Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia

Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems / Computer Science (ICICS/CS) building at UBC

The UBC Computer Science department at the University of British Columbia was established in May 1968. UBC CS is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As of May 2020, it has 55 faculty, 35 staff, 200 graduate students, and 1300 undergraduates. Recognized internationally for excellence in research and teaching with a conscious focus on interdisciplinary programs, the Department encourages diversity both within its community and areas of study. It plays a leadership role in research, teaching and outreach activities to champion the understanding and integration of Computer Science.

History

The Computer Science department was established in May 1968 by six founding UBC faculty members:

1. After more than a decade working with Atomic Energy of Canada, Dr. Kennedy joined the department in January 1966 as Director of the Computing Centre, a position he held until June 1980. The Computing Centre served computing needs across the university, including Computer Science. In addition, he became a professor in the Department of Computer Science in 1968.
2. Hugh Dempster was one of the founding members of the department of Computer Science in 1968. Prior to that, Hugh had worked at UBC in the Computing Centre.
3. Edward Argyle, another founding member, had worked at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Lab in Penticton, and published widely on computer science and astrophysics.
4. Founding member, Wilfred J. Hansen wrote one of the founding texts on data structures, "Data Structures" and "Data Structures in Pascal".
5. John L. Allard was a founding faculty member.
6. J.E.L. was the first Department Head and remained so until 1977.

Research activities

The department's research activities are organized around a number of collaborative research groups:

• AI Lab
• Algorithms Lab
• CAIDA (Centre for Artificial Intelligence Decision-Making & Action)
• DFP (Designing for People Cluster)
• Data Management and Mining Lab (DMM)
• Human-AI Interaction
• Imager Laboratory for Graphics, Visualization and HCI)
• InfoVis (Information Visualization Group)
• Integrated System Design (ISD)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• PLAI (Programming Languages for Artificial Intelligence)
• Laboratory for Computational Intelligence (LCI)
• Networks, Systems and Security Lab (NSS)
• Scientific Computing Laboratory (SCL)
• SPIN (SensoryPerception & interaction Research Group)
• Software Practices Lab (SPL)
• Sensiormotor Systems Lab (SSL)
• VisCog (Visual Cognition Lab)

Faculty (who have Wikipedia pages)

• Anne Condon: – bioinformatics and computational complexity. Former department chair.
• Gregor Kiczales – His best known work is on Aspect-oriented programming and the AspectJ extension for Java at Xerox PARC. He contributed to the design of the Common Lisp Object System, and is the author of the book The Art of the Metaobject Protocol, along with Jim Des Rivieres and Daniel G. Bobrow.

• Alan Mackworth – Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence and founding director of the UBC Laboratory for Computational Intelligence. He is Past President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
• Margo Seltzer – Canada 150 Research Chair in Computer Systems and the Cheriton Family Chair in Computer Science. Former president of USENIX.

• Gail Murphy

• Tamara Munzner
• Joanna McGrenere
• Kevin Leyton-Brown
• David Kirkpatrick
• Cristina Conati

See also

• Sauder School of Business
• Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
• Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
• UBC Faculty of Science

External links

• UBC Department of Computer Science