
Fall 2005 … Fall 2013
Fall 2014
Female
129
…
389
480
Total
1053
…
1676
2105
% Female
12.3%
…
23.2%
22.8%
Undergrad
Fall 2005 … Fall 2013
Fall 2014
URM
85
…
227
319
Total
1053
…
1676
2105
% Female
8.1%
…
13.5%
15.2%
Recent Achievements


Education
 Graduated first-cohort of computer game science graduates
• Significant participation from Blizzard in support of senior projects
 ACM Computing Team finished 2nd in 2013 SoCal regional;
participated in international programming championship in Russia
 Graduate students -- 3 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
Outreach / Access
 Competitions: App Jam + (middle school), Med App Jam (ICS & Med
students), Autism App Jam, Butterworth Product Development Competition
 Summer App Camp for middle school students
 NSF-funded Alliance for California Computing Education for Students and
Schools (ACCESS) focused on K-12 CS education
 Mentoring Program (Alumni/friends mentoring women/URM students)
 Engr/ICS Corporate Partners Program
Recent Achievements

Research / Collaboration

Faculty recognitions:
•
•
•
•
•
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Nik Dutt, Gene Tsudik – ACM Fellow
Alex Nicolau – IEEE Fellow
Eric Mjolsness – AAAS Fellow
Jessica Utts – Elected president of the American Statistical Association
Scott Jordan – Chief Technologist at the FCC (on leave 2014-2016)
Mike Carey / Chen Li - $1.1 million (NSF + companies) to support AsterixDB (big
data management system)
Andre van der Hoek - $1.4 million (NSF) to study “crowdprogramming”
RWJ Foundation $1.9 million award to researcher Matt Beitz at UCI and colleagues
at UCSD to study how personal health data can be used
Nalini Venkatasubramanian invited to White House to demonstrate SmartAmerica
project on low-cost sensors for safe communities
Gillian Hayes named the initial Robert and Barbara Kleist Professor of Informatics to
continue her research on health and technology
Padhraic Smyth named to head new Provost-funded “Data Science Initiative”
Current Year Activities




Data Science undergraduate major (statistics and computer science
 Students take a combination of CS and Statistics courses
Professional M.S. degree programs
 Computer Science (CS Dept)
 Human-Computer Interaction and Design (Informatics Dept)
 Software Engineering (Informatics Dept)
New Engineering/ICS Office for Access and Inclusion
Large scale research proposals
 Social impacts of computing (NSF Center proposal)
 Big data management system (seeking NSF and industry support)
Research Areas of Excellence

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Statistics
Algorithms / methods for analyzing large amounts of data
Faculty
 Pierre Baldi – bioinformatics/genomics, chemistry/drug discovery
 Rina Dechter – automated reasoning for AI systems
 Padhraic Smyth – applications in climate science, web data
 Hal Stern – biostatistics, forensic science
Noteworthy
 New campus “Data Science Initiative” led by Padhraic Smyth
(datascience.uci.edu)
 Center for Statistical Consulting (M. Phelan, Interim Director)


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Research Areas of Excellence

Bioinformatics / Medical Informatics / Computational Biology /
Health & Technology
Artificial intelligence and machine learning focused on fast-growing
datasets in biology, chemistry, medicine
 Software engineering to develop and apply medical records systems
Faculty
 Pierre Baldi – bioinformatics/genomics, chemistry/drug discovery
 Yunan Chen – human-computer interaction for health records sysems
 Gillian Hayes – technology for autism and other diseases
 Rick Lathrop – computational biology / synthetic biology for cancer
Noteworthy
 Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics (Pierre Baldi, Director)
 Endowed chair to support work of Gillian Hayes on technology and health
 Recent successful efforts on p53 repair for cancer treatment (Lathrop)

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Research Areas of Excellence

Computer Architecture and Embedded Computer Systems
Computers are integral part of all devices/machines (cars, smartphone,
appliances)
 Puts a premium on innovative architecture and power-aware designs
Faculty
 Nikil Dutt – embedded systems, computer-aided design
 Alex Nicolau – parallelizing compilers, power-aware computing
 Nalini Venkatasubramanian – low-cost sensors, middleware
Noteworthy
 Recognitions: Dutt (ACM Fellow), Nicolau (IEEE Fellow)
 SCALE project (Venkatasubramanian) demonstrated at the White House as
part of Smart America project

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Research Areas of Excellence

Computer Games and Virtual Worlds
Great growth of computer game industry (initial focus on entertainment)
 Increasing application of games to education and training, health (treatment
of chronic diseases), business (marketing and behavior modification)
Faculty
 Yunan Chen – games for health
 Magda El-Zarki – use of sensors, video over IP
 Walt Scacchi – networked computer games, virtual worlds
 Josh Tanenbaum – game culture, wearable technology and gaming
Noteworthy
 New research center, Institute for Virtual Environments and Computer Games
(Magda El-Zarki, director)

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Research Areas of Excellence

Databases and Information Systems
Database researchers continue to face new challenges: size of datasets,
variety of data types, etc.
Faculty
 Michael Carey – database system architecture, information integration
 Ramesh Jain – multimedia information systems, experiential computing
 Chen Li – data cleaning, next generation search
 Sharad Mehrotra – emergency response technologies, databases
Noteworthy
 AsterixDB – open source big data management system (initial release June
2013) with recent funding of $1.1 million (NSF and industry)
 SRCH2 – startup from UCI search technology (Chen Li, CTO)

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Research Areas of Excellence

Human-Centered Computing / HCI
Technological innovation must account for the human element
 Social aspects include: user interfaces, computer-supported collaboration, impact
of technology
Faculty
 Paul Dourish – social analysis of people and technology
 Mizuko Ito – new media, cross-cultural comparisons of media use
 Gloria Mark – technology in the workplace, impacts of email
 Gary and Judy Olson – technology for supporting long distance collaboration
Noteworthy
 Six-year $1.5 million collaboration w/ Google on collaborative tools (Olsons)
 Facebook’s new policy regarding death heavily influenced by Ph.D student Jed
Brubaker’s research
 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded Health Data Exploration Project ($1.9
million) co-led by research Matt Beitz



Research Areas of Excellence

Security and Privacy
Security is focused on keeping computers and associated information secure
from intrusions/detection
 Privacy is concerned with legal rights and personal expectations regarding the
privacy of their data and information
Faculty
 Michael Franz – compiler technology, biological-motivated software security
 Michael Goodrich – algorithms for information assurance
 Alfred Kobsa – modeling of user privacy behavior
 Gene Tsudik – computer and network security, privacy-preserving
communication
Noteworthy
 Automated software diversity research featured in The Economist (Franz)

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Research Areas of Excellence

Software Engineering
Software development is now an important part of many industries
 Need for careful design and organization in decentralized/distributed
environments
Faculty
 Crista Lopes – large software systems
 David Redmiles – graphical user interfaces, user studies
 Richard Taylor (emeritus) – software architecture
 Andre van der Hoek – design tools for software, education in software
engineering
Noteworthy
 OpenSimulator open source tool for developing virtual environments (Lopes)
 HTTP, DNS are key contributions of UCI alums to internet (Fielding, Mockapetris
were students of Richard Taylor (emeritus))
 Recent $1.4 million NSF award to study “crowd”-programming (van der Hoek)
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Contact

Questions

Hal Stern – sternh@uci.edu

Shana Chance
Director of Corporate Relations (ICS & Engr)
schance@uci.edu

Nancy Kim Yun
Director of Corporate and Research Collaborations (ICS & Engr)
nancy.kim.yun@uci.edu