UChicago CS Open House Introduces New Space and New Faces
On October 19th, the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science welcomed colleagues and collaborators for an open house at our new research and teaching facility in the John Crerar Library. Attendees heard a program of remarks from University President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier, a keynote from 2018 Turing Award winner David A. Patterson, and lightning talks from six of our newest faculty — all of which you can view below.
“This is a seminal moment for our computer science department,” Zimmer said. “This building is really one piece of what we intend to be a large sequence of investments in computer science, a large expansion of the computer science department itself, and a large expansion of things connected to computer science around the university.”
Before introducing Patterson’s talk, “A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture,” Liew Family Chair of Computer Science Michael Franklin discussed how the design of the new UChicago CS home — with ample open space for co-working and new laboratory and research facilities — supports the vision for a cutting-edge department.
“It’s an amazing time to be a computer scientist, particularly here at the University of Chicago, because things are really, really moving,” Franklin said. “The most visible sign of the momentum we have is this beautiful, renovated building, and lot of thought has gone into it. We’ve built a modern environment that’s really geared to encourage collaboration.”
Watch video of the opening remarks and Patterson’s full talk below.
The open house was also an opportunity to introduce the UChicago community to the deep class of new faculty members that joined the department this year. In the event’s second session, six of those newcomers presented brief talks on their research interests, demonstrating the growth of UChicago CS into new areas at the intersection of science and technology.
“We’re in the midst of a huge expansion of our program across just about any dimension you can think of, and we’ve hired some amazing new faculty,” Franklin said. “We’re expanding into a huge range of new areas: artificial intelligence and machine learning, human-computer interaction, security, data science, and quantum computing.”
Watch ten-minute talks from Rebecca Willett, Aaron Potechin, Junchen Jiang, Sanjay Krishnan, Michael Maire, and Pedro Lopes below.
