The Department
The Department
The field of computer science is remarkable for its diversity and vitality. It is a rich intellectual discipline that has deep theoretical foundations and is at the center of a dynamic technology with applications in every aspect of science, engineering, government and business.
In the next 10 years, we can expect to see stunning new advances in computing and computing applications, and Washington University's Department of Computer Science is working to help fulfill these expectations. Computers are evolving into multimedia communication devices, with the ability to send and receive sound, high-resolution images, and video over high-speed networks like those now being developed within our Computer and Communications Research Center and Applied Research Laboratory. Cooperative computing, where many computers work together on the solution of a large computational problem and use networks to exchange intermediate results, will become much more common and play a large role in many different applications. Our Concurrent Systems Group is concerned with developing the formal underpinnings for such applications and the software tools that practitioners need to create reliable and robust systems. New programming environments now being developed within the department will simplify the design of distributed multimedia applications.
Pen-based computers that allow written gestures on a tablet rather than typing at a keyboard are emerging. Widespread use of these devices will require better solutions to the problem of automatic handwriting recognition, but results obtained at Washington University and at other laboratories look very promising. Automatic speech recognition is already surfacing in limited and controlled applications. We are developing new AI-based techniques for making such applications more flexible and natural. By the end of the decade, computers may be able to interpret unstructured human dialogue accurately.
More widespread use of computing in the "real world" will require that computers learn through experience and that they behave sensibly when confronted with incomplete or contradictory information. Research in the department seeks to develop more efficient strategies for learning and to understand the inherent limits of certain approaches to learning. We are also working to develop formal theories of reasoning that will allow computers to formulate and modify plans so that they can carry out complex tasks in which information relevant to the planning process is discovered as the task is carried out.
Computer simulations and visualizations are being developed to help people understand complex phenomena of all types. Our Computer Visualization Lab is concerned with how such information can be best presented to inform the user and yield new insights and understanding. Such visualizations are becoming an intrinsic part of multimedia electronic libraries, which will be accessed from desktop workstations. Our colleagues in Medical Informatics are concerned with how electronic libraries can be created and utilized to improve medical training and access to the latest medical research results.
The application of computing to address problems in other fields of science and engineering is becoming a major focus for computing research. As these problems become ever more challenging, they require increasingly sophisticated uses of computing, and indeed the invention of new algorithms and technology. The Laboratory for Computational Science is addressing two such computational grand challenges: DNA mapping and analysis of molecular conformation. In the Computer and Communications Research Center we are working to develop more effective computational engines to support such grand challenges, using inexpensive mass-market workstations together with emerging high-speed computer networks to create powerful, yet cost-effective parallel machines.
The Department of Computer Science at Washington University is playing an active role in advancing the intellectual frontiers of computer science, creating new computing technology, and applying that technology to meet the needs of our technological society. In the past 10 years, we have grown from a small department focusing primarily on high quality undergraduate teaching to a research-oriented department with outstanding research programs and a continuing commitment to providing the best possible education to all of our students. We have expanded our physical facilities to keep pace with a growing number of faculty and graduate students, and we have built an outstanding research infrastructure to support our activities. We have worked to ensure that our research ideas have an impact on the broader community, not only through scholarly publication, but also by creating systems that can be used by others and can serve as models for commercial developments.
The strength of any organization is derived from its people. At Washington University, we are especially fortunate to have outstanding people who care deeply about research and teaching and who create an environment that encourages the sharing of ideas, values the efforts of every individual, and fosters deep and lasting friendships.