Computer Science – Facts and Fantasies

Ed Lazowska

Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington

August 2011

Today

 UW Computer Science & Engineering  Education for the 21 st century  Why computer science?

 Why a research-intensive university?

 What your students will experience in UW Computer Science & Engineering

UW Computer Science & Engineering

 Ranked among the top 10 programs in the nation  MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, Washington, Cornell, Princeton, Georgia Tech, Princeton, Caltech, Wisconsin …  Two undergraduate programs  Computer Science (College of Arts & Sciences)  Computer Engineering (College of Engineering)  160 Bachelors students per year  We also grant ~85 Masters and ~20 Ph.D. degrees annually

 Admission  “Regular Admission” for UW students who have fulfilled a set of prerequisites (math, physical sciences, computer science, etc.)  Offered twice each year – for autumn and spring quarters  “Accelerated Admission” for students who do extremely well in our introductory courses  Offered every quarter  “Direct Admission” for top high school students  Offered in the spring, for autumn quarter, coordinated with the UW Admissions Office and the UW Honors Program

 Extraordinary students  A deep commitment to providing a top-tier undergraduate education  Winner of 5 UW Distinguished Teaching Awards  Winner of the inaugural UW Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence

 Housed in the spectacular Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering

 Message #1  There are various reasons to go out of state for college  Getting the best computer science or computer engineering education in the nation is not one of them

Education for the 21

st

century

 Once upon a time, the “content” of the goods we produced was largely physical

 Then we transitioned to goods whose “content” was a balance of physical and intellectual

 In the “innovation economy,” the content of goods is almost entirely intellectual rather than physical

 What kind of education is needed to produce goods whose content is almost entirely intellectual rather than physical?

 Correlated with education:  Employment  Earnings  Health  Volunteerism  Voting

0 5 10 15 20 1 6 9 6 9 5 1 25 30 35 40 35 38 42 45 50 Engineers employed / 10,000 workers Computer specialists employed / 10,000 workers Life and physical scientists employed / 10,000 workers Persons with recent science & engineering Bachelors degrees / 10,000 workers Recent science & engineering Ph.D.

degrees / 10,000 workers Percent of employment in high technology NAICS codes Percent of payroll in high technology NAICS codes Bachelors degrees granted (all institutions, public and private) / population of 18-24 year olds Percent of Bachelors degrees granted in science & engineering Science & engineering graduate students / population of 18-24 year olds US Department of Commerce

0 5 10 15 20 1 6 9 6 9 5 1 25 30 35 40 35 38 42 45 50 Engineers employed / 10,000 workers Computer specialists employed / 10,000 workers Life and physical scientists employed / 10,000 workers Persons with recent science & engineering Bachelors degrees / 10,000 workers Recent science & engineering Ph.D.

degrees / 10,000 workers Percent of employment in high technology NAICS codes Percent of payroll in high technology NAICS codes Bachelors degrees granted (all institutions, public and private) / population of 18-24 year olds Percent of Bachelors degrees granted in science & engineering Science & engineering graduate students / population of 18-24 year olds US Department of Commerce

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 5 40 43 44 45 48 49 50 2-year public institutions overall 4-year public institutions overall 4-year public lower division 4-year public upper-division 4-year public graduate and professional US Department of Commerce

Participation rate (% of 18-24 year olds)

36 4-year private institutions

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 5 40 43 44 45 48 49 50 2-year public institutions overall 4-year public institutions overall 4-year public lower division 4-year public upper-division 4-year public graduate and professional US Department of Commerce

Participation rate (% of 18-24 year olds)

36 4-year private institutions

 Washington State is all geared up to fight the last war!

 Message #2  The vanguard of our economy is the production of goods whose content is almost entirely intellectual  It takes a Bachelors+ education to produce these goods  If you steer a capable student towards a 2-year program as his or her end-goal, you are doing that student a disservice  Not every student needs college prep. But every student needs life prep. Increasingly, math and science are life prep.

 “Honors, AP, and IB English, math, and science”

Why Computer Science?

