WELCOME TO COMPUTER SCIENCE Michael Black Ugur Cetintemel

WELCOME TO COMPUTER SCIENCE Michael Black Ugur Cetintemel Eugene Charniak Tom Dean Amy Greenwald Maurice Herlihy John F. Hughes Sorin Istrail John Jannotti Chad Jenkins Claire Kenyon Philip Klein Shriram Krishnamurthi David Laidlaw Anna Lysyanskaya Franco P. Preparata Steve Reiss Roberto Tamassia Eli Upfal Department Chair Andy van Dam John Savage Pascal Van Hentenryck Tom Doeppner Meinolf Sellmann Stan Zdonik Peter Wegner Emeritus 1 of 8 September 6, 2005

115 Waterman Street Providence, RI 02912 401 -863 -7600 http: //www. cs. brown. edu/ About The Department Computer Science has been an active area at Brown for over 40 years and a department since 1979, when it was founded by faculty from the departments of Applied Math and Engineering. The Department is located on the 3 rd, 4 th and 5 th floors of the Thomas J. Watson Sr. Center for Information Technology (the CIT Building) on the Brown Campus. Visitors should go to the Reception desk located on the 4 th floor. The Department of Computer Science offers standard Sc. B. and A. B. concentrations, standard concentrations in Mathematics and Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Economics and Computer Science, and Computational Biology, a Master's program, and a Ph. D. program. People The Department Chair is Professor Eli Upfal, and there are 25 active faculty members and one emeritus faculty member. The URL for the faculty pages is: http: //www. cs. brown. edu/people/faculty/ Programs The undergraduate program combines educational breadth in practical and theoretical Computer Science with deeper understanding of specialized areas. Undergraduates often take at least one semester of faculty-supervised independent study, working either on a project of their own choice or as members of a team on a faculty-sponsored research project. Graduate students pursue research in a wide range of areas that are described in the department brochure, which may be obtained at: http: //www. cs. brown. edu/about/ Our established coordination with other departments of the University provides an unusual opportunity for advanced research both in traditional "core" Computer Science and in areas interfacing between Computer Science and such fields as Applied Mathematics, Cognitive Science, Economics, Engineering, Biology, and Medicine. 2 of 8 September 6, 2005

Introductory Courses: Fearless Leaders Andy van Dam, CS 15 John (Spike) Hughes, CS 17 3 of 8 September 6, 2005

Faculty Roundup Michael J. Black, Professor Research: Computer Vision, Human Motion "I build neural prostheses - brain machine interfaces - using computational and mathematical models to understand how humans move and how the brain controls movement. " Ugur Cetintemel, Assistant Professor Research: Distributed Systems, Mobile Computing "I develop software tools and techniques that organize and manage the proliferating mass of online data so that people can easily query and access the information they need when they need it. " Eugene Charniak, Professor Research: Statistical Language Processing "I combine statistical machine-learning techniques with those of language processing to aid in tasks such as machine-translation and speech recognition. " Thomas Dean, Professor Research: Machine Learning, Planning and Control “I'm building a computational model of the neocortex that will, if successful, provide computers with a form of associative memory very different from conventional computer memory” Thomas W. Doeppner, Associate Professor and Vice Chairman Research: Operating Systems, Security ”I look for ways to make computers more secure so that you can execute any program and not have to worry about the consequences. ” 4 of 8 September 6, 2005

Faculty Roundup Amy Greenwald, Assistant Professor Research: Multi-Agent Learning, AI Game Theory "I build autonomous agents capable of making limited rational choices in multiagent settings and in the presence of uncertainty for applications such as financial trading, pricing, and auctions. ” Maurice Herlihy, Professor Research: Distributed Computing, Synchronization "I investigate how to make multiple computers work well with each other by the application of parallelism in computer algorithms, memory, and multi-processor chips" John F. Hughes, Associate Professor Research: Computer Graphics, Gestural Animation "I model shape and form at multiple scales, developing new human-computer interaction methods, and am interested in art-based graphics, such as automatically drawing curves that look like those in Disney animations. " Sorin Istrail, Professor Research: Computational Biology "I build computational models and genomics tools for understanding the genomic basis of information processing and complexity of biological systems. " John Jannotti, Assistant Professor Research: Distributed Systems, Wireless Networking "I design network architectures that address evolving Internet issues, such as mobile users, planetary-scale services such as Google and Hotmail, Voice-over-IP, and the need for security and privacy. " 5 of 8 September 6, 2005

Faculty Roundup Chad Jenkins, Assistant Professor Research: Robotics, Computer Vision and Animation "I develop methods for autonomous control and perception that have applications for humanoid robotics, character animation, interactive games, and novel human-computer interfaces. " Claire Kenyon, Professor Research: Design and Analysis of Algorithms "I develop solutions to problems that are extremely time consuming even for the fastest computers by coming up with approximate, but good enough, approaches. " Philip Klein, Professor Research: Algorithms, Combinatorial Optimization "I investigate the problems of a "Google-like" search for shapes rather than text, and solve problems such as finding the shortest route for driving to all 50 state capitals. " Shriram Krishnamurthi, Assistant Professor Research: Programming Languages “I study interactive software systems, such as the Web: how do they really work, what kinds of errors do they manifest, how can we program them quicker and better, and where are they heading? David Laidlaw, Associate Professor Research: Computer Graphics, Scientific Visualization “I build practical computational applications, usually involving interaction and visualization, that help scientists in many different areas do their science more effectively. ” 6 of 8 September 6, 2005

Faculty Roundup Anna Lysyanskaya, Assistant Professor Research: Cryptography, Security, Computation Theory "I study cryptography problems such as digital signature schemes that are computer problems that allow you to sign digital documents much as you sign paper documents. " Franco P. Preparata, Professor Research: Design and Analysis of Algorithms "I develop algorithms to solve hard combinatorial problems arising in computational biology. Particularly, I am interested in formalisms suited for describing molecular processes occurring in the living cell. " Steve Reiss, Professor Research: Software Tools and Environments "I develop tools and techniques to help make software systems more reliable, secure, efficient and user-friendly. " John E. Savage, Professor Research: Computational Nanotechnology "I model and analyze computational systems and structures such as nanotechnology-based systems where the smallest components are just a few tens or hundreds of molecule diameters. " Meinolf Sellmann, Assistant Professor Research: Combinatorial Optimization "I work on optimization problems that consist in finding a high quality solution out of a humongous set of potential decisions that arise in a wide variety of applications, from running an airline company to scheduling sports events. " 7 of 8 September 6, 2005

Faculty Roundup Roberto Tamassia, Professor Research: Graph Drawing, Computational Geometry "I develop security algorithms and systems, including privacypreserving biometric authentication, financial fraud detection, and email authentication for spam defense. " Eli Upfal, Professor and Chairman Research: Design and Analysis of Algorithms Eli applies mathematical techniques from combinatoric and probability theory to real-world problems in computational biology, finance, web search, and computer design. Andries van Dam, Professor Research: Computer Graphics "I develop interactive, graphics systems for education and scientific research, using tools ranging from the Tablet PC to the immersive virtual reality environment of the Cave. " Pascal Van Hentenryck, Professor Research: Combinatorial Optimization "I design and implement languages and tools for combinatorial optimization problems such as scheduling, resource allocation, and planning that are becoming increasingly important in an uncertain and quickly evolving world. " Stan Zdonik, Professor Research: Database Systems "I develop data management technology that allows huge collections of physical sensors to be treated as if they were a single stored database. " 8 of 8 September 6, 2005