In July 1965, Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Alan J. Perlis, in conjunction with the faculty from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA, renamed Tepper School of Business in 2004), staff from the newly formed Computation Center, and key administrators created the Computer Science Department, one of the first such departments in the nation. Their mission statement was "to cultivate a course of study leading to the PhD degree in computer science, a program that would exploit the new technology and assist in establishing a discipline of computer science." The educational program, formally accepted in October 1965, drew its first graduate students from several existing academic disciplines: mathematics, electrical engineering, psychology, and the interdisciplinary Systems and Communications Sciences program in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration. The department was housed within the Mellon College of Science.
With support from Newell, Simon, Nico Haberman, Provost Angel Jordan and President Richard Cyert, the computer science department began a two-year status as a "floating" department in the early months of 1986. Then, the Department began to grow, both academically and financially. In 1988, the School of Computer Science was established, among the first such schools in the country. The Computer Science Department was the original department within the school.[2]
Structure in the 1970s
During the 1970s the Computer Science Department offered only a PhD study program, with no master's degree as an intermediate step. The PhD program required a minimum of six years of residency. It was called the "do or die" program among the graduate students, because a student could not drop a PhD and receive a master's degree. It had quickly focused on computer networking, operating systems (Hydra, Accent, Mach), and robotics.
Gates and Hillman CentersThe Randy Pausch memorial bridge has LEDs that glow different colours at night.
The Gates Center for Computer Science and the Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies are home to much of the School of Computer Science. The $98 million complex was opened in 2009.[3]
It has 217,000-square-foot (20,200 m2) of floor space, including about 310 offices, 11 conference rooms, 32 labs, 8,000 square feet (740 m2) of project space and the Planetary Robotics Center. It also houses 12 classrooms, including a 250-seat auditorium.[4]
Additionally, the Gates Center connects to the Purnell Center, which houses the School of Drama, via the Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge. The bridge represents Professor Pausch's own devotion to linking computer science and entertainment, as he was a co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center.[5]
Carnegie Mellon's Mobot Races, now in their 14th year, are hosted by the School of Computer Science during every Spring Carnival celebration. The Mobots (short for mobile robots) follow a slalom course painted in the sidewalk outside of Wean Hall. The Mobot Races used to include a MoboJoust competition, but it has not been held since 2002[7] to avoid damaging the Mobots.[8]
SCS Day is a yearly celebration of computer science that started in 2003. The event features a variety of activities, including exhibits, workshops and games, in addition to an evening talent show.[9]
Smiley face
SCS research professor Scott Fahlman is credited with the invention of the smiley face emoticon. He suggested the emoticon on an electronic board in 1982 as a way for board readers to know when an author was joking. The text of Fahlman's original post was lost for nearly 20 years but was later recovered from backup tapes:[10]
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes - given current trends. For this, use
:-(
In 2007, Tartan Racing won the DARPA Urban Challenge, in which 11 autonomous ground vehicles raced over urban roadways. In the challenge, team vehicles were required to obey all California driving laws, share the road with other drivers and robotic cars, and complete the course in under six hours. Tartan Racing won the $2 million cash prize with Boss, a reworked 2007 Chevy Tahoe. Averaging about 14 miles (23 km) an hour for a 55-mile (89 km) trip, Boss beat the second-place team, Stanford Racing, by just under 20 minutes.[12]
SCS honors and awards
The School established a number of honors and awards.[13]
SCS Endowed Chairs
Finmeccanica Chair
A. Nico Habermann Chair in the School of Computer Science
Litton Faculty Fellows
Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence
Herbert A. Simon Award for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science
The Robert Doherty Prize for Excellence in Education
Carnegie Mellon University Undergraduate Academic Advising Award
Luis von Ahn is a Consulting Professor in the Computer Science Department, where he also received his PhD in 2005. Von Ahn was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2006 (called the "genius" grant).[19] He also created Games With a Purpose, a website where users can play games to help train computers to solve complicated problems, in addition to reCAPTCHA and Duolingo.
William L. "Red" Whittaker is a roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon who led the Tartan Racing team to victory in the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge. He is also leading a team of Carnegie Mellon students to win the Google Lunar X Prize.[20] Whittaker is the Fredkin Professor of Robotics at the Robotics Institute and the director of the Robotics Institute's Field Robotics Center[21] since its creation in 1983. Whittaker earned his master's and doctoral degrees in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in the late 1970s.[22]
Raj Reddy is the University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics and Moza Bint Nasser Chair at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His areas of interest include artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. He received the ACM Turning award in 1994. He received the French Legion of Honour in 1984 and Padma Bhushan award in 2001. He was also awarded the Honda Prize in 2005, and the Vannevar Bush Award in 2006.[23] Reddy was the founding directory of the Robotics Institute[24] and the Dean of School of Computer Science. He was one of the founders of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence[25] and was its President from 1987 to 1989.[26]
Takeo Kanade is a U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics. He is the director of the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center at Carnegie Mellon. His main areas of interest include computer vision, multi-media, manipulators, autonomous mobile robots, and sensors.[27]
Hans Moravec is a research professor at the Robotics Institute with interests in mobile robots and artificial intelligence. He worked in the RI's Mobile Robot Lab, a research space designed to produce robots able to move through intricate indoor and outdoor areas.[28] He also helped develop Moravec's paradox in the 1980s, which states that it is more difficult for computers to learn basic human instincts than human reason.
Manuela M. Veloso is the Herbert A. Simon Professor at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. She is the President of the International RoboCup Federation that she co-founded and the President Elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. She is a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of IEEE. Her research focus on the scientific and engineering challenges of creating teams of intelligent agents in complex, dynamic, and uncertain environments, in particular adversarial environments, such as robot soccer, that Cooperate, Observe the world, Reason, Act, and Learn. She currently researches and develops effective indoor mobile service robots aiming at contributing to a multi-robot, multi-human symbiotic relationship, in which robots and humans coordinate and cooperate as a function of their limitations and strengths.
Manuel Blum is the Bruce Nelson Professor of Computer Science and a Turing Award winner. His wife Lenore Blum and son Avrim Blum are also professors in the School of Computer Science.
Lorrie Cranor is the FORE Systems Professor in the Institute for Software Research and served as the Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission.
Kathleen Carley is a computational social scientist and a professor at the Software and Societal Systems Department.
David Garlan is a professor at the Software and Societal Systems Department.
Randal Bryant is a Founders University Professor of Computer Science Emeritus and former Dean of the School of Computer Science.
Daniel Siewiorek is the Buhl University Professor Emeritus at CMU.
Michael Ian Shamos is a Distinguished Career Professor in the Software and Societal Systems Department and Language Technologies Institute.
