WELCOME TO COMPUTER SCIENCE

1
WELCOME TO COMPUTER SCIENCE
2
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
3rd, 4th and 5th 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 4th 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/ Progra
ms 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.
3
Introductory Courses Fearless Leaders
Andy van Dam, CS 15
John (Spike) Hughes, CS 17
4
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.
5
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."
6
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.
7
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."
8
Faculty Roundup
Roberto Tamassia, Professor Research Graph
Drawing, Computational Geometry "I develop
security algorithms and systems, including
privacy-preserving 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 combin-atorial
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."