Opportunities in
Computer Science
Jeff Gray, Ph.D. - Professor
Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year (Alabama, 2008)
University of Alabama
Department of Computer Science
gray@cs.ua.edu
http://gray.cs.ua.edu
The Benefits of a Diverse Education
• You don’t need to be a Pulitzer
Prize winning novelist to
appreciate an English class…
• …nor a world-renowned scientist
or mathematician to understand
the wonders of our world.
• We believe that understanding
computational thinking also offers Your Photo
skills useful for your future.
Here
Software is Everywhere
• Think of some of the things that entertain
and enrich your daily life
• All of the above are driven by software
• Software developers equipped with a
computer science degree have opportunities
to work on exciting and cutting-edge projects
Software is Everywhere
• 98% of all microprocessors control devices other
than desktop computers
– Automobiles, airplanes, televisions, copiers, razors…
• These devices also need software and often
require strong technical skills to develop
Intellectual Opportunities
“… the software industry is going to make
more breakthroughs in these next 10 years
than it's made in the last 30 … software is
really going to transform not just what we
think about as the computer industry, but
the way that everything is done …”
Re-architecting
the Internet
Harnessing
parallelism
Wreckless
driving
Quantum computing
Prosthetics /
augmentation /
access
Transforming all fields
of science and engineering
Transforming the
nation’s defense
An Example: Tornado Warnings
• Because software is often transparent, the
general public is not aware of its daily benefits
• Computer Scientists play an important role in
public safety by creating software to read the
Doppler radar to assist meteorologists
Youthful Opportunities
• January 2011: An app by a 14-year old called
Bubble Ball knocks Angry Birds out of top spot
– “While Angry Birds was created by a 17-person
company based in Finland, Bubble Ball is the work of
14-year-old Robert Nay, an eighth grader living in Utah”
– http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/17/robert-nay-bubble-ball_n_810023.html
• March 2013: Yahoo purchases Summly
– 18-year-old CEO named Nick D’Aloisio for $30Million
– 2013 Wall Street Journal Innovator of the Year
–
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/03/25/nick-dalosio-summly-yahoo-sale/
High Impact Opportunities
February 15, 2005:
Domain registered (youtube.com)
April 23, 2005:
First Video
October 6, 2006:
Google purchased for $1.65B
Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen
Age: mid-20s
•
•
•
•
1 Billion unique user visits each month
6 Billion hours of video viewed each month
100 hours of video uploaded each minute
October 2006: Time Magazine Invention of the Year
UA Alums as Tech Leaders
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder
From Huntsville, AL
• The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet.
• Since its creation in 2001, nearly 33 million pages in over 285 languages.
• 470M monthly visitors; 76k active contributors.
UA Alums as Tech Leaders
Dr. Nan Boden is a Director of Engineering at Google
in Mountain View, California, joining Google in 2013 to
help develop Google’s next-generation data centers.
Nan earned her PhD and MS degrees in Computer
Science from Caltech and her BS degree from the
University of Alabama in Applied Mathematics. She
Dr. Nan Boden
also has an MBA from UCLA.
Director of Engineering at Google
From Athens, AL
Nan formerly was the CEO of Myricom, a successful Caltech spin-off she helped
found in 1994 that pioneered high-performance computer networking. Over the
years at Myricom, Nan migrated from the techie world into the business world,
serving as Executive Vice President, CFO, a member of Myricom's Board of
Directors, and becoming CEO in 2010.
Women IT Leaders
Marissa Mayer
• Employee #20 at Google
• Current President and CEO of Yahoo!
• Net worth: Over $300M
• Top-15 in Forbes’ Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg
• Current COO of Facebook
• Net worth: Over $1B
• Board of Directors, Walt Disney
• Top-5 in Forbes’ Most Powerful Women
African-American IT Leaders
Aston Motes
• Joined Dropbox as its first employee. He
built a lot of its back-end web functionality.
• Graduated from MIT and interned at
Google and Intel before joining Dropbox.
Makinde Adeagbo
• Early Facebook engineer responsible
for key infrastructure innovations.
• Worked at Dropbox and currently
engineering manager at Pinterest.
The Demand for Computer Scientists
The Demand for Computer Scientists
Software development positions are expected to grow by 32%
over the next 10 years, much faster than the average for all
other occupations. Below are the top 8 career choices for
highest growth/highest salary with a Bachelors degree.
Over the next 10 years, a projected 822,000 new jobs will be
available in Computer Science occupation areas in the United
States alone.
Source: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm/
The Demand for Computer Scientists
A new Georgetown University report finds that of the 1.9 million
job openings posted online, “application software developer is
the most in-demand occupation overall” with 125,000 jobs.
The Online Labor Market: Where the Jobs Are
http://cew.georgetown.edu/onlinejobmarket
Where the STEM Jobs Will Be
Projected Annual Growth of NEWLY CREATED STEM Job Openings 2010-2020
* Subtotals do not equal 9.2 million due to rounding.
