UC Irvine Donald Bren School of ICS
School Overview
&
UCI Industry / University Relations
Hal Stern
Ted and Janice Smith Family Foundation Dean
sternh@uci.edu
3.12.15
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
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)
ICS Data and Trends
Undergraduate Enrollment
Freshman Enrollment
2500
600
500
2000
UGEnroll
1000
Applications
1500
300
Fresh_Enroll
200
500
100
2014
2011
2008
2005
2002
1999
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
0
0
1996
Applications
400
Graduate Studies
M.S. AND PH.D. DEGREE PROGRAMS IN:

Computer Science

Informatics

Statistics

Networked Systems

Software Engineering (established 2012)
ICS Data and Trends
Graduate Enrollment
Total Student Credit Hours
600
90000
80000
500
Grad_Enroll
300
PhD
MS
200
60000
50000
Tot_SCH
40000
30000
20000
100
10000
2014
2011
2008
2005
2002
1999
96-97
98-99
00-01
02-03
04-05
06-07
08-09
10-11
12-13
0
0
1996
Students
400
Student Credit Hours
70000
ICS Diversity
Undergr
ad
Fall …
2005
Fall
2013
Fall 2014
Female
129
…
389
480
Total
1053 …
1676
2105
%
12.3% … 23.2%
Female
Undergr
Fall … Fall
ad
2005
2013
22.8%
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





App Development Competitions:
AppJam+ (middle school), MedAppJam (ICS & Med), Autism
AppJam
Butterworth Product Development Competition
Summer App Camp for middle school students
Mentoring Program (Alumni/friends mentoring women/URM
students)
Engr/ICS Corporate Partners Program
Recent Achievements

Research / Collaboration

Faculty recognitions:
• Nik Dutt, Gene Tsudik – ACM Fellow
• Alex Nicolau – IEEE 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
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



Bioinformatics / Medical Informatics / Computational Biology /
Health & Technology



Algorithms / methods for analyzing large amounts of data
New campus “Data Science Initiative” led by Padhraic Smyth
(datascience.uci.edu)
Machine learning focused on fast-growing datasets in biology, medicine
Software engineering to develop and apply medical records systems
Computer Architecture and Embedded Computer Systems


Design of computers used in other devices (cars, smartphone, appliances)
SCALE project (Venkatasubramanian) demonstrated at the White House
shows how low-cost sensors can provide resilient, secure emergency
response

Research Areas of Excellence
Computer Games and Virtual Worlds



Databases and Information Systems



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)
Database challenges: size of datasets, variety of data types, etc.
AsterixDB – open source big data management system (initial
release June 2013) with recent funding of $1.1 million (NSF and
industry)
Human-Centered Computing / HCI



Social aspects of computing include: user interfaces, computersupported collaboration, impact of technology
Six-year $1.5 million collaboration w/ Google on collaborative
tools
Facebook’s new policy regarding after death management of
pages
Research Areas of Excellence

Security and Privacy




Security - keeping computers and information secure
from intrusions/detection
Privacy - legal rights and personal expectations
regarding privacy of data
Example: Automated software diversity research
featured in The Economist
Software Engineering



Software development is now an important part of many
industries, increasingly in decentralized/distributed
environments
HTTP, DNS are key contributions of UCI alums
Recent $1.4 million NSF award to study “crowd”programming
Interactions with Industry



ICS and Engineering want to partner with
industry
Corporate Partners Program – concierge
service for:
 talent acquisition
 student projects
 internships
Research connections
 Collaborations with faculty/students
 Sponsorship of relevant research
 Consulting with faculty
16
Student Projects

Senior students work in
teams on sponsorgenerated projects

Can be 1-quarter, 2quarter, 3-quarter projects

Faculty supervision

Regular interaction with
sponsor

Examples:
 UCI Police – ZOTfinder
 Google (Analytics) – EZ
Dashboard
 SavvyMoney.com –
Gamification
 MIRTH – Plug-ins for
open source healthcare
integration engine
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