 It’s creative, it’s challenging, it’s exciting  It’s increasingly fundamental to many other fields  And thus it’s great preparation for these fields  There are tons of jobs  Although this is not a reason to choose a major!

http://www.cs.washington.edu/WhyCSE/

 Power to Change the World  People enter computer science for all sorts of aspirational reasons  Pathways in Computer Science  A computer science education is the gateway to all sorts of careers in addition to the software industry  A day in the life  The software industry is pretty cool

The Impact

“From smartphones to eBook readers to game consoles to personal computers; from corporate datacenters to cloud services to scientific supercomputers; from digital photography and photo editing, to MP3 music players, to streaming media, to GPS navigation; from robot vacuum cleaners in the home, to adaptive cruise control in cars and the real-time control systems in hybrid vehicles, to robot vehicles on and above the battlefield; from the Internet and the World Wide Web to email, search engines, eCommerce, and social networks; from medical imaging, to computer assisted surgery, to the large-scale data analysis that is enabling evidence based healthcare and the new biology; from spreadsheets and word processing to revolutions in inventory control, supply chain, and logistics; from the automatic bar-coding of hand-addressed first class mail, to remarkably effective natural language translation, to rapidly improving speech recognition – our world today relies to an astonishing degree on systems, tools, and services that belong to a vast and still growing domain known as Networking and Information Technology (NIT).”

“As a field of inquiry, NIT has a rich intellectual agenda – as rich as that of any other field of science or engineering.” “In addition, NIT is arguably unique among all fields of science and engineering in the breadth of its impact.” “The development and application of NIT-related systems, services, tools and methodologies have boosted U.S. labor productivity more than any other set of forces in recent decades. Advances in NIT, deployed pervasively throughout the U.S. economy, have helped U.S. workers become the world’s most productive and have enabled the U.S. to remain one of the world’s most competitive economies.”

The Future Role

“Recent technological and societal trends place the further advancement and application of NIT squarely at the center of our Nation’s ability to achieve essentially all of our priorities and to address essentially all of our challenges: • Advances in NIT are a key driver of economic competitiveness. They create new markets and increase productivity.

• Advances in NIT are crucial to achieving our major national and global priorities in energy and transportation, education and life-long learning, healthcare, and national and homeland security. NIT will be an indispensable element in buildings that manage their own energy usage; attention-gripping, personalized methods that reinforce classroom lessons; continuous unobtrusive assistance for people with physical and mental disabilities; and strong resilience to cyber warfare.

• Advances in NIT accelerate the pace of discovery in nearly all other fields.

The latest NIT tools are helping scientists and engineers to illuminate the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, elucidate the nature of combustion, and predict the size of the ozone hole, to cite just a few examples.

• Advances in NIT are essential to achieving the goals of open government.

Those advances will allow better access to government records, better and more accessible government services, and the ability both to learn from and communicate with the American public more effectively.”

Workforce and Education

“All indicators – all historical data, and all projections – argue that NIT is the dominant factor in America’s science and technology employment.”

Science and Technology Job Growth, 2008-2018 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

1,400,000 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0 New Jobs New Jobs + Replacements 15-1000 17-2000 19-1000 19-2000 19-3000

“The gap between the demand for NIT talent and the supply of that talent is and will remain large.”

Annualized Job Openings vs. Annual Degrees Granted

300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 Annualized job openings, 2008 2018 (BLS data) Degrees granted, 2006 (NSF data)

Washington has innovators in most major information technology industry sectors

Broad e-tailing, Cloud Software Search, etc.

Online real estate Online media Online travel Networking infrastructure Games Bioinformatics RFID High-performance computing Focused e-tailing Clustered storage

HEC Board Regional Needs Analysis Report (2011)

June 2011 job openings

 Message #3  Computer science is an incredible field  And there are tons of jobs 

However, a Bachelors-level education is not about vocational training – it’s about preparation for life long learning, and preparation for citizenship

Why a research-intensive university?

 What can we uniquely do?

 Get students into the lab  Make them our partners in discovery  Prepare them for life-long learning at the forefront of knowledge and society

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Christophe Bisciglia Gig Harbor HS

Tessa MacDuff Issaquah HS Christophe Bisciglia Gig Harbor HS (Google corporate trip to Burning Man)

UW CSE Bachelors Student Destinations

(most recent 2 years, ~90% response rate)

 Message #4  There’s no field in which it’s more important ot prepare students for lifelong learning  Bright, well-prepared, well-motivated students from all across this state get a mind-blowingly great education at UW

What your students will experience in UW Computer Science & Engineering

 “Capstone Design Courses”  Robot soccer => robot blimps => robot cars  “Software system design”  Computer animation  Ubiquitous computing  “Google-scale computing”  Many, many more http://www.cs.washington.edu/info/videos/

 Message #5  We are in “the opportunity business”