* STEM is defined here to include non-medical occupations.
Source: Jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Employment
Projections 2010-2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/emp/. STEM is defined here to include nonmedical occupations.
Source: Jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),
Employment Projections 2010-2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/emp/.
Where the STEM Jobs Will Be
Degrees vs. Jobs Annually
Sources: Degree data are calculated from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Science and Engineering Indicators 2012,
available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/appendix.htm. Annual jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS), Employment Projections 2010-2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/emp/. STEM is defined here to include nonmedical degrees and occupations.
Where the STEM Jobs Will Be
Top 10 STEM Occupations by Total Employment in 2020
Source: Jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Employment Projections 2010-2020, available at
http://www.bls.gov/emp/. STEM is defined here to include non-medical occupations.
The Demand for Computer Scientists
• National Job Outlook
– According to the National Association of
Colleges and Employers (NACE)
• $64,800 is the average starting salary for
computer science degrees in the class of 2013
(among highest starting salaries); 3.9% increase
over 2010 offers
• Computer Science tops list of best major for jobs
with the highest number of job offers per major
(2.8 job offers per CS undergrad)
The Potential for Alabama
• Per capita, Huntsville is
one of the top five cities
in
the
US
with
concentration of software
developers, and #4 in
overall STEM workers.
• Cummings Research
Park is the second
largest in the United
States and the fourth
largest in the World.
Huntsville
The Potential for Alabama
• Comparison of Projected Computing Jobs &
Computer Science Degrees Earned
http://www.ncwit.org/caucus.php?id=AL&d=0
Myth of Computer Science
• According to the Alabama Learning Exchange
(ALEX)1, computing is equated to learning
Microsoft Word and various mechanical tasks;
this is not Computer Science!
2
1
2
http://alex.state.al.us/standardAll.php?grade=9&subject=TC2&summary=2
http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/can-we-fix-computer-science-education-in-america/
Computer Science in Alabama
• Number of schools passing AP CS audit
State
Alabama
Number of Schools
Less than 8
(out of > 460)
Tennessee
16
South Carolina
18
North Carolina
28
Florida
69
Georgia
78
New Jersey
133
California
165
Texas
271
Comparison with
Neighbors to the East
• Number of students taking AP CS exams
State
2001
2007
Georgia
461 CS A
422 CS A
114 CS AB
107 CS AB
27 CS A
27 CS A
Alabama
15 CS AB
7 CS AB
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
585 CS A
583 CS A
692 CS A
884 CS A
1037 CS A
1260
105 CS AB
160 CS AB
41 CS A
24 CS A
51 CS A
99 CS A
97 CS A
126 CS A
11 CS AB
22 CS AB
• Alabama population, ages 15-18: 220k
• Over 5200 students took AP US History
• Nearly 120 took the AP Latin exam
K-12 Outreach at UA CS
Mentoring for Science Fair Competitions
• Mentoring throughout academic year;
students treated like a PhD student
with office space
• In 2010, three students named ISEF
finalists; another in 2013
Summer Camps
• Summer: Java, robots, Android!
• Summer: Teacher workshops
• Summer: Middle school camps
• Taught by UA Faculty
http://outreach.cs.ua.edu/camps
Field Trips and School Visits
• 3-hour field trips to UA
CS Department (pizza
lunch!)
• Visits to your school;
robotics and game
programming talks
Alabama Robotics Contest
http://outreach.cs.ua.edu/robotics-contest/
• 3-hour field trips
contest; solve 3
challenge problems
• Open to all grades in
K-12; statewide
• Open platform
• Focus on
programming
High School Outreach at UA CS
Google-Sponsored CS4HS
• Teachers from Alabama and 7 other
states meet in Tuscaloosa for training in
new teaching techniques and platforms
(e.g., smartphone programming)
New NSF CE21 Grant/College Board Pilot
• A $1M grant to provide detailed PD to
50 high school teachers
• The goal is to sustain and scale the
offering of a new College Board AP
exam that we are helping to pilot
• In collaboration with A+ College Ready
Teacher PD
• Training for middle/high school teachers
on robotics programming; robots loaned
to teachers for classroom use
• Training for middle school teachers on
Alice game programming
Robotics Training in Classroom
• A new NSF grant provides an
opportunity for UA undergraduates to
help with new robotics courses in
middle/high schools
UA Factoids
• Founded in 1831, UA is the state’s first university
• UA is ranked among the top 50 public universities in the
nation for the tenth consecutive year in U.S. News and
World Report’s annual college rankings, fall 2012.
• The University of Alabama ranks first among public
universities nationwide in the enrollment of National Merit
Scholars for 2012-2013 with 241 scholars in the fall 2012
freshman class. The ranking also places UA fourth among
all universities (public and private).
• For the eight-year period from 2007 to 2014, UA ranks
second in the United States for the number of students
named Goldwater Scholars. UA is tied with Arizona State
University with 21 scholars during that period and just one
behind Harvard University, which had 22 scholars. The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one behind UA
and ASU with 20.